Page 129 of Promised to the Cowboy

I set the board down harder than necessary.

Dad doesn’t flinch. He places one coffee on the workbench, then looks at the half-built partition between the two stalls.

The frame is finished, and the outside door is in. Ethan wired the lights last weekend while Daniel and Henry arguedover ventilation as though either of them had spent a day rehabilitating a frightened horse. The rubber flooring arrives tomorrow.

Evie’s shelves are already marked in pencil along the far wall—feed, medical supplies, bandages, training equipment. She’s labeled every section in handwriting that slopes more when she’s tired, which is often now.

Seven months pregnant and carrying our daughter like she plans to arrive ten pounds strong and already giving orders.

“You’re supposed to be sanding,” Dad says.

“I was sanding.”

“With a board in your hands.”

“I had to put it on the sawhorses.”

“You could have asked.”

That’s the thing he says most now.You could have asked.For help. For a ride to cardiac rehab. For someone to carry the groceries. For him to sit through another appointment while a specialist discusses electrical pathways, scar tissue, and the small machine now resting beneath the skin below my collarbone.

I didn’t want the defibrillator, but I wanted even less to admit I was afraid of needing it.

Dad came to the consultation anyway and sat beside me without speaking until the doctor left, then said, “Being harder to kill seems useful on a ranch.”

I signed the consent forms.

Now the incision has healed to a raised pink line, and I’m not allowed to lift my left arm too high, haul anything heavy, ride alone, or pretend that dying in a pasture was an inconvenience everybody should stop mentioning.

I frown. “I don’t need help carrying a board.”

“No.” Dad picks up the coffee he brought for me and holds it out. “You need help remembering you don’t have to prove you can.”

I stare at him. He looks uncomfortable the second the words leave his mouth. Good, because that makes two of us.

I take the cup. “Decaf?”

“Half.”

“Maggie get to you?”

“She threatened to replace my coffee with chicory if I brought you anything stronger.”

We stand beside the workbench drinking bad coffee in the morning light. Eight weeks ago, silence between us would have felt like a wall. It’s still awkward, but it’s not empty anymore.

Dad comes to my cardiac rehabilitation twice a week. He drives without asking whether I am capable. I complain without telling him to leave. Afterward, we stop at the feed store or hardware store or anywhere else that lets us talk about fence posts instead of feelings. We keep circling the harder things, but at least now, neither of us walks away.

He looks toward Chance. “She seems settled.”

“She is.”

The mare stands with her head over the stall door, watching us. Evie can approach her now without that first long pause. She still doesn’t like quick movement behind her, and ropes make her go rigid, but she comes when Evie calls.

Trust doesn’t return all at once. It comes in pieces. A step. A breath. A hand held out and not withdrawn.

I understand that better now.

Dad reaches into his jacket and takes out a folded sheet of paper. “Daniel has information.”