That afternoon, the air turned wrong. Not colder, not hotter, just strange, warm in places it shouldn’t be, the wind shifting like a restless animal. Wyatt stepped out back to check a calf that had gone off feed, half-crouched in the pen as he tested its leg for swelling.
Behind him, the barn door banged open. Wren ran toward him barefoot, hair whipped loose around her face. She didn’t yell. Instead she grabbed his sleeve hard and tugged. The urgency in her grip was sharp enough to cut through his stubborn calm. Wyatt straightened, startled. “What is it?”
Wren pointed past the ridge, then pointed again, her whole body tight with warning. She looked not at the sky, but at the oak tree by the shed, and Wyatt’s eyes followed her instinct more than her gesture. The world split open.
Lightning struck the old oak with full force, a flash so white it stole color from everything else. The crack came a heartbeat later, loud enough to punch the breath from Wyatt’s chest. The tree screamed as it tore, flame racing down its spine. Sparks rained into dry grass, and smoke rose fast, black against copper sky.
Wyatt stumbled back, heart slamming. The calf bawled. The mare in the stall kicked once, frantic, and Wyatt cursed as he lunged for water. Wren didn’t run. She stood in the open like a silhouette carved from firelight, eyes fixed on Wyatt, not on the blaze. She’d known. Not guessed. Known.
Later, when the fire was doused and the air smelled of wet ash and scorched bark, Wyatt sat at the table with two tin mugs and a low flame in the lamp. Wren wrapped her shawl tighter but didn’t hunch. Wyatt stared at the silver dollar resting by the stove, the coin that had bought her in the eyes of men who called themselves decent. He picked it up, turned it in his palm, and felt something sour in his throat.
“That’s what they said you were worth,” he said quietly. “A dollar.”
Wren didn’t look at the coin. She looked at him, and her gaze held the same steady weight it had in the auction pen, as if she was deciding what kind of man he was going to be now that he’d made a choice. Slowly, she reached across the table. Not to touch the coin. To brush his sleeve once, in the same place she’d touched him on the road, as if reminding him that value wasn’t metal, it was contact.
Then she leaned back, expression unreadable, and Wyatt set the coin down gently beside her cup as if it might burn him. For the first time in years, the cabin didn’t feel like a place he was simply surviving in. It felt like a place where something might happen that wasn’t punishment.
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