Troy called eleven times since yesterday morning. I know because my phone screen keeps lighting up on the nightstand like a heartbeat I didn't ask for — his name, over and over, while I lay on the cot with a bruise the size of a dinner plate and a pillow a man adjusted for me still holding the shape of his hands.
The texts got shorter as the day went on. "When are you coming home." Then just: "Jessie." Then: "Don't make me drive out there." That last one got me out of bed and into the truck because I know what don't make me means. It means he will, and it'll be worse with an audience.
Every bump in the road is a conversation with my stomach. Forty minutes of bad asphalt and my abdomen keeping score — each pothole a reminder that I should be lying flat, not driving, not doing anything except letting my body heal in a room that smells like saddle oil where someone asked if I was warm enough.
But Troy doesn't care about the kick. Troy doesn't ask about the kick. Troy cares that his property has been off-site too long and needs to be accounted for.
I pull into the apartment complex and sit with the engine off. Beige siding, cracked parking lot, the neighbor's broken wind chime clicking — a dull, arrhythmic sound like a clock running out of reasons. I press my hand against my stomach. The bruise pulses back. Okay. Let's go.
The apartment door is unlocked. I step inside and the first thing I hear is Liam — not crying, babbling, the happy nonsense sounds he makes when he's awake and fed and nobody's yelling. He's in the high chair. He sees me and his whole body lunges forward, both arms reaching, fingers opening and closing.
The sound that comes out of him is my name — not the word, he doesn't have the word yet, but the sound of it, the shape his mouth makes when he sees the person who means safe.
I pick him up. Press my face into his hair. He smells like baby shampoo and something warm and slightly sour. I breathe him in and my arms tighten and the bruise screams but I don't care because he's here and warm and mine.
"Must be nice."
Troy is standing at the kitchen counter. Arms crossed, leaning against it, a dish towel over his shoulder like a prop in a play about a man who does housework. He doesn't say welcome back. He doesn't look at the way I'm holding my son like I haven't seen him in a week. He looks at me the way he looks at a bill he didn't expect.
"Playing ranch girl all week while I'm stuck here changing diapers and heating bottles." He pushes off the counter. His jaw is set, his eyes flat. "You know he wouldn't stop crying Tuesday night? Screamed for two hours. Two hours, Jess. I had to call my mother."
"I got hurt at work." I shift Liam to my other hip and the movement pulls at the bruise and I press my lips together to keep the wince inside. "A horse kicked me."
He glances at my stomach. His eyes travel down, then back up, the whole assessment taking less than two seconds. "You look fine to me."
Four words. He turns back to the counter. Picks up a mug. That's the full extent of his concern — a visual scan shorter than a blink and the verdict that I appear functional. A horse kicked me and his diagnostic process was quicker than checking the weather on his phone.
I set Liam back in the high chair and hand him the plastic spoon he likes to bang. My hands are steady. My face is steady. Everything underneath is vibrating like a wire someone keeps plucking.
"So this rancher." Troy opens the fridge. Doesn't look at me. "He give you a room?"
"Above the tack shed. It's standard for live-in hands."
"Live-in." He says the word like it tastes different than I meant it. The fridge closes. He leans against the counter again, mug in hand, and his eyes narrow the way they narrow before the questions stop being questions and start being charges. "What kind of operation is this, Jess? Some guy gives you a room on his property and you just — move in?"
"It's not like that."
"What's it like then?" He sets the mug down. The ceramic hits the counter harder than it needs to. "You're sleeping on his land. Eating his food. Spending more time with his horses than with your son. And I'm supposed to — what? Be grateful?"
"The tack shed isn't the house, Troy."
"Same property though, right?" He steps toward me. One step. Not aggressive — measured. The distance between us shrinking by exactly the amount he wants it to. "Same dirt. Same roof when it rains." His head tilts. "He married?"
My stomach tightens. Not the bruise — deeper. "Divorced."
Wrong answer. I watch it land on his face — the jaw tightening, the nostrils flaring, the specific rearrangement of features that happens when Troy receives information he's already decided to be angry about. "Divorced." He repeats it like a verdict. "So a single man. With a ranch. And you're sleeping on his property. With my son."
"Troy…"
"Don't Troy me." His voice drops. Low, controlled, the register that means the next thing he says will be quieter and worse. "I let you take this job. I agreed to it. And now you're living with some divorced cowboy and I'm supposed to sit here and pretend that's normal?"
Let me. The words hit a place in my chest that's taken hits for three years. I let you. Like my employment is a favor he dispensed from the throne of his construction paycheck.
Liam bangs the spoon on the tray. The sound is bright and oblivious and it cuts through the kitchen like a bell and I look at my son — his dark hair, his steady eyes, his face that looks nothing like the man standing four feet away claiming ownership of him — and something inside me goes very still.
"I'm going to take a shower." I say it flat. No argument. No defense. I've learned that the exit isn't through the fight — it's through the side door of boredom. Give him nothing to swing at and he puts the bat down. Eventually.
He watches me walk down the hall. I can feel his eyes on my back like a hand I didn't consent to.
The shower is hot and the water hits the bruise and I press both palms against the tile and breathe through it. The bathroom is small, the curtain mildewed, the light flickering because Troy won't replace the bulb. Everything in this apartment is almost broken.
That night. Troy is asleep. One arm thrown across my side like a seatbelt — not holding me, securing me. The weight of it presses against the bruise and I don't move it because moving it means waking him and waking him means another conversation I can't afford.
Liam is in the crib beside the bed. I can hear him breathing — the small, steady rhythm of a child who doesn't know yet what kind of house he's sleeping in. The ceiling above me is water-stained.
I trace the largest stain with my eyes and think about a different ceiling — the one in the room above the tack shed, where the wood is dark and clean and a man knocked on the door with soup and painkillers and asked if I was warm enough.
Two men. Two versions of care. One adjusts a pillow and leaves without asking for anything. The other throws an arm across me in his sleep and doesn't notice the bruise he's pressing on.
I press my hand flat against my stomach. The bruise throbs under my palm. Liam's breathing fills the dark.
I have to get you out of here. I mean him. I might also mean me.