Updated Mar 22, 2026 • ~4 min read
Chapter 28: Don’t Go Yet
COLE
He had told himself he was not going to do this.
He had told himself that the correct thing was to let the situation develop at the pace it was developing, which was a good pace — the five weeks and the calls and the column piece and the genuine, building shape of something that was moving toward something. He had told himself that adding pressure was the wrong move, that she was already doing the right thing, that asking for more before she’d even arrived was the specific mistake of a man who had not learned anything from the thirteen years of his first marriage.
He was at the gate at eight forty-five.
He had not planned to be at the gate. He had planned to be at the barn doing the Wednesday morning cattle feed, and he had been at the barn, and at eight-thirty he had told his hand Ruiz that he was going to the gate and Ruiz had nodded with the expression of a man who had been on this ranch for four years and who had his own opinions about the situation.
He waited at the gate.
He thought: she’s not coming to stay permanently. She’s coming for a month. To start. He knew the terms. He’d agreed to the terms. The terms were right for where they were.
He thought: I know that.
He thought: I am at the gate.
The car came down the county road at eight fifty-eight — a different rental than last time, which made sense, but the same direction, the same turn at the gate. She slowed for the two soft spots without prompting. She had not needed to be told.
She pulled up and stopped.
She got out.
She was in the same kind of clothes as the first day — right clothes, for real this time, not almost-right, because she knew now what the ranch required. She had a bag over her shoulder and the notebook in her back pocket and she looked at him standing at the gate and the corner of her mouth did the thing.
“You didn’t wait in the truck,” she said.
“No.”
“Not even a few seconds?”
“No.”
She walked toward him.
He thought about what he’d told himself in the line cabin and the fence line and the porch, which was: she leaves. She’s always going to leave. She lives for the next story.
He thought: she chose this story.
She reached him and he put his arms around her and she was real and present and smelled like travel and the specific quality of someone who had been on the road for a long time coming to the right place.
She said, into his shoulder: “I didn’t miss Chicago.”
He said: “No?”
“I missed the apartment coffee, which was better than the cabin coffee. That’s the whole list.”
“June’s is better than both.”
“I know.”
He held her for a moment. He was aware that Ruiz could see them from the barn and that Ruby’s school day ended at three-thirty and that there was cattle feed that needed doing and that none of these facts were particularly urgent.
“I have the creek road house through the end of January,” she said.
“I know.”
“And then we’ll figure out the next piece.”
“Yes.”
“I’m not — I want to be clear that I’m not showing up here expecting a specific outcome. I’m here to work and to be here and to see what—”
“Wren,” he said.
She stopped.
“I know,” he said. “I know what you’re here for.”
She pulled back enough to look at him.
He said: “I’m glad you’re here.”
She held his gaze.
“I’m glad I’m here,” she said.
He took her bag.
They walked up the driveway and avoided the soft spots and the rooster announced something from the direction of the barn, and in the main house window he could see the movement that was his mother, who was going to be extremely satisfied about this development and was going to express it through biscuits.
“June knows you’re here,” he said.
“I assumed.”
“She made biscuits.”
“It’s not Monday.”
“She made an exception.”
Wren looked at him.
He thought: she is going to be here for a month. And then, if the month is what he thought it would be, she would figure out the next piece, which would be January, and then the piece after that. And at some point the pieces would stop having gaps between them.
He didn’t say this.
He thought: one thing at a time.
He thought: she’s here.
He thought: that’s the whole thing.
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