The ranch always felt too quiet after a storm.
Cassidy Hart stepped out into the morning with sleep in her eyes and smoke already curling from between her fingers. The cigarette hung loose at the edge of her mouth, lit from habit more than need. She hadn’t slept much—just drifted in and out of dreams thick with rain and breath and the taste of a man she hadn’t kissed. Could’ve kissed.
The sky was washed pale, soft peach bleeding into a dull, low haze. The ground still held yesterday’s water, dark and heavy with mud along the path. The grass sagged beneath the weight of it. She took a long drag of her cigarette, let it burn in her chest. Inside, the coffee maker had hissed and sputtered. Her tank clung to her sides with the sweat of a half-slept night, and her braid was loose, strands catching on her collarbone like a ghost’s fingers.
She looked out towards the barn, tin roof damp and glinting dully in the light. No sign of movement. Not from Colt, at least. She didn’t know how that made her feel.
Ruckus padded beside her, tongue lolling slightly, ears flicking at every sound.
“Don’t start,” she muttered to him. He thumped his tail once, then trotted ahead to pee on the porch post. Cassidy exhaled hard through her nose. The smoke didn’t clear her head—it never did—but it gave her something to do with her mouth that didn’t involve Colt Maddox’s name.
The air smelled like churned dirt, pressing in around her, thick with silence. No birdsong. Just wind, faint and restless. It carried the scent of the pasture, the fence, and the quiet echo of yesterday’s storm still clinging to the horizon. She ran a hand through her braid, pulling it tighter.
When she walked back inside, Dottie was already at the kitchen table, mug in hand, hat half-tilted. Her blue flannel was open over a tank that had once been black but now lived somewhere between soot and sweat. She cradled her coffee like it was gospel, fingers ringed in calluses and chipped nail polish. One finger tapped the side of the mug in a lazy rhythm, and her hat—an old straw thing so sun-bleached it looked bone-dry from a desert storm—was tipped halfway down her brow, casting her eyes in shadow.
But the smirk on her mouth? Full daylight.
Dottie didn’t look at you so much as see through you, like she’d been collecting your tells for years and had finally run out of patience with your poker face. Crow’s feet lined her eyes not from age, but from squinting at fools in sunlight and laughing at things she didn’t say out loud. She looked comfortable in the kind of way that meant danger—like a rattlesnake sunning itself, warm and still, but all bite just below the surface.
Dottie looked her over once, slow. Took in the wrinkled shirt, the unwashed face, the fire in her eyes that hadn’t settled since the night before.
“You look like someone who almost kissed a man and regretted the hell out of it all night,” she said.
Cassidy dropped into the opposite chair, flicked ash into the tray on the table, and said nothing.
“You wanna tell me what happened in that barn?”
“No.”
“You gonna anyway?”
“No.”
Dottie sipped her coffee. “He didn’t leave, you know.”
Cassidy glanced up.
“He was out feeding the horses before sunrise,” Dottie continued.
Cassidy rolled her jaw. “Of course he was.”
“Maybe he’s not here to start trouble.”
“Maybe I don’t need another man deciding what I need.”
Dottie raised a brow. “Or maybe you’re just pissed you still want the one who left.”
Cassidy stood. Fast. The chair scraped loud across the floor. She walked to the window and stared out at the barn.
Behind her, Dottie said, “He’s not a ghost, Cass. Just a man.”
“No,” Cassidy said softly. “He’s the man who left me holding the damn shovel.”
The fencing crew also cancelled on her, so that definitely didn’t put her in a good mood this morning. Nor did Dottie’s drilling.
Cassidy read the message three times before she set her phone down on the counter like it might bite. The words were polite. No reason given, only a quiet retreat wrapped in half-promises and vague delays.
“I’m gonna finish of the North side fencing today. Let me know if you see any strangers lurking,” she said to Dottie before stepping out onto the porch again. The screen door creaked behind her. Ruckus followed, tongue out, content to flop down in the shade like the morning’s tension hadn’t touched him. Down by the far end of the barn, movement caught her eye.
Colt.
Shirt off, jeans slung low, shoulders moving with each swing of his hammer. He was fixing a gate panel she hadn’t asked him to touch. It made her feel like he found her incompetent, even though she knew now it was the guilt driving him.
She watched him for longer than she meant to.
His back was sunburned along the line of his spine, muscles flexing smooth beneath the strain. A scar she didn’t remember cut across one shoulder blade. He paused, wiped sweat from his brow with the crook of his arm, reaching for the water jug beside him. She should’ve turned away. Instead, she stepped off the porch, boots thudding down the steps. The gravel gave under her feet as she crossed the yard. Ruckus stayed put, happy to relax in the shade. Smart dog.
Colt didn’t look up until she was close enough to smell the cedar oil on his hands and the salt of sweat clinging to his skin.
“You planning on rebuilding the whole damn ranch?” she asked.
He looked at her. “It was falling apart.”
Silence stretched between them like a rawhide rope—tight and frayed. He picked up a nail, lined it between two boards, and said nothing more.
“The fencing crew bailed.”
“Huh.”
“Think it’s coincidence?”
“I don’t believe in coincidence, Hart.”
She hated how steady he sounded, like the heat didn’t get to him. Like the crew ditching her didn’t raise the same alarm, together with damn marks left all over the ranch. She hated that she didn’t hate it at all.
He wiped his palms on his jeans, then picked up a mug from the post behind him. Coffee. Still warm, so probably a peace offering from Dottie.
Traitor.
A car door slammed in the distance. Cassidy’s eyes snapped toward the driveway just as a silver SUV eased to a stop by the front gate. It looked clean enough to belong in a bank parking lot, not choking on her gravel. She watched as June Langley stepped out in wedge heels and a sleeveless blouse that hadn’t seen a fence post in its life. Blonde hair swept up tight, face powdered like a pageant, and a smile too sweet to mean anything good.
Cassidy muttered under her breath. “Perfect.”
Colt caught the shift in her posture, glanced over, then said nothing. June made her way up the walk like the ranch was a backdrop for one of her fundraising galas. She carried a single paper feed receipt, probably the excuse she’d cooked up in the car. Her eyes scanned the barn, the yard, the house—lingering long enough for it to seem like she was creating a mental catalogue of everything.
Cassidy didn’t go to meet her. She waited, arms crossed.
“Well,” June said brightly when she reached speaking distance, “it’s hotter than a branding iron out here.”
“Is that what brought you?” Cassidy asked. “The weather?”
June gave a little laugh. “I was in the area. Thought I’d stop in.”
Cassidy raised a brow.
“We’ve got a new contract with that big agri-coop outside Riverton. They keep our schedule pretty tight,” June said, brushing invisible lint from her blouse.
Of course they did.
Cassidy let the silence stretch, thick and sunlit. June fidgeted with the receipt in her hand like she wasn’t used to someone letting her words hang long enough to show their shape.
“You sure you’re not in over your head out here?” June asked finally. “Big property, lots of upkeep. Not like it was when your father was running it.”
Cassidy’s jaw tightened. “It’s still standing.”
“For now,” June said, voice soft. Pitying. Made Cassidy wonder whether she knows more than she is letting on.
“Just saying, if you ever decide to sell—before things really fall apart...”
“And if you ever want a tour of the compost pit,” Cassidy said, stepping forward, “I can show you where we keep the manure fork.”
June blinked.
Ruckus picked that moment to trot over and snort loudly near June’s leg, as if on cue. Her nose wrinkled. Cassidy didn’t hide her grin.
“I should be going,” June said, stepping back.
“You should,” Cassidy agreed.
June gave Colt a parting glance. “Good to see you back in town, Maddox.”
He just nodded. The SUV rolled away a moment later, tires stirring up a plume of dust that drifted toward the barn like smoke from a slow burn. Cassidy stood there a while, arms still folded.
“She was fishing,” she muttered.
Colt grabbed the hammer again. “She always is.”
“She thinks this land’s up for grabs.”
He met her eyes. “Is it?”
Cassidy didn’t answer. She turned and headed back toward the house, boots kicking up grit with every step. She didn’t know what made her angrier—June’s thinly veiled offer, or the quiet way Colt had asked the one question she didn’t want to answer. Is it? Hell if she knew anymore. She grabbed the halter off the hook by the door, needing to do something that didn’t involve feelings. Or talking. Or the past.
But when she passed the barn again, she slowed. Voices. Familiar ones.
The wood siding was warm beneath her palm as she stepped closer to the open door.
“She won’t let me help,” Colt said, voice low but clear. “Not really.”
“Then you don’t know her,” Dottie replied. “She lets people help, just hates feeling useless.”
Cassidy didn’t mean to eavesdrop, yet she was frozen in place.
There was a pause, then Colt spoke again, quieter now, like the words cost more. “I didn’t come back for the ranch. I came back because I couldn’t forget her.”
Dottie was silent.
“She was it for me,” Colt said. “Still is. And I don’t know if I’ll ever earn my way back, but I couldn’t keep pretending that staying gone was the right thing.”
“You tell her that?” Dottie asked.
Cassidy stepped back before she could hear more. She didn’t want the rest. She already felt the weight of it—settling heavy in her chest like wet soil.
She turned on her heel and walked straight toward the pasture, Colt’s voice following her, stuck behind her ribs.
Still is.
ns216.73.216.12da2
