▍ 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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The fire crackled somewhere ahead of us, quiet but constant, throwing up sparks like tiny warnings into the dark. It lit up the edges of the field in gold and shadow, carving out just enough warmth to draw people near without ever letting the cold fully leave. But the only thing I could really hear was my own heartbeat. Loud. Steady. Like it didn't trust where I was.
We stood just off to the side, a few paces away from the rest of them—close enough to hear the laughter, but far enough that I didn't have to pretend. There was a looseness in their movements, a kind of ease I couldn't fake. The way they leaned into each other, heads tilted back, smiles soft around the fire's glow—I envied that. The way they weren't carrying anything.
I folded my arms, not for warmth. Just to hold myself in.
Everything felt too loud inside me. The past few weeks hadn't let up, not really. They just shifted shape—pain traded for exhaustion, worry wrapped in silence. And now here I was, standing under stars too wide to understand, wondering why it felt harder to be still than it did to bleed.
Colt's hand found the small of my back, and it didn't startle me—but it nearly undid me. That quiet pressure, barely there, like he was steadying something he knew better than to name out loud. I hadn't realized how close I was to coming apart until that moment, until his thumb brushed slow along the curve of my spine like he was reminding me I was still here. Still held.
I looked up at him.
The firelight caught the edge of his jaw, softening what the world had carved hard. His eyes were fixed on mine—not sharp, not searching, just... seeing. Seeing the way I'd gone quiet. The way I was holding my breath like maybe if I stayed still enough, the weight inside me wouldn't spill out. He didn't ask what was wrong. Didn't try to fill the silence with something neat. He just stood there, steady as earth, like he'd decided a long time ago that if I was going to break, it wasn't going to be alone.
"We need this," he said, voice low and even, like gravel settling in water. "You especially."
I tried to smile, but it didn't quite land. My mouth moved like it remembered how, but the feeling never reached the rest of me.
"A break," he added, softer now. "That's all it is."
But it wasn't just a break. We both knew that.
It was a choice—his, mine—to try and step outside of what had been eating us alive since the accident. To stand here in the middle of people laughing like they weren't bleeding, like they'd never had to hold someone's hand in a hospital bed and pretend it didn't matter if they let go.
He was trying. For me. The same way I'd tried for him in the weeks after the rodeo, when his body gave out before his pride did and the nights blurred into painkillers and tight-lipped exhaustion. I remembered sitting on the edge of his bed, smoothing the blanket flat while he stared past me like the world had stopped moving. I hadn't had words then either. Just quiet, and closeness, and whatever comfort could be offered without asking for anything in return.
