Page 60 of Ironwood Ranch Cowboys

I let him build my plate because apparently surrendering autonomy one category at a time is how I’m living now.

“More beans?” he asks.

“No.” He adds them anyway. “I saw that.”

“You need vegetables.”

“I’m at a potluck. The vegetables are decorative.”

We end up at a long table with Dakota and her family on one side, Abilene and hers on the other, and enough conversation happening around me that I stop being one distinct object of interest and start becoming part of the general noise.

Which, as it turns out, is deeply soothing.

No one interrogates me.

No one corners me.

No one makes me explain myself.

Instead Dakota asks if I’ve tried Millie’s lemon bars yet like this is critical information. Abilene points out which casserole to avoid unless I have “the digestion of a frontier woman.”

Jesse eventually returns with frosting on one sleeve and no particular remorse. Marshall steals his cookie. Wyatt passes me the salt before I realize I’m reaching for it.

Charlie tells me, very solemnly, that cornbread is better if you put honey on it, which feels less like a suggestion and more like a deeply held philosophy.

Somewhere between the peach pie, the superhero compliment, and Abilene confessing to fearing these events too, I stopped waiting for this place to close its teeth around me.

I find myself feeling more connected to this town than I ever have anywhere else before.

CHAPTER TEN

Cody

The Silver Bit has always irritated me in a very specific way.

Not because there’s anything objectively wrong with it. The bar is clean enough by tavern standards.

The staff are competent, the food consistent, and the crowd predictable in the way small-town crowds usually are once you’ve lived among them long enough to distinguish between harmless repetition and actual nuisance.

The problem is that this place encourages a kind of social sprawl I’ve never found useful.

People linger.

They circle the same stories. They interrupt each other mid-thought and somehow consider that conversation rather than structural failure.

Nothing in here moves in a straight line, and while most nights I can tolerate that in measured doses, tonight the lack of order feels less atmospheric than invasive.

It doesn’t help that Reid is already two fingers into a whiskey and watching me with the expression he gets whenever he thinks I’ve become unintentionally interesting.

“You’ve been glaring at that glass for long enough that I’m starting to think it owes you money,” he says, leaning back in his chair because he has all the time in the world and no concern whatsoever for efficiency.

I look down at the bourbon in front of me. I hadn’t realized I’d gone still with it. “I’m not glaring at it.”

“You are. You’ve got the same look you get when someone formats a spreadsheet wrong.”

“That’s an entirely reasonable response to misformatting.”

Reid’s mouth twitches. “Sure. In an office. Less so in a bar.”