Page 47 of Lost in the Reins

“Stop.” The word cracks like a whip.

He sits back, hands spread in surrender. “I know this isn’t what you wanted to hear?—”

“Do you?” Heat rises in my chest, something dark and sharp. “You understand what it means to tell my brothers the land they bled for is worthless? To tell a ten-year-old girl that the only home she has left is about to be carved up into vacation rentals?”

“Wes.” His voice carries decades of shared history—he approved Dad’s loans, watched us grow up through the lens of quarterly statements and collateral assessments. “Your father saw this coming. It’s why Sarah pushed the tourism angle in the first place.”

Her name hits like a branding iron, but I keep my face neutral. Years of poker with Jake are finally paying off.

“That what you’re putting in your report?” My voice is steady, but the storm inside me isn’t. “That we’re a dying breed?”

Frank exhales. “What I’m putting in my report is that I gave you all the options. What you do with them…” He shrugs, heavywith things we’re both pretending not to understand. “That’s up to you.”

Some choice.

I push to my feet, the scrape of the chair loud in the quiet room. My hand finds the door, but Frank’s words give me pause.

“For what it’s worth, I wish things were different.”

“Yeah.” I step out into the morning light. “Me, too.”

Chapter Twenty-One

Paisley

My desk looks like a crime scene where coffee cups went to die. I count seven empty mugs, each one a testament to my spectacular life choices this week. The latest victim—a chipped blue cup Emma picked out for me at Wilson's—sits perilously close to my laptop, dregs of cold coffee creating a ring that would probably give my Manhattan housekeeper an aneurysm. If I still had a housekeeper. Or, you know, a life that didn't revolve around avoiding emotionally unavailable cowboys while mainlining caffeine like it's a personality trait.

The cursor blinks at me from my laptop screen, patient as a confession booth. I've been writing for—I glance at the timestamp on my last save—thirty-six hours straight, breaking only for coffee refills and the occasional reminder from my body that humans need things like food and sleep to survive. Though honestly, sleep feels like admitting defeat at this point. Because every time I close my eyes, I see him. Standing in Martha's diner, looking at me with those impossibly blue eyes while systematically dismantling any chance we had at... whatever this was.

But the words. Oh, goodness, the words.

They're pouring out of me like a broken dam, raw and real and nothing like the sanitized cowboys I used to write. My hero isn't doing sunrise yoga or wearing designer boots that have never seen mud. He has hands roughened by real work and shoulders that carry the weight of generations. He's complicated and stubborn and absolutely terrified of letting anyone close enough to matter. He has calluses on his hands and ghosts in his eyes and a heart so carefully guarded that it would takes an act of God—or maybe just a determined heroine—to crack through those walls.

Wonder where I got that inspiration from.

Spoiler alert: it's not fromYellowstonemarathons this time.

I grab the nearest coffee cup, find it empty, and contemplate whether licking the dried residue would be a new personal low. Probably. Though still not as low as falling for a man who'd rather push me away than admit he might actually have feelings. Or as low as hiding in my room like some kind of caffeinated hermit because it's easier than facing the quiet disappointment in Emma's eyes every time Wes and I do our carefully choreographed dance of avoidance at breakfast.

My phone buzzes—Miranda, probably checking on the manuscript I promised her yesterday. I'd called her in a caffeine-fueled fog of inspiration, babbling about authentic characters and real ranch life and how I finally understood what my books had been missing.

"I've got ten chapters," I told her, the words tumbling out faster than my brain could filter them. "Raw, real, nothing like before. No designer jeans, no perfect hair, just... truth. The kind that hurts to write but feels like breathing for the first time."

She's quiet for a long moment before saying, "Send me what you've got. And Paisley? Try to sleep occasionally. Insomnia isn't actually a personality trait, even if you're writing about emotionally constipated cowboys."

That was two days and three chapters ago. Turns out, heartbreak is one heck of a motivator. Who knew all I needed to write authentic romance was to have my own heart thoroughly and systematically dismantled by a man who probably thinks emotional vulnerability is something you catch from reading too many Hallmark cards?

The house creaks around me, settling into its morning routine. Emma's at school, Jake and Colt are probably out fixing fences or whatever ranch task Wes assigned to keep them away from his brooding, and Wes himself...

Well.

Let's just say we've elevated avoiding each other to an Olympic sport. Though he still makes coffee every morning, leaving it brewing like some kind of caffeine-scented olive branch. Because apparently, emotional constipation doesn't override basic hospitality. It's like living in a very specific kind of hell where the devil wears Wranglers and makes really good coffee.

I stretch, my back protesting hours of hunched writing posture, and consider the possibility of venturing downstairs for fresh coffee. The risk assessment is complex: potential Wes encounter versus caffeine necessity. Though lately, he's been timing his movements through the house with military precision to ensure our paths never cross. It would be impressive if it wasn't so thoroughly depressing.

That's when I hear it—a strange ringing that cuts through my writing fog. Not my phone—I've been staring at that screen for hours. Something else, something almost archaic in its persistence, like the ghost of communications past, has come to haunt the house.

I follow the sound downstairs, through the quiet house that's become more home than my Manhattan apartment ever was, until I find it: an actual landline phone, mounted on thekitchen wall like a relic from a simpler time. The kind of phone that probably remembers rotary dials and party lines and less complicated relationships.

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