Reece (Stud Ranch)

“Wait, wait, wait, you don’t happen to mean a small woman, about yay tall with short, dark hair?” He held up his hand about the height of Reece’s shoulder.

“Yes. Yes!” Reece grasped the deputy’s shirt and dragged him closer. “That’s her. What do you know?”

The deputy looked alarmed, but answered. “She’s back up the road.” He hitched a thumb over his shoulder. “Maybe half a mile where the road’s all tore up. She was crawling out of a ditch when me and the ambulance were coming and flagged us down.”

“The ditch!” Reece yanked the deputy into a hug, then let him go, looking at Jeremiah. “The ditch!”

Holy shit, did that mean they’d driven right past her earlier? And how the hell had she ended up in the ditch? But thank God. Thank God she wasn’t in the house.

“Where?” Reece asked, already heading for his truck. “Half a mile back you said? Was she okay? Jesus, you said she flagged you down?” But Reece barely waited for an answer, he was already almost to his truck.

“Yes,” the deputy said. “The ambulance stopped to treat her.”

Reece shouted his thanks and then he was peeling out down the road.

The half mile felt like it took half an hour even though it was only minutes. He came upon the ambulance which, thank Jesus, was still there. He got out of the car and threw the door shut, sprinting towards the back end of the ambulance.

And there she was, looking dazed as the paramedic helped put her arm in a sling, but intact. Intact! Alive!

“Charlie!” he shouted, and her head jerked his direction, right before a grin lit her face. And it was like a rainbow scattering all the clouds of the world.

Charlotte was safe and she was smiling at him.

He didn’t care about any other goddamned thing in the whole goddamned world.

He rushed toward her, ignoring the paramedic and shoving him out of the way with the sheer force of his size and will.

And he wrapped himself around as much of Charlotte as he could. She winced and he yanked back.

“Sorry. Shit, sorry! How’d you know to run? Thank God, thank God. The house is demolished. I was so afraid. I was so scared—”

He grabbed her cheeks in his hands and kissed her hard, just to make sure she was there, she was solid and not an apparition. And then he kissed her gentle and slow and indeed, she didn’t disappear again like so much ethereal dust.

She was safe even though he hadn’t been there to save her. Maybe the whole world wasn’t on his shoulders after all, but he was damn glad she was the kind of woman strong enough to catch herself and pick herself back up when she fell down.

Or, ya know, when a damn twister was tearing shit up nearby. That was the kind of person he wanted on his team.

20

Ruth and I rented a place in Austin since the ranch house was torn to shreds. It was ironic in one of those messed up Alanis Morissette ways that I finally got to Austin, just not exactly like I ever imagined. And Ruth had certainly never intended on being there with me, though at the end of the day, she, like Reece, was just glad I was in one piece.

And as we moved in, both of us with just the clothes on our backs this time, she was waxing philosophical. “Well, nothing was going to get me off that land except an act of God and—” She threw her hands up in the air, “There we have it!”

“So you’re actually doing it? Selling the rest to Reece and Jeremiah’s boss?”

Ruth nodded and collapsed on a couch that had seen better days. We’d rented an already furnished apartment since it wasn’t like either of us had furniture. The furniture here was…well-loved was a good term for it.

I liked it because it was so different from where I’d lived for most of my adult life. It was eclectic and fit the hippie vibe I’d dreamed of.

Ruth hated it.

She looked over at me as I sat down beside her. “Promise me we’re just here for six months? Then we’ll get some place better and decorate it to be cute and modern, okay?”

I shrugged. “Sure, as long as we both get jobs where we can magically afford that. We were lucky to get this.”

“Ugh, I know! And I want to go back to school, so I’ll be a poor student!”

I laughed and threw a throw pillow with a faded sunshine cross-stitched on it at her.

She grabbed it mid-air and stared at it, obvious distaste on her face. “What even is this? How did anyone think this was good décor?” She made an appalled noise and threw it to the floor.

I giggled. “You just crushed the eternal spirit of someone who spent hours on that labor of love.”