-MY FINALS ARE COMING UP. WISH ME LUCK! I THINK IM STRESS WRITING AND PUBLISHING-

When Laney was fifteen, she brought a wild thing home.

Not the kind that wanted saving. The kind that charged the fence line with its ears pinned back and its eyes black with rage. Its coat was the color of fire muted by dust, its hooves churning up the earth like it meant to outrun the world that had tried to break it. And maybe it had. She had found it near the south ridge, where the fence sagged and the grass grew tall enough to hide secrets. It had slipped past the boundary lines like smoke, grazing just outside the land we called ours—but only because no one had challenged it yet.

The moment Laney saw it, something in her stilled. I remember how she slid through the tall grass like a whisper, not even a rustle to betray her presence. And when the horse lifted its head, nostrils flared and breath sharp with warning, it was like time held its breath to see what she'd do next.

I was watching from the fence line, bare knees pressed into splintered wood, the kind of still you only learn when awe takes hold of your limbs. I'd never seen her move like that before—not fast, not slow, just steady. Her hand reached out like she wasn't reaching for an animal at all but for something buried. She didn't call to it. Didn't force. Just stepped forward inch by inch, her palm offered open, like she was handing over her trust before asking for any in return.

The horse reared once, hooves lashing the air, mane blazing against the fading sky like fire given shape. It should've turned and vanished into the trees. Should've run like every feral thing does when it meets the press of a human gaze. But it didn't. It looked at her. Really looked. Like it saw something in her it recognized. And then, against every rule of logic and fear and instinct—it stepped forward.

The breath caught in my throat and never let go.

When her fingers brushed its nose, it was like she'd reached inside its chest and gripped the wild there. Not to steal it, but to say, I see you. You don't have to run anymore.

That was the magic of my sister.

She didn't tame things. She didn't break them. She just saw them so clearly they forgot they were supposed to be afraid.

I remember the way the light hit her then, the soft spill of golden hour catching in her hair, the dirt streaked on her jeans, the calm in her eyes that didn't belong to a fifteen-year-old girl. And I remember thinking—this wasn't something she learned. This was something she was born with. Odell.

Me—I never had that.

I kept to the cattle. There was honesty in their chaos. Calves came into the world bloody and wailing and tangled in afterbirth, and there was no poetry in it, no grace. Just work. Just hands and knees in the mud and the sharp relief of hearing that first ragged breath rattle out of lungs that had never tasted air. It was a mess you could understand. A rhythm you could follow.

But horses... horses required something else. They didn't just ask for your strength. They demanded your quiet. Your stillness. Your belief that they owed you nothing.

And I—I've never been good at asking for things that can be taken back.

Laney used to laugh at me, all teeth and sunburnt cheeks, brushing the hair from my eyes with hands that smelled like hay and lavender balm.

"You're not scared of horses," she'd say. "You're scared of being seen by something that won't pretend it didn't see you."

She taught me how to still the tremble in my fingers when a colt's breath stung hot against my wrist. How to quiet the parts of me that flinched and hesitated, how to stand steady enough that a creature built to run might choose, just once, to stay. Her hands—firm, patient, sun-warmed—would rest over mine, guiding them in slow arcs down trembling flanks and sweat-slick manes. "Not too soft," she'd murmur, "or they won't respect you. Not too hard, either. They'll bolt the second they feel control without kindness."

She made it look effortless. Like some piece of her had always belonged to their world.

Me, I was all elbows and guesswork. The horses could sense it, I think—that flicker of doubt I never quite wrangled down. They didn't shy away from me. They just watched. Warily. Like they were waiting for the part where I proved I didn't belong.

When Laney left for Denver, she traded boots for heels and the smell of hay for the sharp clean of courtrooms. She wanted something louder than land. Something that echoed when she walked across it. And I was proud of her—I was. But I'd be lying if I said it didn't feel like watching the wind abandon the prairie.

Still, she left behind a sliver of herself. A stable tucked quiet at the edge of the property, a few stalls and a half-hung sign that read Second Chance—scrawled in her messy, hopeful handwriting, like she was half-joking, but only half. She never said it outright, but I think she knew what it meant, that not all of us get do-overs. That sometimes saving something broken is the only way to keep yourself from breaking too.

I tried. God, I tried.

Tried to carry that space she carved out of the world. But between the cattle and the mounting debts and the days that ran dry too fast, the horses slipped through my fingers like dusk—soft, slow, and inevitable. The stable faded, not with drama, but with silence. Like most things that matter do.

Now I'm standing in the gravel lot, boots planted, the cold cutting through my jacket, and there's a stranger beside me unloading something wild-eyed and shaking from a trailer that's seen better decades. The woman doesn't look at me when she speaks—just jerks her chin toward the beast inside.

"She's a wild one," she mutters, like it's a warning and a judgment wrapped in the same breath.

I almost laughed.

Not because it was funny, but because there was nowhere else for the disbelief to go. It hit the back of my throat and caught there, brittle and sharp, too fragile to make it all the way out. The kind of laugh that lives closer to grief than humor. The kind that tastes like something you've been swallowing down for too long.

I didn't answer the woman. Just stared past her, to the horse in the trailer—if you could even call her that. She looked more storm than mare. A dark chestnut flash of fury and bone, hooves scuffing the metal ramp with a sound that cut through the stillness like a warning shot. Her breath fogged the air in short, uneven bursts, and every inch of her looked like it was ready to bolt.

And yet... she hadn't.

Not yet.

My gaze traced the lines of her—shoulders drawn taut, nostrils flared, eyes flicking to every shift and sound with a kind of hunted brightness. There was a wildness in her that hadn't been dulled by the miles, hadn't been stripped out by the trailer walls or the woman standing too close with her arms crossed like she already regretted bringing her here.

That sound—the scrape of hooves against metal—it echoed through me. Not just my ears, but deeper, like it had threaded itself into the bones of the place. Into the brittle fencing, into the barn doors that didn't close right anymore, into the sagging beams and the cracked troughs and the places in me that still flinched when I remembered how it used to be. That sound was a reminder. Of all the things this ranch had once held. Of all the things it had lost.

I didn't need another reminder.

And I sure as hell didn't need another broken thing.

The thought rose quick and mean. Tell her to turn around. Tell her we're full. Tell her we've run out of time and money and reasons to keep pretending we can carry more than we already are. But the words stayed locked behind my teeth. Heavy. Unmovable. Like they'd calcified in my throat.

I didn't turn around. Couldn't.

Because I could feel him—Colt. Standing just behind me, close enough that I could sense the weight of his gaze pressing into my back. I didn't need to see him to know how he stood—boots planted steady on the porch boards, arms crossed over that broad chest, shoulders rigid under the cotton of a flannel still damp from morning frost. He wouldn't speak, not yet. That wasn't his way.

He watched. Measured. Waited.

The same way he did when a bull came out spinning hard, or when I brought him a problem half-solved. That quiet calculation. That bone-deep steadiness. It used to calm me. Now it just made my skin prickle, because I couldn't tell anymore if he was holding himself back... or just holding on.

I knew if I turned, I'd see the bruises. The ones blooming dark and angry along his jaw, the split where his lip still hadn't healed. The same face I'd cradled in my hands not two nights ago, while his mouth pressed into mine like he was trying to unmake everything between us and rebuild it out of that kiss alone. Like skin could be salvation.

But it wasn't.

And when I did look—on the nights I was stupid enough to—there was something worse than the bruises. There was the ache.

But what gutted me most—what split me straight down the center—was knowing that ache didn't belong to me alone.

Because Rhett had kissed me, too.

Not soft. Not careful. Not like a man trying to fix something. He kissed me like a man who didn't care if he broke it. Like he'd been waiting for me to fall, and when I did, he met me there without apology. His mouth was fire and pride and every sharp thing I should've run from, and I'd let it happen. God help me, I let it. I'd stood there with his hands on my waist, his breath hot and close, and I didn't stop it. I didn't pull away. Not fast enough. Not soon enough.

And now that kiss lived inside me like a bruise no one could see.

What a mess.

The thought moved through me slow as honey left out in winter—thick, bitter, inevitable. It wasn't the frantic kind of mess, the kind you could clean up with a shovel and some string. This was the quieter kind.The kind that hollowed out a place inside you and called it home.

I shut my eyes for a breath that didn't help. Just long enough to pretend I was anywhere but here. Just long enough to wish I could rewind the last few days and untangle every knot I'd let tighten around me. But the second I opened them again, the frost was still clinging to the porch rail, the mustang was still pawing at the steel trailer floor, and I was still standing in a life that felt more borrowed than owned.

The woman shifted, arms crossed in that stiff, no-nonsense way that said she'd already decided how this story was going to end. Her boots crunched across gravel as she turned slightly, face sharp with road-weariness and something less patient.

"So," she said, voice cutting through the silence like a blade honed too often. "We doing this or not?"

Her thumb jerked toward the horse—Spice, she'd said—as if the question didn't deserve time. As if it was already answered.

Spice's coat caught what little light the morning offered, the color of dried blood and rusted iron, like she'd been carved from the same land we all kept trying to survive. Her muscles quivered under her skin—barely, but enough. Enough to say she wasn't here to make friends. Enough to say she remembered what it felt like to be dragged from somewhere she once belonged.

And then my eyes caught on it—that mark seared into her shoulder, dark against the chestnut hide. The sight of that brand lit something in me I didn't have a name for. Not rage. Not sadness. Just the slow burn of a truth I didn't want showing up on my doorstep wearing someone else's halter and a look I'd seen in the mirror too many times.

That stylized W. For WhiteWood.

The Weston's ranch.

It curled dark against Spice's shoulder like it belonged there, like ownership could be boiled down to heat and metal and muscle. And maybe it could. Maybe that was the whole game—mark what you think is yours before it learns to run again.

It should've been nothing. A coincidence. A routine drop-off arranged weeks ago, long before Rhett looked at me like I was a challenge he'd already solved. But the timing—the bitter sharpness of it—clawed at something soft inside me. Some corner of myself that had just started to heal, only to find it cracked wide again.

I ran a hand along the back of my neck, fingers brushing the exposed skin just above my collar. The chill caught there, a reminder that morning hadn't warmed to the day yet—and maybe it wouldn't. My braid stuck damp to my shoulder, still heavy with fog, and I tugged at it absentmindedly, like I could pull the ache out of my chest strand by strand.

Spice let out a low snort and pawed at the ground, the sound gritty, dry, like bones shifting under dirt. Her eyes locked on mine—sharp, waiting, unyielding. There was no fear in her. Just a question.

You or them?

Me or everything else?

I didn't know the answer.

Behind me, I felt Colt's presence the way you feel thunder before it breaks—a pressure, a hum beneath the skin. He hadn't moved. Hadn't spoken. But I could sense the shape of him, solid and waiting, like the fence posts that still held even after the storms had rotted everything else.

And maybe that was the worst part—he was still here. Still steady. Still him. And I'd let something into the space between us that didn't belong.

I closed my eyes for just a breath, long enough to feel the weight of it. The kiss I'd given Colt—desperate, clinging, like I could hold onto him hard enough to keep the world from falling apart. And then Rhett—his hands on my waist, his mouth unapologetic, like he already knew I'd break and was ready to catch the pieces before they hit the floor.

The difference between the two sat heavy in my chest, like trying to breathe underwater.

I swallowed hard.

"Unload her," I said, and even to my own ears, my voice didn't sound like mine. It was too clipped, too hard at the edges. I cleared my throat and tried again, softer this time. "Put her in the round pen."

The woman gave a tight nod, already turning, already done with me. I didn't blame her.

Spice balked as she backed down the ramp, and Colt was there before I could even call to him—one hand on the lead rope, the other held low, steady, calm. He moved like water finding its way downhill, never rushing, never pushing, just adjusting to the terrain.

God, the way he handled her. Like she wasn't a problem. Like she wasn't broken. Like he wasn't either.

I turned away, throat tight, and pulled my phone from my pocket. I tapped Laney's name and lifted it to my ear, the cold seeping through the metal and into my skin like punishment.

The line rang once. Twice.

"Lemon?"