Page 19 of Unleashed
She was my good luck charm in life.
Even my skin is a reminder of her.
I've gotten through the heartbreak phase. The anger. The resentment. The months of agony after she told me she didn't love me enough, words I know she didn't mean, words she chose specifically because she knew they were the only ones brutal enough to make me stop fighting for her.
And every day I reflect on that. I know my heart is hers. I know she lied that night. I know the girl who used to whisperI love you so much it scares meinto the dark of my truck didn't just wake up one morning and stop.
She let me go so I'd stay. So I'd ride. So I'd become this.
And I hate her for it. And I love her for it. And I can't tell the difference anymore.
"Meet you downstairs," Hunter says, heading toward the door.
"One more year, Hunter."
He stops in his tracks.
"I'll wait one more year. If by my twenty-eighth birthday, she hasn't reached out, I'll forget about her."
He watches me for a long moment. Something moves behind his eyes. The look of a man who knows what it's like to love someone so hard it rewires your entire brain.
"Alright," he says, and gives me a sad smile. "I'll mark it on the calendar."
He disappears down the hallway, and I stand in the empty room, pantless and hungover and heartbroken, with a cracked phone screen and a tattoo that won't fade and a year-long countdown that started ticking the second he walked out.
One year, Goldie. That's what I've got left in me.
After that, I'm either yours or I'm no one's.
Seven knows something's wrong before I do.
My stallion pulls up sharp at the crest of the hill overlooking Pasture Fifteen, ears pinned forward, nostrils flaring at something I can't see yet. I let him have his head and trust the instinct. Seven's been my horse since he was a colt, and in five years, nothing’s ever spooked him.
"Easy, boy. Easy."
The morning sun is hammering down hard. From up here, Sterling Ranch stretches out in every direction, so much land you could ride all day and never hit a fence. Dad used to say this place was God's rough draft, too big, too wild, too beautiful to be finished. I think he was right.
I click my tongue, and Seven walks on, picking his way down the slope toward the fence line where Jace and Paulie are already working. Jace is on his bay mare, sitting high in the saddle, scanning the pasture. Paulie's on the ground near the fence, hat pushed back on his head, hands on his hips, staring at something I can't make out from this distance.
Neither of them looks happy.
"Mornin'," I call out, reining Seven in beside Jace. "How bad is it?"
Jace shakes his head. "Bad enough. We've got cattle scattered from here to the creek bed. Paulie's been out since six trying to get a count, but they're spread thin. Some of 'em pushed through into the brush, gonna be a bitch to flush out."
I nod, squinting against the sun, and nudge Seven toward the fence line where Paulie's standing.
What I see when I get there makes my blood run cold.
The fence isn't broken. It's cut.
Three sections of heavy-gauge wire, each one severed at the post with the kind of precision that doesn't come from a spooked animal or a fallen branch. Someone took bolt cutters to this fence. Someone who knew exactly where to cut and how much to take down to create a gap wide enough for cattle to drift through overnight.
I swing down from Seven and crouch by the nearest post, running my fingers along the severed wire. The ends are bright. This wasn't last week. This was last night. Maybe early this morning, while I was passed out in Hunter's spare room, dreaming about a girl who won't text me back.
"Paulie."
He walks over, dust on his boots, sweat already staining the band of his hat. Paulie's been working at Sterling Ranch since before I was born. He's in his fifties, bowlegged, built like jerky, and there isn't a man alive who knows this land better. He basically taught me everything I know about this ranch. I had my dad, but I also had Paulie to look up to.
