Total pages in book: 28
Estimated words: 26140 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 131(@200wpm)___ 105(@250wpm)___ 87(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 26140 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 131(@200wpm)___ 105(@250wpm)___ 87(@300wpm)
Fourteen years earlier, she had sworn she would never come back. Then her father died and left her the one thing she never wanted: the family ranch and all the painful memories that came with it.
She never expected Ryder Kane to still be there.
Once, he'd been the quiet boy who always appeared when she needed him most. Now, he was a scarred, brooding cowboy with rough hands, haunted eyes, and a devotion so fierce that time had never managed to weaken it.
For years, Ryder had protected the ranch, repaired what was broken, and watched over the life Lila had left behind. While she’d been running from the past, he’d been preserving it for her.
But some secrets refused to stay buried, and the truth about the darkest chapter of Lila's childhood threatened to destroy the fragile future they were building together.
Because the man who had always protected her had been keeping one devastating secret of his own.
And Lila had to decide whether she could trust the cowboy who had loved her enough to sacrifice everything for her
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1
The first thing I noticed when I crossed into Rootstown Creek was how little had changed.
The same rusted sign leaned beside the county road, white paint so faded the town’s name had nearly disappeared. Endless stretches of dry grass rolled under a pale blue sky. Barbed-wire fences cut across the land, their posts crooked from years of wind and punishing winters.
Even the dust looked familiar.
It rose behind my car in a thick brown cloud, swallowing the road and everything I’d left behind.
I kept both hands locked around the steering wheel as the town appeared in the distance. Gas station. Feed store. The narrow church steeple stabbing up above the rooftops. Rootstown Creek had always been too small to hide in and too isolated to escape without everyone knowing exactly why you left.
I hadn’t been back in fourteen years. Not since the morning my father loaded my suitcases into the bed of his truck and drove me to the bus station two towns over. He stood there with his arms folded, making sure I understood there would be no coming back once I stepped onto that bus.
I’d believed him.
Then he died and left me the one thing I never wanted. The ranch.
A lawyer’s letter had arrived three weeks ago telling me Dwayne Shaw had driven his truck off a mountain road. The vehicle broke through a guardrail, rolled down an embankment, and caught fire. No funeral. No service. Just ashes and a key to the prison I’d escaped years ago.
The sheriff's report called it an accident, but people in a town as small as Rootstown Creek always had something to say. Some blamed the weather, but others blamed the bottle that had followed my father around for most of his life.
Either way, no one seemed particularly surprised.
And because of all that, I told myself selling it would be simple.
Drive in, sign the papers, clear out the house, and leave Rootstown Creek in the dust for good. Then I’d be out of here.
But the moment I turned onto the dirt road leading to the ranch, that lie started to crack.
The Kane Ranch bordered ours along the western fence line. Theirs had always been bigger, cleaner, and better kept. I tried not to think about Ryder Kane as the house came into view. The white siding had yellowed. Shutters hung crooked beside dirty windows, and weeds strangled the rosebushes my mother planted before she died.
The porch steps still leaned to the left, and the dent in the gutter above my old bedroom window was still there. Everything waited exactly as I’d left it, like the land itself had been holding its breath for fourteen years.
A cold shiver crawled over my skin.
I parked and killed the engine but didn’t move. Silence pressed in, broken only by the ticking of the cooling engine. I stared at the front door and the faint kick-mark near the bottom where my father had split the wood in a drunken rage looking for me one night.
That memory came back in a rush. I remembered crouching behind the kitchen table, hands over my mouth, heart hammering while his boots thundered through the house after he’d broken back in. I’d escaped through the back door, barefoot and bleeding, and ran straight across the pasture.
Straight to Ryder.
Whenever my father started drinking, I'd find Ryder somewhere on the Kane Ranch. He never asked questions. He'd just hand me a bottle of water, and let me stay until it was safe to go home.
I shoved the memories down, grabbed my purse, and forced myself out of the car. The keys felt heavy in my hand, and the front door groaned open. I stood frozen in the entryway. The smell hit me hard. Dust, old wood, stale cigarette smoke, and old resentment soaked into the walls.
But it wasn’t the complete disaster I’d expected. The scuffed recliner still sat angled toward the outdated TV, and a few newspapers lay scattered across the table beside it. The overflowing ashtray was gone, and the thick dust I’d braced myself for was only a faint film.
I moved through the rooms slowly, opening windows to let warm, fresh air push inside and stir the ghosts. For the next two hours, I drifted from space to space, touching almost nothing. A couple of dishes sat by the sink, clean and dry like someone had just washed them.
Upstairs, my childhood bedroom had been turned into a storage space with boxes stacked against the walls more neatly than I expected, an old saddle resting on the mattress, and even the floor looked recently swept. There was no way my father had kept this place even halfway clean. He’d always been a slob. I’d been the one scrubbing, cooking, and picking up after him while he sat drunk in front of old reruns.
So who had?