Page 27 of Fall or Nothing

“Why?”

He picked up the digger in one hand and a new post in the other, and hauled them to the next location, considering my question. “Thought the entire world was out there for me to discover when I first left, but when I came back, home was still here—my family, my sister. There’s something about knowing where you belong. Having a place that’s actually yours and stays yours. A lot of guys I served with, they’re still looking for that. Where’s home for you?”

He dug, and then I set the post in the hole. I did the honors of driving it in with the sledgehammer, grunting through it with muscles that had been sore all week. His question weighed more heavily. Where the hell was home?

“Guess I’ve been everywhere,” I mumbled. The answerwas accurate from a certain angle. “Hard to say if there is a home right now.”

“You’ll know it when you find it.”

Satisfied, we moved on to the next section of fence, repeating the entire process over and over. We talked here and there, and I realized that if I needed a friend on the ranch, I’d just found myself one. Jake was one of the good guys.

Physical work did something I hadn’t expected, stripping away the noise, forcing me into thinking way too much about things. In the city, I’d always had too much going on to stop and think too much: a meetup with friends, a call to return, a party that needed my name on a list, a concert event to appear at.

Out here the only sound was the wind and the grind of boots on almost frozen ground, and underneath it all was whatever weighed me down.

Like the thoughts of Sage.

Damn it, she kept trickling back in no matter how hard I tried to push her away. Since the coffee shop. Since her hand had landed over mine on that wobbly shelf. Since I’d held her in her kitchen while she cried.

Why was I so drawn to her? She was nothing like the polished, high-maintenance women I typically dated. Sage was real. Natural. If Carter James had a type, it was apparently the lavender-scented, plant-loving woman who rescued half-naked strangers on the side of the road.

Aside from my numbered days here, we were from opposite worlds, and no matter what name I used, I wasn’t exactly a guy who settled down. Pursuing her would onlyend in hurt for both of us. Tonight I’d find her, pay what I owed, and draw a line between us.

A clean exit strategy—thirty days and done. Dad had probably had a good laugh writing out my inheritance challenge, betting I’d fail.

There wasn’t much we ever agreed upon. Especially once I’d made it clear, I had no intention of majoring in business and joining him and my brothers in running Magnus Music. Dad thought I was throwing my life away, studying plant biology.

Somewhere around the second semester, though, my new major had stopped being out of spite and started being the only thing I’d ever chosen entirely for myself. It suited me, the quiet of growing things, and the logic of plant systems that didn’t care about your famous last name or your investment portfolio.

Dad and I hadn’t had a proper conversation after that. I’d assumed there would be more time for reckoning.

There wasn’t.

I drove the sledgehammer a little harder into the next pole and tried harder to forget the past.

Ash cameout of the main office at day’s end with the envelope box under one arm and the efficiency of a man who ran a tight operation and knew it.

He called out names. Handed out envelopes. The guysopened them and grinned at their checks. Guess cowboys cared little for direct deposit. I waited for mine.

“Carter. My office,” Ash shouted. What the hell was this about?

I followed him in. He tossed the envelope across the desk.

I opened it, blinked twice at the numbers on my check, and turned it over to the back in case this was a joke.

“Is this missing a zero?”

“Nope.” He leaned back in his creaky chair.

“Or three?”

“Also, nope.”

“I worked my ass off every day this week. Including the section of the barn you sent me back to redo yesterday.”

“You’d done it wrong the first time.”

“And for five days of that, plus Trig calling me Pretty Boy at minimum twice per shift, this is all I get?”