Page 55 of Branded By the Cowboy

Locked.

No.

I try again, jiggling the latch and slamming my palm against the wood. I rear back and slam my shoulder into it once. Twice. It doesn’t budge.

The heat is unbearable now. The shed walls glow dull orange. Smoke curls in, thick and choking. Cheese Puff bleats in my arms, trembling.

I sink to my knees, wrapping her close, the world narrowing to fire and ash and fear.

Heat surges at my back. The flames have found the dry hay now. The shed moans under the weight of it—wood creaking, air whooshing like it’s being swallowed whole.

The fire doesn’t burn—it devours.

I try to think.Phone, phone, where’s my damn phone?—

It’s in the house.

Of course it is.

Panic claws at my chest. That old, cold fear from childhood rises. The fear that came with locked doors and no comforting arms when you cried. The fear that whispersno one’s coming.

The shed groans above me as the wood gives way.

I press a hand to my chest, forcing myself to breathe.

I’m not alone now. I’m not invisible. Someone will notice. Someone will come.

Angus will come.

Hehasto.

My eyes burn. My throat is a blade.

Still clutching Cheese Puff, I drop to the floor—lower air, maybe cleaner. But every inhale chars my raw throat.

“Please,” I whisper to no one. “Please.”

My vision blurs.

Cheese Puff lets out a mournful bleat.

The barn groans again, louder.

I think of the fire swallowing the only place that ever felt like mine.

The flowerbed I was saving for next week.

Shay and Henry’s baby I’ll never meet.

Angus calling mewifelike he meant it.

And for a split second, I mourn the roof, the walls, and the structure I thought I needed.

But the flames have stripped everything down to truth.

It was never about the roof.

It was about the man who built a space for me beneath it.

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