Page 17 of Knotting the Cowboys

Tomorrow feels like a mountain I'm not sure I can climb.

Find a way to the ranch—hitchhike maybe, or see if there's a bus. Figure out what condition it's in, whether my grandfather left me a gift or just another problem to solve. Try to make a broken-down property into something resembling a life, with no money and no experience and lungs that still protest when I breathe too deep.

But tonight? Tonight I'm safe.

The word sits strange in my mouth, foreign as a new language. When did I stop feeling safe? When Blake's protection became possession? When my parents' disappointment became distance?

Or earlier, the first time someone told me Omegas like me need to know their place?

A light flicks on in the building across the street—someone else who can't sleep, probably. I wonder what keeps them awake. Lost dreams? Found nightmares? Or just the ordinary insomnia of ordinary lives? There's something comforting in knowing I'm not the only one awake, not the only one standing at a window wondering what comes next.

The mountains feel closer in the darkness, like they've crept forward to peer at the newcomer. Somewhere beyond them, my grandfather's ranch waits. Cactus Rose Ranch—even the name sounds like something from a movie, all thorns and beauty and Western romance. He sent letters for a while when I was young, before my parents made it clear contact wasn't welcome. I remember his handwriting, careful and slanted, telling storiesabout horses and sunsets and the way the desert blooms after rain.

I wonder if he knew what was ahead of me?

Maybe that's why he left it to me—not to the William my parents wanted, but to the Willa I became.

A place for someone who exists wrong, who fits nowhere, who needs somewhere to run to when the running from gets to be too much.

Or maybe he just had no one else, and I'm inheriting neglect and decay along with the land.

Tomorrow will tell.

I wrap my arms around myself, suddenly cold despite the warm room.

The unknown stretches before me, vast as the darkness beyond the mountains. But for the first time in months—years—it doesn't feel entirely bleak. There's Wendolyn downstairs, probably reading romance novels with Fitzgerald purring on her lap. There's a bookstore that feels like home and a town that might, maybe, possibly have room for one more misfit.

It's not much. But it's not nothing either.

The clock on the dresser shows 11:47. Less than fifteen minutes until tomorrow, until I have to figure out how to move forward when every path seems blocked. But right now, in this suspended moment between one day and the next, I let myself feel something dangerous:curiosity.

What would it be like to stop running?

To plant feet somewhere and grow roots, thorny and deep like the cacti that presumably gave the ranch its name? To drink pumpkin spice lattes and smell like cinnamon and befriend women who wear victory rolls as armor?

To be Willa—not the William my parents wanted or the Omega society expects, but just Willa, messy and scarred and stubbornly still here?

Frightening.

Impossible.

But also...glorious to dream about.

The courthouse clock begins to chime midnight, twelve deep notes that resonate through the quiet town. With each toll, I feel something shift inside me, subtle but significant. Not hope exactly—I'm not ready for hope. But maybe its quieter cousin:possibility.

I'll wake in Sweetwater Falls with problems to solve and a life to somehow rebuild.

I'll face the ranch and whatever ghosts or gifts it holds.

Tomorrow I'll have to decide if I'm brave enough to stop running, to try trusting, to see if a heart that's been labeled inappropriate might still find its home.

Tonight, I stand at this window in a borrowed room above a bookstore, watching a sleeping town that doesn't know what to do with me any more than I know what to do with it.

The last chime fades into silence.

October 15th begins…

Four Familiar Strangers?

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