Page 33 of Knotting the Cowboys

The Future Of What’s Been Left

~WILLA~

The equipment shed smells like motor oil and WD-40, scents that should be purely mechanical but somehow carry their signatures too —River's calm embedded in the organized tool racks, Cole's intensity in the perfectly maintained engines, Mavi's vigilance in the security locks on every cabinet, Austin's care in the child-safety covers on anything sharp or dangerous.

I follow Cole through the spotless space, trying to process the sheer amount of money and effort they've invested in machinery I don't even recognize.

"New baler," Cole says, running his hand along the green metal with unconscious affection. "Your grandfather's was held together with baling wire and prayer. This one'll last another twenty years with proper maintenance."

Twenty years.

The number sits heavy in my stomach.

That's long-term thinking, planning for a future they couldn't have been sure would include them. My fingers find the edge of a workbench, needing something solid while my mind spins calculations I don't want to make.

How much did all this cost? How many hours of labor? Why pour so much into a ranch that might not even be theirs? What could be worth investing all this energy into a dream and vision that wasn’t theirs, but to a man who they weren’t even in debt to…

"The chicken coop's been completely rebuilt too," River adds from behind me, and I catch that scent again—rain-soaked earth mixing with the mechanical smells until my head swims. "Automatic doors, heated nesting boxes for winter. The girls are spoiled rotten."

The girls. Of course, they've named the chickens. Giving personalities to the livestock turned this working ranch into something that feels suspiciously like their forever home. All night I’ve been thinking about things revolving around the permanent ideology of them sticking around, which only gives me anxiety if I dare put a name to it. Anything that makes roots at a future where they potentially stay in my life longer than my previous pack attempted would.

My chest tightens with an emotion I can't afford to name.

Luna fusses from Austin's arms, reaching for me with grasping fingers, and I find myself moving closer without conscious thought.

She settles the moment I'm within reach, one chubby hand fisting in my shirt like she's afraid I'll disappear. The weight of that small trust hits harder than it should.

"Let's head back," Mavi suggests from his position by the door—always watching, always ready. "Getting close to Luna's lunchtime, and she gets cranky when her schedule's off."

The walk from the equipment shed to the main house stretches far longer than it should, every step loaded with a thousand sensory distractions and reminders that I am not insulated from this place, or these people, the way I keep trying to convince myself.

The gravel crunches beneath my boots, crisp and uneven, and the wind coming off the hayfields is sharp enough to sting the inside of my nose.

It carries competing threads of scent—green rye, rusted iron, the faint sweetness of livestock—braiding them into something uniquely Cactus Rose. But overlaying it all are the men themselves, four distinct signatures: leather and pine, rain and sage, char and cinnamon, linen and sun. Each one should be background noise by now, except my brain catalogues them with compulsive efficiency, the way the traumatized always do with things that might someday matter for survival.

Up ahead, Luna’s small head, a dark blur against Austin’s chest, is the only sign that the world might one day become safe enough to stop cataloguing.

She’s already learned how to be the axis around which these men orbit. I keep expecting them to forget about her—hell, about me—the moment they’re distracted by some more pressing problem, but the opposite happens.

Every minute is an exercise in vigilance, in subtle midwestern care, in anticipating needs before they're spoken. Mavi walks point, always scanning the horizon for threats real and imagined. Cole keeps to my left, pacing his steps to mine like we’re yoked together by invisible rope. River trails just behind, stance loose but eyes bright, while Austin and Luna complete the formation, child wrapped in a patchwork of wool and veteran hands.

I want to laugh at the absurdity—a security detail for a woman who couldn’t even keep herself safe in her own life—butI’m too busy making spreadsheets in my head, tabulating all the ways I don’t measure up.

We pass the rebuilt chicken coop, the air shifting from diesel to something sweet and domestic.

A half-dozen hens peck under the porch, and one—fat, red, and obviously favored—waddles right up to the edge of the path, unbothered by the parade of predators in boots. Cole bends down, scooping her up with impossible gentleness and murmuring something into her feathers.

The others don’t comment, don’t even look askance; it’s normal here, a grown man sweet-talking a bird, because the bedrock of this place is that nothing is too small to deserve protection.

I steal a glance at the men surrounding me—not just hired help, not just remnants of a rescue operation gone sideways, but something more foundational. They’ve stitched themselves into the literal fabric of this ranch; the evidence is everywhere, from the freshly painted outbuildings to the way the paths are already tamped down by practiced feet.

It’s a physical record of investment, a timeline of effort and care that stretches out into the future as if they assume, without question, that they’ll always be here. And me? I’m collateral, a contingency they prepared for even when I was presumed lost.

By the time we reach the house, my arms ache from holding Luna so tightly, but I don’t want to let go. She pulls at my hair, her grip surprisingly strong, and when I tilt her up to face me, she gives a gummy smile and a soft half-chirp, like she’s already figured out that my heart is a weak spot she can exploit. I press my nose into her crown and inhale, and for a moment, everything slows down. Just the scent of her, pure and new, and the blurry warmth of the men crowding into the mudroom behind us.

Inside, the air is heavy with the memory of baking bread and slow-roast stew, a reminder that someone was always thinking about the next meal even when the world was crumbling. I let the others shuffle past me, each setting down boots or hats or burdens in a choreography that’s far from accidental, and try to find my own place in the entryway. It’s like walking into a museum dedicated to a version of me that never existed: family photos on the wall, some ancient, some new and impossible to explain; a row of miniature boots by the door, Luna-sized and already mud-stained; even the furniture is rearranged just so, optimized for group living and maximum comfort. I want to claw at it, to unmake it into something less perfect, more true to the disaster I feel like inside.

But all I do is stand there, Luna on my hip, while the men move around me like the world’s most attentive honor guard. There’s a moment where Mavi meets my gaze, eyebrows raised as if to ask permission for something neither of us can say out loud. I look away first. The shame is instantaneous.

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