▍ AN ORIGINAL ╱ western romance
There's a kind of wild you can't outrun.
Lemon Odell knows this better than anyone-the kind that lives under your skin, that shapes the way you move, the way you fight, the way you break. Born into a bloodline stitch...
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In the three months since Colt Langmore came to Windwalker, he had surprised me more than I care to admit. But only three times had those glimpses truly unsettled something within me, like whispers sinking deep into the soil of my thoughts, rooting themselves where I couldn't quite reach.
The first time was when I found him late one evening, long after the workday had wrung us both dry, sitting under the dim light of the barn with a book in his hand. It wasn't the sight of him there, tucked into the quiet space between the stalls and hay bales, that gave me pause—it was the book. Not a dog-eared cowboy magazine or an old rancher's guide like I might have expected. No, it was something else entirely. The spine was creased, the pages worn from use, as if the story inside had been lived over and over.
I didn't say a word. Just stood there in the shadows, watching the way his brow furrowed with each line, the way his fingers traced the edges of the page before turning it with a kind of care that didn't belong in a world as hard as this. He didn't notice me—too absorbed in whatever words held him captive. And in that moment, the distance between us felt both infinite and suddenly too small.
He glanced up when I settled beside him, those cobalt eyes meeting mine with a flicker of surprise, but he didn't speak. Didn't need to. In that moment, words weren't necessary. We existed together in the quiet—me, lost in the weight of his presence, and him, lost in whatever world the pages held for him. It was the kind of closeness that didn't demand anything, didn't push or pull. Just was. And it made me wonder how many more layers Colt had hidden beneath that quiet exterior, how much more there was to discover.
The second time Colt Langmore surprised me, it wasn't quiet like the first. It was anything but.
We had been working side by side in the heat of the midday sun, mending fences that had seen too many storms and too little care. The sky stretched endless and blinding above us, and the earth beneath our boots felt hard and unyielding, like everything here had forgotten how to give. We'd barely spoken, both of us too lost in the rhythm of the work—him, with that steady focus I had come to expect, and me, trying to shake off the unease that had settled in my chest.
I don't know what made me look up at that moment, but when I did, I saw it. One of the bulls had broken loose, its massive frame barreling straight toward the open field, toward the road beyond. Time seemed to slow, the pounding of hooves rattling through my bones, and before I could shout or even think, Colt was moving. He dropped the hammer, his body cutting through the air as if he'd been made for this very moment. There was no hesitation, no fear in the way he moved—just raw, unflinching instinct.
He reached the bull before I could even register what was happening, throwing himself into the path of the beast with a kind of reckless determination that left me breathless. He didn't flinch as the animal reared up, didn't falter as he grabbed hold of the rope, twisting it around his hands like he was taming something wild, something untamable.
