Page 200 of Lost Then Found
Especially not love.
Now that I’m foreman, the stakes are higher. The responsibilities heavier. The weight of it lives in my spine, in my shoulders. But I don’t complain. I know what I signed up for.
But none of that prepared me for her.
For the way her presence strips everything else away. For how deeply she unsettles the part of me that’s never allowed to slow down.
I lower my mouth to her shoulder, letting the kiss sink into her skin. She’s warm beneath me, soft in that way that makes everything in me go still. I kiss her again, just beneath her ear, then trail along her jaw, not rushing it, not even really thinking—just needing to feel her.
She shifts slightly, caught between sleep and waking, her breath hitching like I’ve pulled her to the surface without meaning to. The sound alone nearly undoes me. Every instinct in me is screaming to stay. To nudge her onto her back, slide between her thighs, and lose myself in the heat of her while the sun crawls its way up the sky outside.
But I don’t have time.
My voice is soft against her skin. “I’ve got some work to do,” I murmur, brushing her hair back from her face. “I’ll be back soon. Go back to sleep, baby.”
She mumbles something I can’t quite catch, but she nods, barely, and settles in again, her body curling closer like she already misses me. A few minutes later, her breathing evens out, slow and easy. I stay for another minute, holding on like it’ll make it easier to leave.
It doesn’t.
The floor’s warm from yesterday’s sun still caught in the planks, and the air smells faintly of pine, cedar, and her. I pull on a thermal from the drawer, then my work jeans and a flannel — sleeves already rolled, buttons missing near the cuff. Doesn’t matter. It’s gonna be a warm one, and this shirt’s soft enough to live in. My boots are by the door where I kicked them off last night, scuffed to hell, but they’ve got another few thousand miles in them.
The coffee machine’s loud and at least a century old but it does the job. I fill it with water, dump in some grounds, and let it rip while I lace up. The place isn’t fancy, but it’s got the basics — which is more than I expected when I hauled Lark out here last night. The cabin’s small, tucked back on the edge of the property—mostly for hired hands, guests or when I need to be closer to the back pastures. Wasn’t necessarily meant to be cozy, but with her here, it’s starting to feel that way.
The coffee finishes with a sputter. I grab my thermos from thecabinet, fill it with the first pour — straight black, strong. Then I fill a second cup for Lark and go digging through the pantry for sugar. Takes me a minute, but I find a half-filled jar shoved behind a can of soup I wouldn’t feed to a damn dog and an off-brand cereal box. I dump in a few heaping spoonfuls, stir until it looks like syrup, then take a sip.
“Goddamn,” I mutter, wincing. “That’s nasty.”
Which means it’s just how she likes it.
I set it on the nightstand beside her and glance around for something to write on. I find a notepad under a stack of junk mail and tear off a page. Grab a pen and scrawl quick:
Try not to miss me too much. Your coffee’s ready and just the right amount of awful. Love you —B
It’s crooked, rushed, but it’ll make her smile. That’s enough.
Leaning over, I press a kiss to her temple, and then I head out.
The cabin door creaks a little as it swings open. The air’s warm—not oppressively so, not yet—but thick in that early summer way, carrying the smell of sun-scorched grass and dirt that’s been churned up by cattle and boots for generations. Spring’s nearly wrung itself out, all fresh green and bloom giving way to something heavier, slower—the heat that clings to your skin and makes the days stretch long and lazy.
The land feels alive in a way that gets under your skin, pulsing with growth and noise and movement, like it knows something you don’t. Everything’s green and sharp, blinding in places, stretched across the pastures like someone painted the earth. Hills roll out in every direction, soft and uneven, spilling into the base of mountains that look like they belong to another world entirely. There’s still snow on the peaks, clinging on stubbornly, even though down here, it’s damn near short-sleeve weather by mid-morning.
The birds are loud, louder than they’ve got any right to be at this hour, chirping and rustling in the cottonwoods along the creek like the whole place is waking up without giving a shit if you’re ready for it or not. The breeze drags in the usual—cattle, manure, damp earth, and somewhere under it all, the sweetness of wildflowers. It’s a smell that’s so rooted inthis place, you don’t notice it’s missing until you leave and realize you’d give anything to have it back.
The sky out here is vast, endless. Pale gold bleeding into soft blue, clouds sliding across it all slow and aimless. There’s a stillness to it, not quiet exactly, but steady—like the land’s just going about its business, same as it always has, indifferent to the messiness happening anywhere else.
The ranch stretches wide, every building worn and sun-bleached but standing solid. Barn to the left, corral out front, bunkhouse set back near the fence line. Ridge and I stayed there when we were kids—me in high school, him barely out of middle school. Dad didn’t believe in handouts or soft edges, not for his boys. Said if we were old enough to want to work for our money, we were old enough to live like it, same as the hired hands.
So we froze our asses off in January, sweat through our shirts in July, and learned quick how to earn our place and keep our mouths shut about it. That’s just how it was. You showed up, you worked, you didn’t complain.
Those nights in that drafty bunkhouse—cold, loud, no privacy to speak of—they stuck with me. Taught me how to carry my own weight, how to take responsibility when shit hit the fan. Taught me respect for the work, for the men who’d been doing it longer than I’d been alive, and for this land that doesn’t give you anything you don’t fight for. Lessons like that? They settle in deep.
I catch sight of Witt out by the corral, already on his horse, leaning forward in the saddle like he’s got nowhere better to be. Coffee mug balanced in one hand, reins in the other, cocky as hell.
“You’re late,” he calls out, loud enough to carry. “Figured you’d be limping this morning, the way you brought Lark out here last night.”
I don’t bother answering right away, just adjust my grip on the thermos and keep walking. He’s not wrong, but I’m not giving him the satisfaction.
“You know,” I call back, “if you spent half as much time working as you do running your damn mouth, I might actually get to sleep in one of these days.”
