"Don't answer now," she says, pressing a small slip of paper into my hand. "That's the code to the cabin door. Go look at it. Feel it. See if it could be home for you and Emma."
My chest aches with the possibility. "You'd give me that?"
"I'd be giving myself the best damn assistant I could ask for," she says firmly. "Think about it. Go look at the cabin. It's empty."
The weight in my chest loosens, just a little. A new kind of fear slips in—fear of hope. Of what it would mean to step toward something that isn't just survival.
"Thank you," I whisper, the words almost breaking apart.
She smiles, reaching over to squeeze my hand. "Don't thank me yet. Go look. Then decide. And Kassi?"
"What?"
Her eyes soften. "You deserve a life that isn't all weight and guilt. You deserve to be happy."
Chapter 22
Asher
By the time I roll back into the yard, the sun is high enough to burn the dew off the grass. The barn roof flashes bright, and the place is alive with sound, the bawl of calves in the pen and the sound of a tractor in the distance. I cut the engine and sit a second longer than I should, hands on the wheel, trying so my face doesn't give me away.
It doesn't work. Finn steps out of my front door with two mugs and a grin that says he is about to be a problem. He hands me coffee while making peace and starting trouble in the same breath.
"You look like a man who slept in the back of his truck and liked it," he says. "Early exit this morning. Later return. I’m connecting the dots."
"Connect less," I tell him, taking the mug. The heat bites my palm, grounding me.
He leans a shoulder against the post, eyes narrowed in fake thought. "Dark hair. Pretty. I saw only a flash in the mirror when you pulled down the lane, but I admire the efficiency. Which rodeo buckle gets the credit?"
I drink slowly to buy a beat. "You ever mind your business?"
"Not when your business is as obvious as a barn on fire." He snorts into his mug and glances toward the house. "Mom will start planning a Sunday dinner with place cards if she catches wind. You know that."
"She won't," I say too fast.
He catches it. His grin fades into something quieter. "Who is she?"
"No one you know," I lie, and it lands between us with a thud that makes my own ribs ache. If he had known it was Kassi in my passenger seat this morning, this conversation would not be teasing. It would be questions and words we couldn’t take back. I’m suddenly grateful he only saw a shape and a shadow.
"Fine," he says, reading the stop sign on my face. He bumps my shoulder with his. "You do look less grumpy. Keep doing whatever is good for that, because Zach and I sleep better when you're happy and not piling on extra work for us."
"Go put out salt blocks," I say. "You’re better with cows than with feelings."
"True," he says easily, and strolls off, whistling loudly on purpose because he likes to be annoying when he has to drop a subject.
I carry the coffee into the barn and set it on the workbench. Work helps when my head is loud. Opening the stall door, I pull a light blanket for a gelding that runs cool in the mornings. The leather creaks, that rough, honest sound that says everything’s strapped down and put back right. It should settle me. It doesn't. Kassi's laugh from the rodeo last night keeps flashing like a camera in the dark. Her hand on my chest, Emma's small palm on my hat, the way both felt like they belonged there.
I do a quick check of the south pens, then head for the house because there is something I have been putting off, and I can’t afford to keep avoiding it for another hour. The laptop on my old kitchen table whirs awake like a tractor that needs a tune.
I never liked sitting in front of screens. Feels like wasted hours when the sun is shining, and the cattle still need tending. But right now, research is the only weapon I've got.
Ignoring the stack of invoices, I open the county records site. This is the sort of work my father always said to learn, even if you hate it. Paper protects land as much as a fence does. I hated hearing it when I was eighteen. I understand it now.
The records are a maze. Old scans that look like they were typed by ghosts, maps that tilt at angles that make no sense, and notes in margins from men who never thought anyone would need to read them twice. Searching our parcel number, Willy's family name, and then find the old ranch name from the first deed nobody uses anymore. I push through dates until my eyes blur. I learn where fence lines moved after floods and which corner post got reset in 1989 after some idiot in a flatbed knocked it crooked.
Then I find what I am looking for. A split that goes back two generations. The dirt and the buildings under our name. The mineral rights under another. A hedge. A plan for a day just like this one. I stare at the scanned page and trace the signature with my eyes as if it might talk. The name beside mineral rights is one I know.
Willy's brother, Walton.