Page 41 of Saddle and Scent
"This is stupid," he announces. "We're all sitting here pretending we don't know each other when we spent half our lives attached at the hip. I don't like it."
Juniper's jaw tightens.
"Things change."
She’s right…and yet it feels wrong all the same.
"Not that much," Wes insists. "You're still you, we're still us, and this whole stranger routine is bullshit."
"Wes," Beckett warns, but Wes is on a roll now.
"No, I'm serious. We have to pretend because why? Because the town gossips might talk? They're already talking. They've been talking since the day she left. Acting like we barely know her isn't fooling anyone."
"It's for her own good," I say, the words tasting like ash. "And ours."
Juniper's head snaps up, eyes blazing with something that looks like the old fire.
"My own good? That's rich, coming from you."
The temperature in the room feels like it drops ten degrees despite the furnace's best efforts.
"You want to have this conversation now?" I ask, meeting her glare head-on.
"I don't want to have this conversation at all," she fires back. "I want to fix up this disaster of a ranch and be left alone. Is that so much to ask?"
"Yes," Wes says simply. "Because you're an Omega in a town full of Alphas, and pretending that doesn't matter is like pretending water isn't wet."
She flinches at the word—Omega—like it's a slap.
"I'm handling it."
"By pushing everyone away?" Beckett asks quietly. "That worked so well last time."
The silence that follows is deafening.
Juniper sets her mug down with excessive care, stands, and walks to the window.
Her reflection wavers in the rain-streaked glass, a ghost of the girl who used to burn bright enough to blind.
"You should go," she says finally. "Storm's letting up."
It's not, but we all recognize a dismissal when we hear one.
We file out like scolded children, pausing on the porch.
The porch is still slick from the storm, rain sluicing from the sagging eaves in intermittent splats, but none of us rush for the cover of the barn to our horses. We just stand there on the warped boards, shoulders hunched, glancing back at the battered screen door that rattles against its frame behind us.
Beckett tries to meet my eye and fails, his jaw tight and mouth set in the kind of line that says he’d rather be anywhere else, baking a pie or mucking a stall or even just getting a root canal.
Wes, usually so kinetic he can’t stop moving, stands with his hands stuffed into his pockets, head down, scowling at the puddle growing around his boots. The rain’s let up a little, but the world still feels all gray edges and unfinished business.
For a second, I have this urge to turn back, to push open that door and force the conversation we never finished, but I know—by the way Juniper’s shadow moves behind the rain-blurred window, by the way her shoulders are squared against the world—it would only make things worse. Instead, we linger, each of us marinating in the discomfort, pretending we’re scrolling through our phones or checking the sky for a break in the clouds, not just waiting to see if she’ll come after us. The house behind us is dark except for the glow in the front room.
Through the glass, Juniper’s silhouette is outlined by the amber flame of the fireplace, a study in self-contained fury. She’s already turned away, the curtain twitching in her grip, and I can almost hear the words she’s not saying. There’s nothing left to do but leave.
She's still at the window, silhouette rigid with tension.
"This can't keep going like this," Wes mutters as we splash toward the horses.
