Cassidy Hart knew two things: fence posts never stayed put, and trouble always rode back in a saddle.
The Wyoming sun bore down like judgment, merciless and personal. Not a cloud in the sky, just heat radiating off the land and pressing into her skin. The air shimmered above the cracked earth, and the wind carried the sharp sting of sun-baked shit and sweat. She had been at the south line since just after sunrise, and the day had only gotten meaner from there.
Cassidy Hart didn’t believe in signs from the universe. She believed in rusted wire, busted knuckles, and doing a job right the first time—even if it meant bleeding for it. And today, she was bleeding.
Her gloves were torn, her left palm was scraped raw, and her shoulders burned from swinging the T-post driver. The dry wind did nothing to help, just tossed dust in her face and whispered hot against the back of her neck like a warning. She rolled her aching shoulders, and slammed the driver down again. The metal-on-metal ring vibrated through her arms, but the post budged a little deeper into the hardpack. Good enough.
She paused, breath sawing in and out of her lungs, and ripped off her gloves. Her hands were blistered beneath them, her fingernails lined with dirt. She pulled a cigarette from the crumpled pack in her pocket, stuck it between her lips, and lit it with a battered Zippo that had once belonged to her father. Took a long drag. The first inhale always hit deep. Smoky, sharp, a comfort she hated needing. But it gave her a minute to lean back against the post and let her bones catch up to the morning. Smoke filled her lungs; Everything out here required force — fence posts, cattle, bills, grief — and smoking was the only thing she did that didn’t fight her back.
The ranch was quiet—too quiet. No lowing cattle. No distant ATV rumble. No hammering from the barn. Just cicadas, the wind, and the occasional flap of a vulture’s wings overhead. Dottie was gone picking up feed in town, and Jesse had walked out last week with a middle finger and a claim that he didn’t work for free.
Cassidy hadn’t begged him to stay.
She scanned the pasture as she exhaled, the cigarette tip glowing bright. Her old man used to say you could read a ranch like a woman’s face — the curves and cracks told you what it needed, where it hurt. Cassidy didn’t need to look too hard to know Hart Ranch was hurting bad. The truth itched just beneath her pride. The ranch was too damn big for one person. And no matter how early she woke, no matter how hard she worked, it never seemed like enough. Not since her daddy passed and left her holding the reins to a kingdom full of dust and ruin. She’d inherited sixty thousand acres of problems and silence, and she wasn’t about to let them bury her.
The ranch had always been her father’s legacy. Cassidy wasn’t here for legacy. She was here to keep the goddamn lights on and the cows fed.
She pushed off the fence, rolled her sore shoulder, and exhaled another long ribbon of smoke. Then she froze.
Hoofbeats.
Slow. Steady. Confident.
Cassidy’s shoulders stiffened.
She turned slowly, cigarette still burning, breath held. Squinting toward the ridge, she saw the sun flaring behind a figure like a damn movie. Hat pulled low. The rider moved like the saddle was stitched to his spine, moving slow and deliberate.
Her stomach dropped like a hammer through glass. She didn’t need to see his face to know who it was.
Colt Maddox.
She hadn’t seen him in five years, and yet here he was, riding onto her land like the past hadn’t shattered her and scattered the pieces in all directions. She hadn’t expected to see him ever again and sure as hell not today.
As he rode closer, her pulse kicked up. She tried not to stare, to show any sign of interest in this piece of rusted son of a… She took another drag of her cigarette, the smoke stinging her eyes. Surely, it was the smoke? Not rage. Or resentment. Or something deeper she didn’t want to name.
Cassidy crossed her arms over her chest and waited. There was nothing else to do but wait, the hoofbeats louder and louder with each passing beat of her heart. One last drag of her cigarette.
Colt pulled up ten feet away on the other side of the fence and swung off the saddle like it hadn’t been five damn years since he’d looked her in the eye. He still moved like he owned the ground he walked on—smooth, relaxed, aware of the effect he had. The years had only sharpened what had already been trouble. He was broader now through the chest and shoulders, his lean frame packed tighter with the kind of strength that didn’t come from gym weights but from hauling hay bales and wrestling stubborn livestock. His jaw, always square, was dusted in a few days’ worth of stubble that caught the sun like a dare. His mouth—still smug—tugged up on one side in that half-smile that had once wrecked her common sense.
But it was his eyes that hit hardest: clear, hard blue. A prairie sky just before a lightning strike. They hadn’t changed, not even a little. Same boldness, same unspoken challenge, same flash of something colder waiting beneath the surface. And his hair—God, that hair. Blond, longer than she remembered, curled slightly under the rim of his black hat. A few strands clung to the sweat on his forehead, too golden and too damn familiar for her liking.
Colt Maddox looked like every cowboy in a storybook. But Cassidy knew better. He was the unfinished chapter she never got to burn.
“Afternoon, Hart,” he said, voice low and easy.
Cassidy didn’t speak. Not yet. She hated that her body remembered him even when her brain screamed not to. He drew closer, pulling the gelding's reins with him.
“You always greet folks with that look on your face?” he asked.
“Turn your horse around, Maddox.”
He smiled. “I missed your manners.”
Crooked. Dangerous. A memory wrapped in denim and dust. “I didn’t miss anything about you.”
He didn’t flinch. Just took in the scene—her tools, the half-finished fence, her dirt-smeared white shirt sticking to her ribs.
“I was just ridin’ through,” he explained with a shrug, unapologetic.
“No one just ‘rides through’ Hart Ranch. We’re not on the way to anywhere.”
He shrugged again.
“Fence break?” Colt asked, taking a long look around. “Saw the broken fence from up on the ridge. Figured it was your da out here, but it’s just you beatin’ the ground into submission.”
Cassidy kicked up some dirt with her boots. “And now you can keep right on riding.”
They stared each other down. Cassidy refused to be the first to blink.
Colt gave a low laugh. “Still sharp. That’s good.”
She watched him. He looked older, but stronger. Like time had only filed his rough edges into more effective weapons. But it was still him — the man who left without a goodbye, without a word. The man who’d taken a piece of her, maybe just because he could.
“What are you doing here?” she asked finally.
“Ridin’ through,” he repeated again as he stepped closer. Not too close, but enough so she could smell the leather and sweat on him. Same scent she used to wake up to, tangled in sheets, tangled in him.
She barked a laugh. “Are you about to trespass, cowboy?”
“I’m not here to fight you,” he said, suddenly all serious.
“No? Because that’s what it feels like.”
“I came to offer help.”
Cassidy swatted a hand at him, like she could wave his bullshit answers away. “I thought you were ridin’ through.”
His jaw ticked once, but his expression didn’t change. He took another step closer. Not threatening, but steady. His scent was straight up dizzying after all this time. Cassidy took a step back and grabbed the T-post driver. “I’m working. You should be leaving.”
“You gonna hit me with that?”
“If I have to.”
She turned her back to him and raised the driver again, slamming it down over the post. The clang echoed again. Satisfying. Loud. He didn’t move, just stood there while she worked. She could feel his eyes burning a hole into her. She hated that she could feel his eyes on her. Could feel the tension building like thunder behind her ribs.
Bastard probably staring at my ass, huh?
“I’m thinking about expanding,” Colt said suddenly. “Got land near Red Hollow. Bought the Maddox spread back from the bank.”
Her hands froze on the driver. “Good for you.”
“I figured maybe we could help each other.”
Cassidy stared at him. “Get the hell off my land.”
“You sure?”
They stood there, the Wyoming silence closing around them — all wind, dust, and heat. Finally, Colt stepped back. “You know where to find me.”
Then he swung back into the saddle and rode off without another word. She didn't watch him ride back toward the ridge, dust rising in his wake. Cassidy wouldn’t give him that satisfaction—of knowing she watched the way he sat a horse, that her eyes traced the line of his back and the way his thighs shifted with the movement. She turned instead, crouched beside the fence, and shoved her gloves back on. Her hands trembled—not from fear. Not even from anger, though that simmered hot under her skin. She picked up the driver again.
And slammed it down.
Hard.
Colt Maddox was the one ghost she hadn’t figured out how to bury. Cassidy had been twenty-three the last time he stood on her land, hat in hand, eyes full of charm and bullshit promises. She twisted the wire tighter around the post. The barbs bit into the glove leather, and she welcomed the sharpness. Pain had edges, it was clean. Regret was a slow rot—one she refused to let take hold. The sun had started its slow descent, painting everything in red and orange and long shadows. That late light always made the land look more forgiving than it really was, like even the dirt had secrets. Cassidy pulled another length of wire, braced it against her thigh, and began to staple it to the post. Each swing of the hammer echoed. Each strike was another “no” she hadn’t said aloud.
No, she didn’t miss him.
No, she didn’t care that he looked as handsome as ever.
No, she didn’t need his help.
She worked until her fingers ached and her shoulder screamed, trying desperately not to think how fucked of a situation she was in. If Cassidy was being honest with herself, she would have admitted that she indeed needed the help of Colt Maddox. She was drowning in the work and soon, the debt.
By the time she stepped back, the fence was straight, taut, holding strong. The kind of fence her father would’ve nodded at in approval. Cassidy tipped her head back and looked up at the endless sky, pale blue now, rimmed with the deepening hues of dusk, the kind of sky that made you feel small. The kind her daddy used to say made men think they were gods—until a winter storm knocked their cattle down or lightning set fire to a barn. She unwrapped a piece of jerky from her pocket and chewed slowly, jaw working, watching the far ridge, Colt long gone. No sign of anything except the slow breath of the land settling into night.
Her body was ready to collapse, but her mind kept spinning. Why now? Why him? And what the hell made him think she’d even consider letting him back in?
She ran a hand down her face, scraped sweat from her neck, and grabbed her tools, loading them into the ATV’s back tray, checking the tire pressure out of habit. One still had a slow leak. The radiator was rattling again too. She made a mental note to check the coolant—if there was any left. She needed to get back to the barn before full dark.
The barn welcomed her like an old ache—familiar, creaking, and filled with golden hay and sweat that never quite washed out of the walls. Cassidy parked the ATV beside the tack room, its engine wheezing to a stop like it was just as tired as she was. Ruckus, all drool and loyalty, lifted his head from where he lay in the shade and gave a lazy wag of his tail. One thump. Maybe two. That was all he had in him these days.
“Hell of a welcome committee,” Cassidy muttered, stepping down. She unstrapped the tool belt from her hips and hung it on the nail by the door. Her gloves went next—battered things, stained and split at the seams, now sporting hole. She tossed them into the bin that always smelled faintly of axle grease and liniment. Inside the tack room, the air was a few degrees cooler, heavy with oil and dust and the ghost of her father’s pipe smoke, though he’d quit few years before he died. Cassidy leaned her forehead against the wooden slats of the wall, closed her eyes, and let the weight of the day settle into her bones. Her back ached when she straightened.
She was about to reach for her thermos of cool iced water Dottie always left on the side shelf when her phone buzzed in her pocket. Cassidy tugged it free with a grunt — screen cracked, dirt under the edges of the case—and tapped to view the message.
DOTTIE: You’ve got company. In the house. I didn’t let him in. Don’t shoot. Yet.
She read it twice. Then once more, slower.
The muscles in her jaw locked. She could feel the heat building behind her eyes, not just from the message but from everything it implied.
Colt.
Of course it was Colt. Had to be.
There wasn’t another soul dumb—or arrogant—enough to let himself into her house uninvited. Most men in Dry Creek knew better than to test her boundaries. Most people didn’t mistake her silence for weakness anymore. Cassidy pocketed the phone, turned on her heel, and strode out of the barn. Her boots hit the dry-packed ground hard, each step kicking up dust that settled on her jeans like a second skin. The house stood at the edge of the slope, its porch crooked, its white paint peeling where the wind had its way.
She took the steps two at a time and slammed the screen door back so hard it ricocheted against the siding.
He was in the kitchen. Cassidy’s boots ground against the wood floor as she stopped at the threshold. The kitchen hadn’t changed much since her father’s time, and that was on purpose.
Faded linoleum stretched underfoot in a pattern of cracked checkerboard — yellowed with age, the corners curling where the glue had long since given up. The cabinets were pine, knotty and worn, scrubbed so many times their edges had softened, their handles smoothed by years of callused hands. Cassidy had once tried sanding and staining them, but halfway through she realized she preferred the scuffs. The scars made it real.
The sink was deep and enamel-coated, chipped in one corner where a cast iron skillet had slipped from her fingers last winter. Above it, a small window framed the barn and the cottonwoods beyond — now dark silhouettes against the violet Wyoming dusk. A tangle of wildflowers clung to the edge of the sill in an old coffee tin she refused to throw away. The fridge hummed with effort, an ancient beast covered in curling receipts, feed store coupons, and faded Polaroids — a younger Cassidy in jeans too big, standing beside her father with a branding iron; Ruckus as a puppy with his ears too big for his head; a note scrawled in Hank Hart’s weathered handwriting: "Don’t forget to grease the gate hinge — again."
The air smelled like old coffee. A pan still sat on the stove from breakfast — eggs crusted to the sides, forgotten. This was not a pretty looking kitchen. It was not modern. But it was hers, every damn inch of it.
And Colt Maddox standing there like he remembered the creak of the fan, the feeling of her hands on his neck — that was the worst part of all. “I should shoot you just for being this stupid.”
Colt didn’t flinch, just looked up, calm and infuriating as ever, his hat resting on the table beside him like he planned to stay awhile. “You keep sayin’ that but haven’t done it yet.”
“Don’t tempt me.”
He smiled. “Dottie told me you might say that.”
Cassidy folded her arms. “She also told me you let yourself in. Didn’t think the front door needed an invite?”
“I knocked. No one answered. Figured you wouldn’t mind.”
“I do mind.”
He nodded once while a smirk spread across his face. “Duly noted.”
Cassidy walked farther into the kitchen, standing just out of reach. The fan overhead clicked as it rotated, a sound she hadn’t noticed in years. She felt the sweat cooling on her back, soaking into the worn white shirt she’d thrown on this morning.
“You’ve got three minutes to say whatever the hell you came here to say,” she said flatly.
“I came to talk.”
“You already said that when you were ridin' through. Try harder.”
His eyes found hers, and the heat in them hadn’t dulled. “I’ve been thinkin’ about you.”
“Stop.”
“’Bout this place.”
“Really stop.”
He stepped closer. “About how I left.”
Cassidy didn’t back away. She never backed away. But her hands curled into fists at her sides.
“You left because it was easy,” she said. “Because it was cleaner to run than to stay and do the damn work.”
“I left because I was a coward,” he admitted.
Silence fell. She hadn’t expected him to say that. Not ever.
“And now what?” she asked. “You think saying sorry gets you a seat back at the table?”
“I don’t want a seat. I want to build something with you.”
Cassidy let out a bitter laugh. “Too late for that, Maddox. I already built it.”
Lies.
She turned away before he could answer. Her boots echoed in the quiet as she crossed to the sink and braced her hands on the edge.
The land stretched out in gold and blue, cracked and breathtaking.
“I didn’t ask for help,” she said, voice low.
“I know.”
“And I don’t want to owe you anything.”
“You won’t.”
Cassidy looked down at her callused hands, her arms speckled with scars, and thought about all the nights she’d bled for this place alone. Splinters from broken boards, wire cuts that stung like betrayal, bruises from bulls, frostbite from January wind, burns from sun and stubbornness. The land didn’t love her back, but she stayed anyway. Because someone had to. She ran her thumb over a faint white line near her wrist—she’d gotten that trying to birth a breech calf during the worst blizzard in a decade. Colt had been gone two years by then.
Behind her, she heard him shift—boots scraping wood, denim whispering.
“You don’t have to keep doing it like this,” he said, quieter now. “Like it’s a punishment.”
She didn’t turn around. “It’s not a punishment. It’s a choice.”
“You could choose something else.”
She did turn then. Leaned against the counter, arms folded tight across her chest. “Like what? Running? Selling the land my daddy broke his back on so I can live in town and sell belt buckles on Etsy?”
He blinked. “I was gonna say ‘taking a partner,’ but sure, let’s go with Etsy.”
Cassidy snorted despite herself. It came out sharper than she meant it to. Colt didn’t push. He just watched her like he was still trying to memorize her face. Like the lines under her eyes and the new strength in her jaw were pieces of a puzzle he thought he knew how to solve.
That made her nervous. “You don’t get to come back after five years and act like you care about the pieces, Colt.”
“I never stopped.”
Her throat closed. She hated how easily the words stirred something in her—something fragile and furious. She pretended to check the empty coffee pot. “I don’t need that from you.”
“I know what you need.”
She spun again, heat flaring in her cheeks. She was going to get whiplash from all this damn spinning. “Don’t stand there in my kitchen and pretend you have any damn clue what I need. You don’t know me anymore.”
Colt’s eyes darkened. He didn’t move closer, but the space between them felt smaller all the same.
“Then tell me,” he said. “What’s changed?”
Cassidy laughed once again, bitter. “Everything.”
She stepped past him, grabbed the beer he’d opened, and drained what was left. The bitterness on her tongue suited the mood. “I buried my father. Ran this place with nothing but debt and duct tape. Held it together with barbed wire and rage. I fixed everything that broke, paid everything that came due, and worked until I couldn’t feel my hands. So no, Maddox, you don’t know me anymore.”
“I know the woman who never asked for help even when she needed it.”
“And I know the man who walked away.”
The silence cracked like lightning. Finally, Colt picked up his hat from the table, tapped it against his thigh. “I didn’t come here to fight.”
He said that the second time today.
“Then you should’ve stayed gone.”
He nodded, slow, then turned toward the door. She wanted him to leave. She also wanted to throw her beer bottle at the wall and tell him to come back, to stop looking at her like she was made of bruises and barbed wire. He paused with his hand on the doorknob. Classic.
“I meant it,” he said without looking at her. “If you ever want someone who’ll fight for this place beside you, I’m that man.”
And then he was gone. The screen door slammed behind him, and she was alone again.
The quiet settled heavy. Outside, the last light of dusk faded into night, and the cicadas started up again, singing their endless song of work, of heat, of survival. Cassidy leaned back against the counter, her pulse finally slowing. She didn’t cry. She lit a cigarette instead.
And kept breathing.
12Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡGXtOuW5aII
