Page 3 of Oops, I Fell For The Ranch Hand Next Door

For now. Like there might be more later. Like I might stay long enough to find out what more looks like.

I nod.

Satisfaction flickers across his face, or maybe relief. He nods back, then turns and starts walking toward the tree line. After a few steps, he pauses and looks back over his shoulder.

“You coming?”

My feet move before my brain catches up. I follow him through the meadow, wildflowers brushing against my legs, the last of the late afternoon sun painting everything gold. He walks like he knows exactly where he’s going. I trail behind him like someone who’s forgotten how to navigate on her own.

We reach the parking area. He heads for the dusty pickup truck and pauses with his hand on the door handle.

“Two miles up the main road. You can’t miss it.”

I nod.

He climbs into the truck and starts the engine. Dust rises in his wake as he drives away, and then I’m alone in the parking area with my Honda and my phone that won’t stop buzzing and a choice I didn’t know I was making.

I pull out my phone. Dr. Meekins’ name fills the screen. I silence the call and slide it back into my pocket. Then I get in my car and drive toward the ranch instead of away from it.

The main road curves through more hills and meadows, past grazing longhorns with massive horns and scattered live oaks that cast long shadows in the afternoon light. The landscape feels wider here, like there’s room to breathe in a way there hasn’t been for years.

The Granitehart Ranch sign appears on my right. I turn down the long driveway, tires bumping over a cattle guard, and follow the winding path through a tunnel of oak trees. The main lodge emerges through the branches. It’s limestone and timber, two stories, with a wraparound porch and rocking chairs that look like they’ve been waiting for someone to sit down.

I park next to three other vehicles and kill the engine. My hands are shaking. My pulse is still racing from standing too close to a stranger who saw straight through me.

I get out of the car and walk toward the lodge, my legs unsteady, my breathing shallow. The porch steps squeak under my weight. Through the window is warm light and what looks like a kitchen. Somewhere inside is a woman named Sloane who might give me a job I don’t deserve.

The screen door is within reach. I could knock. I could walk away. I raise my hand and knock twice.

The sound echoes final and irreversible in the evening quiet. I stand there on a stranger’s porch and wait to see what happens when you stop running long enough to let someone catch you.

Chapter two

Eli

The last stall needs mucking, but my hands have stopped moving.

I stand in the barn with a pitchfork in my grip and my mind two hundred yards away, circling back to the woman in the meadow. The one who looked like she’d forgotten how to exist. Dark circles carved beneath her eyes showed an exhaustion that lives bone-deep. When I steadied her elbow, her pulse hammered against my palm, rabbit-quick and panicked. She’d looked at me as though steadying her was an accusation instead of an offer.

I recognized that look. Carried it myself for the better part of a year after I left the fire squad.

The pitchfork scrapes concrete as I finish the stall. Diesel, the bay gelding, huffs and shifts his weight, impatient for dinner. I measure out his grain with the muscle memory of someone who’s done this countless times, but the woman’s face keeps surfacing. She was beautiful, but it couldn’t mask what was behind the way she’d wrapped her arms around herself. The hollow “I’m fine” that I know was a lie even from six feet away. The phone that wouldn’t stop buzzing in her pocket while she stood there trying to convince us both she didn’t need help. Her body had leaned toward me for half a second before she’d corrected herself, pulled back, apologized for existing.

You can’t force someone to stop running from a burning building. You just show up. Keep showing up. Wait for them to realize they don’t have to keep running alone.

This is what I do. I show up. Even when it doesn’t matter.

The barn door slides open on its metal track. Sloane appears in the gap, backlit by the last of the sunset, her long hair caught in the breeze. “She came.”

My hands go still on the grain bucket. “Who?”

“Don’t play dumb. The woman you sent to my office.” Sloane props one shoulder against the doorframe, a smile playing at the corner of her mouth. “Jessie Webb. Former ER nurse. Drove here from Ohio without thinking through where she was heading. Says you offered her the seasonal position.”

Jessie. So that’s her name.

“She take it?”

“She did. Asked three times if I was sure, like I might revoke the offer if she stopped being useful for thirty seconds.” Sloane’s expression shifts into concern. “What happened out there?”