Page 8 of Simply Yours

Dallas.

A world away from this place, from home.

A city full of new faces, new opportunities, a life that had nothing to do with the farm, with the ghosts of the past, with him. She was slipping further, leaving him behind, and it felt like he was suffocating in the space between them.

Ayearlater, the farm wasstillstruggling.

The weight of that truth pressed down on him like the heavy, oppressive air of a summer storm. The fields of grass, once brimming with the promise of hard work and even harder dreams, had turned into a battleground of nothingness. The grasses were barely surviving, the land dry and cracked beneath his boots, stubbornly refusing to yield. He would have to buy more hay and more alfalfa for the cattle – which meant more money.

He had done everything he could. Worked every day from dawn until dusk, pushing himself beyond exhaustion, but it wasn’t enough. Nothing was. The farm was slipping through his fingers, just like everything else in his life… but he couldn’t let go. If Becca ever returned, she would always have a home. It was that way foranyof them.

Theyhadto have a home.

Jason had spent countless nights on the porch, staring out at the stars, hoping for some kind of miracle, but none came. His fingers clenched around the railing, the wood splintering beneath his touch as he let out a breath that felt like it would never leave his chest. It wasn’t just the farm that was breaking.

It was him.

His father’s passing had left a hole in the family, and though Jason had never expected to fill it, he had at least hoped to keep things together, to maintain some semblance of order. But it had all unraveled—one thing after another.

Twoyears passed - and Matthew was completely out of control.

Jason could hear the whisper of voices in the town now. The way people would look at him with pity, with barely veiled judgment. His brother’s antics had turned into a public spectacle. Matthew had always been the wild one who tested the boundaries, but now it was like a dark cloud followed him everywhere he went.

He couldn’t even make it through a simple errand without someone gossiping, without the weight of those stares crushing him from all sides. Jason had tried. Heaven knows, he had tried to pull him back from the edge, but nothing he said or did seemed to matter. Matthew was lost in his own self-destruction, and Jason could only watch in helpless frustration.

Everywhere he went, people whispered. They would smile at him, polite but distant, as if they were waiting for the next shoe to drop. Waiting for the family to fall apart completely, waiting for the last vestiges of hope to slip through their fingers.

Jason could see it in their eyes. It wasn’t just pity; it was something darker, something like disappointment. They were looking at him like he had failed them.

Like he hadfailedhis family.

But the truth was that he hadn’t failed. The family hadn’t fallen apart—not completely. It had just changed, twisted into something unrecognizable. And even Jason could see it. He felt the fractures beneath his skin every time he looked around at the empty rooms, at the broken pieces of his life scattered across the place they had all once called home.

The land was still there, but the spirit of it—the heart of it—was slowly bleeding out, day by day. And he didn’t know how to stop it.

He had always thought that if he could just hold things together long enough, it would get better. But he wasn’t sure anymore. He wasn’t sure of anything.

Jason let out a bitter snort, the sound hollow and harsh in the stillness of the house. It was almost laughable how he thought he could fix everything. He had once thought he could be enough - and was wrong.

How could he expect his family to have faith in him?

When he didn’t have faith in himself.

Three

CAITLIN

Two years later…

‘Join the military,’they said…

‘Get your G.I. bill,’they said…

What they didn’tsaywas that you would either love it or hate it – and if you hated it those six years you signed up for would feel like an eternity.

Home.

She was home.

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