Chapter 9
Jenna
My skin is calm.
For the first time in a long while, the patches on my forearms aren’t screaming. They’re a calmer pink instead of an angry red, with less raised edges, and the heat beneath them has subsided.
I’ve only been here for three days, yet I’m already sleeping full nights, heavy and dreamless, in a bed that smells like cedar and unscented soap. Maggie never asks if I’m hungry; she simply places a plate down. I eat her home-cooked food as if someone might walk in and take it back. Halfway through every meal, I catch myself with my shoulders up, elbows close to the plate, resembling a kid who learned early that food wasn’t guaranteed. I make myself slow down but mostly fail.
I’m drinking water because a glass appears next to my elbow every hour, and I never see him pour it.
My body is responding to safety before my mind will admit what’s happening, flourishing and filling out. Nothing major, just a new plumpness beneath my skin, as if my body hasdecided, without consulting me, that it’s finally safe to take up space.
Every morning, I wake up and run the calculation: if something is this good, the cost is coming. And every morning, the catch doesn’t arrive.
This morning, Ethan is teaching me to ride.
Specifically, he’s teaching me how not to fall off a one-eyed horse named Captain Winky, who is allegedly the calmest mare on Stoneridge and has, in the last twenty minutes, tried to eat my hair and refused to move in any direction except toward the feed bucket.
“Heels down.” Ethan’s voice comes from my left. “Lean back a little. You're gripping with your knees.”
“I’m gripping with everything I have.” My fingers are white around the saddle horn. “He hates me.”
“He doesn’t hate you. He’s testing you.” His hand finds my hip.
The contact shoots through the denim and into my bones, and I remind myself that this is instruction, not?—
His thumb shifts. One inch. The pad presses into the hollow above my hip bone, and the instructional argument falls apart because no riding teacher in history has ever touched someone like that.
“Relax your seat.” His voice is closer now, lower. “Trust him.”
With his thumb pressing into my hip like that, the last thing I’m thinking about is the horse.
Captain Winky takes three steps forward. I grip Ethan's shoulder where the muscle meets his neck, and my fingers linger longerthan balance requires. He doesn’t move my hand. He stands there with my hand on his shoulder and his hand on my hip while the whole ranch goes about its business.
“I think Captain Winky and I have reached an understanding,” I say breathlessly. “He walks toward food. I hold on. Everyone survives.”
The corner of his mouth twitches. It’s not quite a smile, but the almost-version he gives me when he’s trying not to laugh. “You’re a natural.”
“You are a liar, Ethan Sutton.”
He lifts me down, his hands spanning my waist as I slide against him, chest to chest for half a second, the flannel warm against my palms. He smells like coffee and hay dust. My feet hit the ground, but his hands remain.
“We’re going to Havenridge this afternoon.” His voice is conversational, while his thumbs make small, distracting circles at my waist. “Shay’s been asking to meet you. The wives want to get together.”
The wives. The other branch of the family. My stomach tightens.
“Meet me or inspect me?”
He reads the fear beneath my joke. His forehead tips against mine. “Both. You’ll like them. Shay’s already planning to feed you.”
“If I eat any more, I’ll be the size of this ranch.”
“Good.”
His palm slides from my waist to my cheekbone, which used to be sharp enough to cut. His thumb traces the soft new curve of it like he's been cataloguing the change. Maybe he has.
“You’ve started filling back in.” His voice drops to a low, private tone. “Your face. Your hips. The hollow under your collarbone.” His hand returns to my waist and settles there, firmer now. Possessive. “I noticed the first morning. I’ve been watching it happen.”