▍ 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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Rhett didn't move.
Didn't push. Didn't press.
He just stood there, letting the silence do what silence does best—settle into your bones, pry the truth loose from where you've tried to bury it. His gaze stayed on me, steady as a held breath, and I felt it—how it wrapped around my ribs without touching a damn thing.
"You sure?" he asked, quiet.
It wasn't coaxing. Wasn't mocking. Just soft. The kind of soft that makes you second-guess everything you thought you knew about leaving.
I should've said yes. I should've turned and walked, let the trees close behind me like they never opened. But the word caught. Snagged on something inside me that was still bleeding.
Because he wasn't wrong.
Colt and that girl were still scorched into the back of my mind—the way she touched him like she had every right, and worse, the way he let her. It wasn't the touch itself. It was the stillness. The absence of retreat. That silence said more than a thousand words ever could.
And now, that same ache—that slow, splintering kind—was blooming behind my ribs all over again. A raw thing I couldn't reason with, no matter how many times I told myself it didn't mean anything.
It did.
So when Rhett looked at me like he'd already taken stock of every shadow I was trying to outrun... I didn't lie.
"Maybe just one," I murmured, my voice thinner than I liked, but not weak. Tired, maybe. Honest. It fell from my mouth like breath I'd been holding too long.
His smile was slow, not smug, but quiet—like he knew something I didn't. Or maybe like he knew I did, and was just waiting for me to catch up.
"I figured as much," he said. Something passed through his expression—approval, maybe. Or the ghost of it.
Rhett didn't say a word. He just turned, easy and unhurried, his boots stirring up dry dust and brittle pine needles as he led the way back toward the firelight.
I followed.
Not because I trusted him. And not because I didn't.
But because something in me had already decided—long before I realized I was deciding.
The cold was deeper now. Not just the kind that curled around your arms or crawled up your spine, but the kind that rooted itself beneath your skin, bone-deep and stubborn. I felt it with every step, the ache that Colt had left behind—silent, unfinished, raw. But as the fire came into view, that glow—the one that flickered like it knew secrets— reached for me. Wrapped around me. And for the first time all night, I didn't feel quite so alone in my own body.
Voices rose and fell like waves around the fire, laughter bright and careless in a way I couldn't reach just yet. But Rhett didn't rush. Didn't cut through the crowd like he needed to own it. He moved like he'd already been a part of it—and the others noticed.
