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“No.” It comes out harder than I mean it to. “We’d fought at dinner. About succession. He told me to stop managing his pulse and start managing the sale. So I let him go.”

She doesn’t say anything. She just waits, the way she does, and the waiting pulls the rest out of me.

“He came back after one. I found him right there.” I nod at the chair beside her. “Pale dust on his boots. His cuff torn. He said the remote pens were being used again. Before I could get the rest, he grabbed his chest.” I look at the drive. “The paramedics came. His heart history made it natural causes. Clay wrote the statement after Russell said a midnight collapse at closed pens would start rumors before the succession filing. I approved it.”

“Garrett.”

“I protected the ranch from the truth about how my father died. That’s the first thing I did as acting head. And then I stood at his funeral and let people say he went peacefully.” I finally look at her. “He tried to tell me something. With his last breath, practically. And I buried it because it was inconvenient.”

Tessa’s face has changed. She reaches across the table, hesitates, and then puts two fingers on the back of my hand. The touch is light.

“You were his son,” she says. “He died in front of you. You were not thinking clearly, and the people around you made sure you didn’t have to.”

“That doesn’t make it right.”

“No. It makes it human.” She takes her hand back, but slowly. “Tell it to me again. Properly. For the statement. What you heard, what the camera showed, what he said, what you saw. Don’t let the tag we found improve your memory.”

I dictate it under the porch camera. She stops me twice when I blend what the camera shows with where I assume he went. I sign it. Her lawyer confirms receipt.

When it’s done, she closes the folder and looks out at the drive for a long moment.

“I came back,” she says, “because yesterday someone shot at you six inches from your head, and I found out I couldn’t stand being twelve miles away not knowing.”

My chest goes tight.

“That isn’t forgiveness,” she says. “I need you to understand that. I haven’t forgiven the tracker. I haven’t forgiven the mirror. I lost a client over them, and my name is in a risk file I didn’t put it in, and every time I think about that radio I want to put my fist through a wall. I don’t know if I’ll ever stop feeling that.”

“You don’t owe me that.”

“I know I don’t.” Her voice drops. “What I need is to know that if I choose you, I’m choosing a man who will tell me what he wants before he takes it. Every time. Even when he thinks it’s for my own good. Especially then.”

“Every time,” I say. “If I think the danger needs more than you’ve given me, I tell you and your lawyer what I want and why, and you decide. You’re allowed to say no. I’m not allowed to go around you.”

“And if you do it anyway?”

“You leave with everything intact. I disclose it myself. I don’t ask you to hide it for me.”

She holds my gaze a long time. Then she stands, picks up her case, and walks to the door.

She looks back once. She leaves the door open.

I follow her up the stairs.

Inside the suite, she locks her evidence in the portable safe and puts both keys on the desk beside her phone. Then she turns.

“Take off your shirt,” she says, “and sit on the bed.”

I obey.

She stands between my knees and checks the dressing on my forearm before she touches anything else. The pad is clean. Her practical attention makes the want in her face more believable, not less.

“Same rules,” she says.

“Same rules.”

“I want you. Do you want me?”

“More than I’ve wanted anything in my life.”