Page 35 of No Turning Back
“My mom died.”
“Oh, sorry.” I say, confused.
“Thanks. We weren’t exactly close. She was kind of a recluse. Anyway, she left me everything, including her house. Well… more like a ranch. It’s just outside Bluebird Hollow, about a half-hour from Austin. The place is huge, and I figured I’d get a roommate or something. Haven’t really felt comfortable bringing someone in, until now.”
I grin. “Are you asking me to move in with you?”
He takes one hand off the wheel, gesturing. “It’s not like we’d have the same room. The place is massive. I mostly stay on the ground floor. Upstairs has three bedrooms and two baths. We’d share a kitchen, and yeah, I’d come upstairs sometimes, but just to sleep.”
When I don’t answer right away, he keeps going. “You don’t have to say yes. If you want, I can clear out the bunkhouse. I think itused to be for the ranch hands, but I could make it pretty damn nice with some time.”
I laugh lightly. “Calm down. Show me this ranch and we’ll talk, cowboy.”
He chuckles, a warm, low baritone that settles into my bones.
The rest of the ride slips into a comfortable silence. We leave the city behind, trading the hum of traffic for the hum of cicadas. The backroads wind through wide-open fields dotted with scrub oak and the occasional weathered barn. Faded billboards lean into the wind, half their paint peeled by sun and storms. Every so often, a mailbox squats at the end of a dirt driveway, the names on them sun-bleached to illegibility.
Bluebird Valley stretches out ahead, thousands of acres of patchwork land, some claimed by ranchers, some just left wild. It holds Bluebird Hollow, the kind of small Texas town where everyone knows whose truck is parked outside the diner, and the rest is unmarked territory where mesquite trees fight for space with tall grass.
The road narrows to cracked asphalt, then to gravel. Dust kicks up behind us in a steady plume. Eventually, we pull up to a chain-link gate, its metal dull with age, a heavy padlock holding it shut.
Sam gets out of the car, and even from inside the car I can hear the hinges groan as the gate creaks open. He swings it wide, the chain-link rattling against the post, then climbs back in. The tires crunch over gravel as we roll forward, the narrow drive pulling us deeper into the property.
It’s quiet, too quiet. No traffic, no distant sounds of people, nothing. Just the creak of the suspension and the occasional whisper of wind through the trees.
The closer we get to the house, the more I see how this place must’ve once meant something. The fencing along the drive is weathered but still standing, posts leaning slightly, as ifstubbornly holding on. The house sits at the end of the road, a two-story with a wide front porch and paint faded to a ghost of its original colour.
The land immediately around it is mowed and kept clear, a small circle of order. But beyond that, tall grass sways in the breeze, wild and unchecked. Out in the distance, trees huddle together, reclaiming what was theirs.
It feels… forgotten.
Chapter Eleven
Quinn
Sam leads me up the front steps, and right away I can tell they’ve been worked on. The wood feels solid under my feet, no soft spots or wobble, and the railing is smooth, sturdy, someone clearly fixed it up. The screen door looks new too, no rips in the mesh, no squeak when Sam pulls it open.
He unlocks the main door and pushes it open, and the inside… yeah, it’s nothing like I expected.
The door opens straight into this big open space. Kitchen’s off to the side, split from the living room by a long island. The counters are sleek and shiny, like they belong in one of those home makeover shows, and there’s barely anything on them except a couple mugs and a stove.
The living room’s got this mishmash of furniture, different colours, different styles, all pointed at a giant flat screen. In thecorner, there’s a fireplace, but the opening’s covered with a piece of wood nailed across it like it’s been out of commission for years.
“I’ve been doing repairs,” Sam says, tossing his keys onto the counter. “Mostly the front porch, kitchen, and two bedrooms upstairs.”
“You didn’t hire anyone?” I ask, running my hand along the island.
He shakes his head. “Nah. Figured I’d just do it as I go. No point paying someone for something I can do myself.”
Sam walks around the island toward a narrow staircase tucked in the corner. “Let me show you the upstairs,” he says over his shoulder.
I follow him up, my hand brushing the railing. The stairs creak under our weight, a little dusty like they haven’t been used much. We hit the top of the stairs, and the hallway stretches out in front of us, five doors total, Two to the left and three to the right.
The first door, right near the stairs towards the left side of the hallway, opens up to what is clearly the master bedroom. There is a ton of space, big windows, and its own bathroom tucked in the corner. Judging by the shirt slung over the chair, I’m guessing this is Sam’s.
The door next to the master leads to a smaller hall closet stuffed with cleaning supplies, a couple paint cans, and some sheets of plywood leaning against the wall like they’ve been there forever.
“Little bit of everything in here,” he says, shutting it again.
