The county inspector arrives Monday at eight twelve in the morning.
I know the exact time because Callum has been awake since five and I have been awake since five-oh-one pretending his pacing is not contagious.
The inspector's name is Neil Barron. Mid-fifties. Khaki shirt. County badge clipped to his belt. He steps out of a white SUV carrying a tablet and the expression of a man who would prefer not to be standing between a Brennan and his barn.
"Anonymous complaint," he says before Callum can ask. "I don't choose the calls. I inspect 'em."
"Then inspect," Callum says.
No hello.
No coffee.
Hospitality has limits.
Barron starts with the exterior. Roofline. Foundation. Electrical box. He photographs an old crack in one concrete footing that Callum says has looked exactly the same since the first Bush administration.
"Any movement?" Barron asks.
"No."
"Engineer ever look at it?"
"Daddy had one out in 2018."
"Paperwork?"
Callum's face says he would like to answer with a shovel.
I step in.
"We can produce it."
Barron looks at me. "You Miss James?"
"Depends who is asking."
"County knows who you are."
"That sentence is somehow less comforting than you intended."
His mouth almost moves.
Inside the barn, he checks wiring, support beams, the loft ladder, fire extinguishers, and a storage room that contains enough old tack to qualify as an archaeological site.
Everything passes until he reaches the north wall.
One outlet plate is cracked.
He photographs it.
Callum stares.
"You're gonna condemn a sixty-year-old barn over a three-dollar outlet cover?"
"I'm gonna put it on the report. You replace it before I leave, it goes in as corrected on site."
Callum walks to the workbench, opens a drawer, and produces a replacement plate without breaking eye contact.
"You keep extras?" I ask.
"Ranchin'."
"Apparently ranchin' is mostly owning the exact screw somebody needs."
While Callum changes the plate, Barron's phone buzzes.
He glances at the screen and turns it facedown against his thigh.
I see only two words before it disappears.
W. PRESCOTT.
My pulse kicks.
Maybe it is a coincidence.
Maybe Wade is one of six million people who have Barron's number.
Maybe I have officially become the kind of woman who thinks every vibrating phone contains a conspiracy.
Barron finishes the inspection.
"Barn is structurally serviceable," he says. "I'll note minor maintenance. No removal order."
Callum's shoulders lower by half an inch.
"Then why did the notice say unsafe structure?"
Barron does not answer immediately.
"Initial complaints aren't findings. That's why we inspect."
I hold out my hand. "Can I get a copy before you leave?"
"It'll be filed this afternoon."
"I would like the preliminary notes too."
His eyes narrow. "Those aren't usually requested."
"I have become very interested in unusual paperwork."
He studies me, then emails the report from the driveway.
After his SUV disappears, I tell Callum what I saw on the phone.
His expression goes cold.
"Prescott."
"Maybe. We don't accuse anybody based on two words on a screen. Mateo has already trained me out of adjectives."
"You saw the name."
"I saw a name. Mr. Caldwell gets the report. Mateo gets the timeline. We document. We do not give Wade a sloppy accusation he can use against us."
Callum looks toward the road.
"I hate when you're right in a calm voice."
"I am also available to be right loudly."
Mr. Caldwell calls an hour later.
Barron's final report says the complaint is unsubstantiated.
It also records the anonymous submission as received through a county portal from an IP address associated with a consulting office in Austin.
Not Wade.
Not proof.
One more thread.
I add it to the timeline.
Offer rejected.
Complaint filed.
Inspection passed.
Pressure failed.
For the first time, the pattern does not end with somebody giving up.
After the inspection, the next few days are quiet.
The kind of quiet that comes after a storm—the air clean, the sky clear, the ground damp but steady. Wade Prescott doesn't call. Doesn't text. Doesn't show up. For the first time since I got here, his presence in my life is absent, and the absence feels like breathin' room.
I use the time to work.
Real work. Ranch work. The kind of work that makes my muscles ache and my hands blister and my back stiff and my heart—surprisingly—full.
Callum teaches me more things. How to move the cattle from one pasture to another. How to check for parasites—I do not enjoy this lesson, but I learn it because the cattle need me to. How to read the weather by the clouds and the wind and the way the cattle behave before a storm.
"A storm's comin'," he says one mornin', lookin' at the sky. "See those clouds? The flat ones, stacked up? That means rain. Probably by tonight."
"How do you know?"
"My daddy taught me. His daddy taught him. His daddy taught him. It's in the Brennan blood—readin' the sky."
"You're sayin' weather prediction is genetic?"
"I'm sayin' payin' attention is genetic. The sky's been talkin' to people for thousands of years. Most folks just stopped listenin'."
I look at the clouds. They do look different—layered, heavy, the kind of gray that means business.
"What do we do?" I ask.
"We get the cattle into the shelter pasture. Make sure the barn is secure. Check the fences. And then we wait."
"For what?"
"For the rain."
We spend the day preparin'. Callum moves the cattle while I check the barn—tightenin' the doors, makin' sure the hay is dry, puttin' out extra water. I'm learnin' that a ranch is basically a series of tasks that repeat forever, like a wheel turnin'. Feed the cattle. Check the fences. Fix what's broken. Prepare for the weather. Repeat.
It's hard. It's repetitive. It's exhaustin'.
And I love it.
I love the feel of the work—the way it uses my whole body, not just my brain. I love the way the cattle look at me when I bring 'em food, with those big brown eyes that are learnin' to recognize me. I love the way the land changes every day—the wildflowers bloomin' and fadin', the grass growin', the creek bed fillin' after a rain and dryin' out again.
I love the way Callum teaches me—not with patience, exactly, but with the expectation that I'll learn. He doesn't simplify things for me. He doesn't treat me like I'm stupid. He just shows me what needs to be done and expects me to do it.
And I do it.
Not well. Not at first. But I do it.
The rain comes at sunset.
The first hard thunderclap hits while Callum is latching the porch gate.
He ducks.
Not much. Barely a bend of the knees and a turn of the shoulder, but it is fast and automatic. His attention snaps toward the road before his brain catches up to Copper Creek.
I see him count the porch posts. The doors. Me.
Then he straightens.
"You alright?" I ask.
"Thunder."
"I identified the weather event."
His hand rubs once over the scar on his arm. "Sometimes my body identifies it before I do."
The answer is honest without bein' complete.
I nod toward the swing. "Sit down before your body starts inspectin' the roof."
He does.
It starts as a whisper—fat drops hittin' the tin roof like fingers tappin' on a drum. Then it builds. Steady. Heavy. The kind of rain that turns the world gray and fills the air with the smell of wet earth and livin' things.
I'm on the porch, watchin' it. Ranger is inside—he hates thunder, the big baby—but Scout is sittin' next to me, his fur wet, his eyes on the horizon like he's keepin' watch.
Callum's truck comes down the road. He parks and runs to the porch, his hat pulled low, his shirt soaked through.
"You're gettin' wet," I say.
"I noticed."
"Come sit down."
He sits. In the swing. Next to me. Close enough that I can feel the heat comin' off his skin—warm despite the rain, warm because of the work he's been doin' all day.
We sit there, watchin' the rain, and the world narrows down to this porch, this swing, this man.
"Callum," I say.
"Hmm."
"Thank you. For everythin'. For the lessons. For the groceries. For the fence repairs. For returnin' every day."
"I told you, you don't have to thank me."
"I know. But I want to. Because I don't think anyone's ever showed up for me like this before."
He's quiet for a long moment. The rain falls. The wind blows. The cattle are in the shelter pasture, safe and dry.
"Your grandaddy showed up for me," he says finally. "When I came back from the Army, I was... not in a good place. I was angry. I was lost. I didn't know what I was gonna do with my life. And Earl—your grandaddy—he said, 'Come work the land. The land will heal you.'"
"Did it?"
"Yeah." His voice is quiet. "It did."
"And now you're doin' the same thing for me."
"I'm not—"
"You are, Callum. You're showin' up. Every day. Without bein' asked. Without expectin' anythin' in return. You're healin' me the way the land healed you."
He looks at me. In the dim light, through the rain, his eyes are dark and deep and full of somethin' that makes something low in me ache.
"Harlow," he says, and his voice does that low thing—the thing that comes from somewhere deep and makes me lean in.
"Don't," I whisper.
"Don't what?"
"Don't say my name like that."
"Like what?"
"Like it means somethin'."
He's quiet.
Then: "It does mean somethin'."
The world narrows further. The rain, the porch, the swing, and Callum Brennan sittin' next to me with his wet shirt and his green eyes and his voice that means more than he's willin' to say.
"Callum—"
"I know." He looks away. "I know it's complicated. I know our families are tangled together. I know this is—" He stops. Takes a breath. "I know."
"But?"
"But I can't pretend I don't feel what I feel."
The words hang in the air between us, heavy as the rain, warm as the swing, real as the land under our feet.
"What do you feel?" I ask, and my voice is barely a whisper.
He looks at me.
And in his eyes, I see it. The thing he's been hidin' since the moment we met. The thing behind the armor and the silence and the daily visits and the groceries and the fence repairs and the lesson about readin' the sky.
He feels what I feel.
He feels it and he's been fightin' it and he's losin'.
"Harlow," he says again.
And this time, I don't tell him to stop.
This time, I lean in.
His hand comes up—slow, careful, like he's handlin' somethin' precious—and cups my face. His thumb brushes my cheek. His fingers tangle in my hair.
The distance between us closes.
Inches.
His breath on my lips.
The rain on the tin roof.
And then—
A clap of thunder so loud it shakes the house.
Ranger barks inside—a high, panicked bark that sounds like a small animal havin' a crisis.
Scout jumps off the porch and runs toward the barn.
The moment—the whatever-it-was—shatters.
Callum pulls back. Drops his hand. Stands up.
"I should—" He gestures toward the barn. "The cattle."
"Right. The cattle."
"I'll check on 'em."
"Okay."
He walks off the porch into the rain.
I sit in the swing, my heart poundin' so hard I can hear it in my ears, and I think: Well, that happened.
Or almost happened.
Or would've happened if a thunderclap hadn't interrupted us at the exact right—wrong—moment.
I put my head in my hands.
"This is fine," I say to nobody. "This is totally fine. I almost kissed a man I had spent three days believin' might be my cousin on my dead grandfather's porch. This is completely normal. This is fine."
It is not fine.
It is the opposite of fine.
It is the most confusing, excitin', terrifyin' thing that has ever happened to me, and I don't know what to do with it except sit here in the swing and listen to the rain and feel my heart do things it has absolutely no authorization to do.
Callum comes back twenty minutes later. He's soaked. His shirt is plastered to his chest. His hat is gone—lost to the wind, maybe, or left in the barn.
He stands at the bottom of the porch steps, lookin' up at me through the rain.
"Cattle are fine," he says.
"Good."
"Barn's secure."
"Good."
"I should go."
"Okay."
He doesn't go.
I don't want him to go.
"Callum," I say.
"Yeah."
"Your hat's gone."
"I know."
"You'll get wet."
"I'm already wet."
"Then stay. Have a beer. Wait out the storm."
He looks at me through the rain. The water is runnin' down his face, his neck, his chest. His eyes are bright and green and full of everythin' he's not sayin'.
"Okay," he says.
He comes back to the porch. I hand him a beer from the cooler I've started keepin' by the door—because apparently porch-sittin' with Callum Brennan is a thing now, and beer is part of it.
We sit in the swing. Not close. Not far. The space between us is charged—the way the air gets before lightnin'—full of potential and danger and the absolute certainty that somethin' is about to happen.
"About before—" I start.
"Forget it."
"I don't want to forget it."
"Harlow—"
"I don't know what it means," I say quickly. "I don't know what we are or what this is or what any of it means. But I don't want to pretend it's not there."
He's quiet for a long moment. The rain falls. The thunder rolls. The world is wet and gray and close.
"Neither do I," he says.
So we sit.
In the swing.
In the rain.
With our beers and our confusion and the absolute, undeniable, impossible thing that's growin' between us like a vine reachin' for the sun.
And we don't talk about it.
We just let it be.
For now.