By mid-morning, I’m done with the ridge and heading back toward the ranch road. I need fencing staples from the hardware store—a section of the south line has been shedding them—and the errand gives me a reason to swing through town.
The main street is quiet. Sunday. Dutch’s has a few trucks in the lot. I park outside the hardware store and get out.
And there she is.
Twenty yards up the street. Stepping out of the general store with a brown paper bag tucked under her arm. Jeans. Boots. A fitted jacket over a dark shirt—practical, nothing showy. Her hair is pulled back, and the morning sun makes it blaze.
My wolf stops so hard my step falters.
Not aggressive. Not territorial. Something deeper, something that reaches into the foundation of what I am and pulls. Every muscle in my body locks. The pull converges into a single point of focus—her—and the intensity is staggering.
She looks different from last night. Younger without the dress. Sharper without the bar light softening her edges. In daylight, she’s all clean lines and controlled movement: the way she stands with her weight balanced, the way her eyes sweep the street even while she’s adjusting the bag under her arm. Vigilance, if I were being professional about it.
I’m not being professional. I’m standing on a sidewalk trying to remember how breathing works.
She turns. As if she felt me the way I feel her. Her head comes around, and her eyes find mine across the width of the street with an accuracy that has nothing to do with chance.
Recognition hits her face, and I watch what follows. Not warmth. Not the softness you’d expect from someone you were inside a few hours ago. The initial jolt of seeing me, a flush she can’t quite hide, and then a rapid, visible effort to contain it all.
Her chin lifts. Her weight shifts to the balls of her feet. The posture of a woman deciding how this is going to go.
Three seconds. Maybe four. It feels longer. The street between us might as well be a canyon.
The sun is on her face, highlighting her cheekbones. I’m thinking about the sounds she made in that restroom. I’m thinking about the way she bolted afterward. I’m thinking that whatever this is—this thing that makes my wolf strain and myhands unsteady—it didn’t start in that restroom. It started the second I saw her at the bar.
I should cross the street. Talk to her. Be the enforcer doing his job:who are you, why are you here, what do you want in my territory?Garrett gave me an assignment this morning. She’s standing right there. It would be so easy.
Nothing about this woman is easy.
I give her a nod. Small. Acknowledging.
She returns it—neutral, nothing—and turns away. Walks toward her truck without looking back. Dismisses me as if I’m a stranger she has no reason to acknowledge.
The rejection lands harder than it should. My wolf makes a sound in my chest that I kill before it reaches my throat. The shift crawls up my forearms, fur threatening under the skin, and I breathe through it the way I’ve breathed through a thousand shifts: slow in, slow out, forcing the animal down by will alone.
I keep walking. Don’t stop. Don’t approach. Don’t look back.
She’s one of the outsiders. My brother wants her watched. My wolf won’t let me stop thinking about her. And whatever happened between us last night wasn’t just a hookup, because I’ve had hookups, and none of them left me standing on a sidewalk with the ground shifting under my boots.
I get in my truck. Close the door. Sit with the engine off.
In the side mirror, I can see her loading the bag into her truck bed. She hasn’t left yet. And her hand is on her chest—right over the heart—a gesture so unconscious, so unguarded, that it tells me everything her face didn’t.
She feels it too.
I start the engine and pull away. My wolf watches her in the mirror until the road curves, and she disappears from view, and even then, he doesn’t stop looking.
And that scares me more than anything.
Chapter 6
Willow
We stopped in town for provisions on the way out this morning. Water, trail food, a better map. Quick in and out, nothing worth mentioning. Except that when I was loading the bag into the truck bed, I looked up, and he was there. Across the street. Looking at me the way he looked at me last night, except in daylight, without whiskey to blame.
I gave him nothing. A nod. Turned away.
That was three hours ago, and I still can’t shake it.