▍ 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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He shook his head and reached for a couple of bowls, his steps slower, but steady. When he set mine down in front of me, it was with a kind of care that made me ache in a way I didn't have a name for. Like the act itself—feeding someone—was its own quiet apology for the parts of himself he didn't know how to show.
The fire cracked low behind us, throwing light against the kitchen walls in that flickering way that made everything feel like it belonged to another time. I stirred the chili with my spoon, watching it swirl, thick and rich.
Then I looked down at my hands. Pale scars traced over knuckles, some faded to ghost lines, others still catching light when I turned them just right. I touched one, almost absently, and felt something stir in my chest.
"I wasn't always left-handed," I said, voice low.
I didn't look up right away. Didn't need to. I could feel the way his attention shifted—how he paused with the spoon halfway to his mouth, set it down without a word, and waited. Not to interrupt. Just to let me speak if I wanted to.
"Oh?" Colt's voice was low, not pressing—just steady, like he was easing the door open in case I wanted to walk through it.
I nodded once, slow. Let my thumb trace the rim of my bowl before I spoke again. "My daddy didn't like it. Said left-handedness was weak. Wrong." The words came out quieter than I expected, like the air itself didn't want to hold them. "He'd tie my left hand behind my back. Said I needed to learn discipline. Said it'd make me better." I paused, eyes fixed on the grain of the wood beneath my fingers. "Guess I believed him. When you're a kid, you think pain means you're bein' shaped into somethin' good."
The room was still. I didn't look up, but I felt the shift in Colt—how he stopped moving altogether, how that silence between us thickened. Not with discomfort. With presence. That kind of quiet men like him carried when they were listening close, the way a soldier scans for movement in the dark.
"He stopped after Mama passed," I added, breath catching a little. "Not sure if it was grief or guilt or just exhaustion, but by then I'd already switched. I wrote with my right hand. Did chores with my left. Eventually it stuck."
The scrape of Colt's spoon setting down was soft, but I heard it like it echoed. When I finally looked up, he was leaning back slightly, eyes steady on mine, jaw tight, like he was keeping something in his teeth. I could see it then—how it worked on him. Not just what I'd said, but the way I'd said it. Not angry. Not bitter. Just true.
"Your daddy really did that?" he asked, but it didn't sound like a question. More like a reckoning.
I gave a small nod. "He thought it made me tougher. And maybe it did, in some twisted way." I let a breath out slow, like it'd been waiting years to leave. "Later, I found out he was born left-handed too. His daddy beat it outta him. Guess he thought passin' that down was a kind of love."
Colt leaned back slow, arms folded across his chest, that furrow deep between his brows like he was trying to work something loose in his head. He didn't speak right away—he never did when it mattered. Just sat there, watching me with that steady kind of quiet that felt more like a presence than a silence. Like he wasn't waiting for me to finish, but holding space for whatever else I needed to say.
