I didn’t need to hear his name to know.
There was something different about the ranch that afternoon—not in the sky, nor in the wind, but in me. A restlessness that didn’t come from the fatigue of pregnancy, or delayed hunger, or the natural weight of recent days. It was deeper. Older.
Daniel was in town.
The confirmation came in the cruelest way possible: a conversation cut short in the hotel hallway, voices too low to be curiosity, too loud to be coincidence. When Marco entered the cabin hours later, carrying the scent of the road and silence on his shoulders, I knew.
“He arrived, didn’t he?” I asked before he could say a word.
Marco stopped. Literally stopped, as if his body had decided for him. His eyes met mine with an almost painful care, like someone trying to protect something
