Page 39 of Knotting the Cowboys

Four men who've upended my world in a matter of hours, leaving to help strangers because that's who they are.

"Be careful," I say, surprising myself with how much I mean it.

Cole turns back, those storm-gray eyes holding mine.

"Always are. You just focus on settling in. We'll talk more when we get back."

Then they're gone, their truck kicking up dust as it speeds toward town.

Luna and I stand on the porch, watching until they disappear around the bend.

The ranch feels different without them—too quiet, too empty, too much space for my thoughts to fill.

"Just you and me now, baby girl," I murmur to Luna. She babbles something that sounds like agreement, then sticks her fingers in my mouth.

I carry her back inside, surveying what is supposedly my domain. The kitchen where they prepared meals as a family. The living room with its worn furniture and baby toys scattered across the rug. The stairs leading to bedrooms that probably smell like them—pine and rain and smoke, and clean mountain air.

Mine, but not mine. Theirs, but not theirs.

All of us caught in this strange limbo my grandfather created, bound by obligation and trauma and something else I'm not ready to name.

Luna yawns, and I check the clock.

Nap time,according to Austin's carefully written schedule.

Time to pretend I know what I'm doing, that I belong here, that I'm not terrified of the quiet and the responsibility and the way my body still hums from their presence.

"Come on, sweet girl," I whisper. "Let's figure this out together."

Not Alone Anymore?

~WILLA~

The house reveals itself to me in the slowest, cruelest increments—like an old wound that forgets to scar over but still remembers how to ache.

Every hallway is a palimpsest, layered with the ghosts of my childhood and the new, more vivid ghosts of the men who’ve made it theirs.

The walls are the same soft blue, but the gallery of faded family photos now shares space with crisp new prints: horses running, mountains in stormlight, the four of them grinning over blackened steaks at the summer barbecue pit.

There’s a scratch on the banister that I remember blaming on a cousin, but now it’s been buffed smooth and stained a richer brown, as though someone’s gone through erasing even my mistakes. I trace the banister with my fingers anyway, daring myself to remember—and to admit that I don’t recognize what’s become of my own ancestral home.

I carry Luna against my chest, her breathing warm and rhythmic, and try to map what’s changed by scent alone. Underneath the familiar sharpness of pine cleaner and the high desert’s mineral tang, a new chemistry dominates: four distinctnotes, woven together by time and proximity, all of them so obvious I’m a little embarrassed I didn’t notice right away. Cole’s campfire smoke and cedar, Mavi’s spice and tobacco, Austin’s sun-drenched wheat, River’s rain and cut grass. It’s not just a place they’re occupying—it’s as if their pack has left a living imprint on the walls, the floors, every surface I touch. Even the air tastes different.

The kitchen is both shrine and battleground. The stone countertops and battered cast iron pans are as I remember, but the old breadbox is gone, replaced with a fancy espresso machine and three different kinds of protein powder lined up on the cowboy checkered tablecloth. Someone’s left a baby bottle in the dish rack, next to a thermos marked “River” in blocky Sharpie. I can almost hear the echo of my grandmother’s laughter in the space, but when I open the fridge, it’s stocked with energy drinks and chicken breasts and half a dozen jars of whatever organic nonsense Austin must be experimenting with for Luna’s “enriched brain development.” I close it quickly, not sure whether I want to scream or cry or just start pitching things onto the floor until it looks like my memory instead of someone else’s future.

I keep moving, Luna’s weight anchoring me to the present. The hallway leading to the living room is a corridor of old certificates—grandpa’s rodeo trophies, grandma’s volunteer awards—and right at the end, pinned to the wall with a tack, is a childish drawing of a barn and a stick-figure family. Someone has added a fifth stick figure in a different colored marker. Underneath it reads: “Home is wherever we all are.” The handwriting is lopsided and obviously Austin’s, a detail that alternately infuriates and devastates me.

And still, every step feels like a trespass. I feel the urge to apologize aloud to the furniture, to the floorboards, to the ghosts of my own past selves who must be watching from the shadowedcorners and wondering how I let it all slip away. But Luna is awake now, peering over my shoulder, small hands tangled in my hair, her scent of milk and talcum oddly grounding.

The living room still has Grandpa's ancient recliner, worn leather shaped by decades of evening rest. But now there's also a playpen in the corner, baby toys scattered across a rug that's definitely newer than my last visit. The mantel holds his collection of carved horses, but between them sit framed photos—the four men at various ranch tasks, Luna at different stages of tiny, and one that stops me cold.

All five of them together, Luna maybe two months old, passed between them like the world's most precious football. Their faces are soft with exhaustion and wonder, the kind of bone-deep contentment that comes from surviving something difficult together.

New fathers, clearly. But no mother in sight.

"Where did you come from, little one?" I whisper to Luna, who's gumming contentedly on my collar.

She offers no answers, just drools with impressive volume.

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