Beneath the Summer Sky - Chapter 2: Chapter 2

By the third day back at the ranch, the dust had already settled under my skin in that old familiar way. It clung to my jeans, coated my boots, filled my lungs like home.
I'd fallen into old habits without even trying, feeding the horses before breakfast, checking on the chickens, helping load hay without being asked. It was like muscle memory. My body remembered things my heart hadn't let me admit I missed.
Graham didn't say much. He never had, really. But his silence used to feel like background noise. Now it felt like tension.
And I was starting to feel the weight of his gaze.
Not constantly. Just... when he thought I wasn't looking.
Like this morning, when I was helping coil the hose by the stable. I bent down to untangle a kink, and when I glanced up, there he was, leaning against the post, arms crossed, watching. Not in a creepy way. Just...intensely. Like he was trying to read something off my skin.
I straightened and wiped sweat off my neck, pretending not to notice. But my stomach flipped.
The moment he saw me looking, he turned and walked off like it was nothing. Like I'd imagined it.
I didn't.
Later that afternoon, I found him fixing the fence along the north pasture, sleeves rolled up, sun catching the sweat on his forearms. I told myself to look away. I really did. But I didn't.
"You need help?" I called out.
He glanced over his shoulder. "Thought you came here to rest."
I smirked, grabbing a pair of gloves from the post. "You're terrible at small talk, you know that?"
"Don't believe in wasting words," he muttered.
But he didn't stop me when I stepped in beside him.
We worked in a rhythm. Handing off nails. Holding boards in place. Passing tools without asking. I could hear the sound of birds in the distance, the wind through the grass. But the silence between us felt thick, charged.
At one point, our fingers brushed over a hammer. It was nothing. Barely a touch. But it felt like static jumped between our skin.
I dropped the hammer, fast. "Sorry."
He didn't move. Just looked at me, his expression unreadable.
"It's fine," he said, voice low.
But something passed between us in that pause. Something neither of us acknowledged.
By dinner, I was exhausted. Not from the work, but from the way my thoughts kept circling back to him.
Graham sat across the table like he always used to, quiet, steady, unmoved. Except now, I saw the way his jaw tightened when our knees brushed under the table. The way his eyes flicked to my mouth when I talked.
Was he even aware of it? Or was I just imagining all of it, like some messed-up fantasy I shouldn't be having?
After dinner, I took my plate to the sink and stayed there longer than I needed to, letting the cool water run over my hands. My heart was beating too fast, and I didn't know why. No—scratch that. I knew why. I just didn't want to admit it.
I was attracted to Graham Hawke.
And not in some passing, "wow he aged well" kind of way. It was worse than that. Deeper. He looked at me differently now. I felt it. And I hated how much I liked it.
This wasn't supposed to happen.
He was Grace's dad. The man who once grounded us for sneaking out after curfew. The same man who once held me after I broke my arm falling off the hayloft when I was twelve.
But when I turned from the sink and found him standing in the doorway, sleeves still rolled up, eyes dark and unreadable... all I could think was how damn good he looked.
And how dangerous that felt.
"I'll finish up here," he said.
I nodded quickly. "Thanks."
I grabbed my sweater from the chair, my fingers shaking a little, and made for the door. But right before I stepped outside, I paused.
I didn't turn around when I asked, "Did you ever think I'd come back?"
There was a beat of silence. Then, his voice, quiet, steady, too careful.
"No."
I swallowed hard. "Yeah. Me neither."
And then I left before I did something really stupid.
Like look back.