Page 7 of Branded Mine
“You didn’t know what he was askin’.”
“I would’ve figured it out.”
He slid a wrench back into the toolbox. “Maybe.”
Something about the calm certainty in his voice irritated me. “You don’t have to keep fixing everything.”
“I’m aware.”
“Then why are you?”
His gaze drifted around the kitchen before settling on the cracked window over the sink. “Somebody ought to.”
The answer caught me off guard. “This isn’t your responsibility.”
“No.”
“But you keep acting like it is.”
He was quiet for a long moment. “When something’s been neglected long enough,” he said, “you stop noticing what’s broken.”
I frowned. “I don’t know what that’s supposed to mean.”
“Didn’t say you had to.”
He picked up the toolbox and started toward the back door.
“Ryder.”
He stopped but didn’t turn around.
“Thank you.”
The words came out quieter than I’d intended.
He stood there for a second before giving a single nod. Then, he walked outside without another word.
I watched him cross the yard, his broad shoulders growing smaller with every step until he disappeared around the side of the barn.
The ranch fell quiet again, and it should’ve felt like a relief.
Instead, I found myself listening for the sound of his boots, almost expecting him to come back.
He didn’t.
And somehow, being alone didn’t feel nearly as safe as I’d always believed it would.
4
The storm rolled in faster than anyone had predicted.
By late afternoon, the sky turned the color of bruises, and low clouds swallowed the mountains until they disappeared. The air strangely stilled, the kind of heavy silence that always came before something bad.
I stood on the front porch with my arms folded, watching the first flash of lightning split the horizon. Thunder followed, rattling the windows. The lights inside the house flickered once, twice, then everything went dark.
“Great,” I muttered.
As if that lone word was the trigger the weather needed, rain drummed down hard enough to blur the pasture in seconds, pounding the tin roof so violently I could barely hear myself think.
