Raven’s POV
Elena.
The name echoes through my mind for days. Elena, who played guitar every night. Elena, who Weston loved so much he buried her instrument rather than face the memories. Elena, whose ghost has been haunting this ranch long before I arrived.
I lie awake at night piecing together the woman I've been living with.
The pajamas I wear belonged to her. Soft cotton, pale blue, lace at the collar. I've been sleeping in a dead woman's clothes for weeks, and somehow that feels less strange than it should.
The boots I borrowed. Scuffed and worn, two sizes too big. She must have had small feet. Delicate.
The coffee mug I accidentally grabbed that first morning—the one with the chipped handle and faded flowers. Weston had taken it from my hands so gently, replaced it without a word of explanation. Now I understand why his face had gone pale.
I've been walking through her life like a trespasser. Wearing her clothes. Using her things. Falling for her husband.
And now I'm carrying a secret that could shatter what's left of this broken place.
The thought crystallizes slowly, then all at once: I don't belong here.
I'm an intruder in a house of grief. A complication neither brother asked for. Every day I stay makes the inevitable destruction worse. When the truth comes out—and it will come out, secrets like mine always do—it won't just hurt them. It will devastate them.
I need to leave.
Figure this out on my own. Find a doctor somewhere anonymous. Make a plan. Decide what to do about the pregnancy without two men staring at me with want and confusion and something that looks dangerously close to love.
I start preparing quietly.
My phone is dying—hasn't held a proper charge in weeks—but I manage to research bus routes during stolen moments. The nearest station is forty miles away. Buses run twice a day. One-way ticket to Austin costs sixty-three dollars.
I count the cash I've saved from avoiding town trips. Eighty-seven dollars, crumpled in the bottom of my borrowed boots. Enough for a ticket and maybe a cheap motel room while I figure out my next move.
The excuse comes easier than expected. I've been here for weeks now. I can't hide forever. I need to figure out my next steps—find a job, a place to live, an actual plan for my life.
All true. All lies.
Dinner that night is the usual awkward affair. The three of us arranged around the small kitchen table like chess pieces that forgot how to move.
Theron fills the silence with chatter. A fence that needs mending in the north pasture. A horse that's been acting strange, won't eat her oats. Weather coming in from the west—might be a storm by the weekend.
Weston eats mechanically, contributing nothing but the occasional grunt of acknowledgment. His eyes stay fixed on his plate like the mashed potatoes contain the meaning of life.
I push food around, appetite destroyed by morning sickness I'm barely managing to hide. The chicken smells wrong. Everything smells wrong lately. I take tiny bites, chew slowly, pray my stomach doesn't rebel.
Then Theron stops mid-sentence.
His honey eyes narrow, fixing on my face with that unnerving perceptiveness he has. The one that sees past all the bullshit to something true underneath.
"You've got that look," he says slowly.
My fork freezes halfway to my mouth. "What look?"
"The one people get right before they run."
The words land like a grenade in the center of the table.
Weston's fork pauses halfway to his mouth. His storm-blue eyes lift to mine for the first time all evening, sharp and searching.
The silence stretches. Thick. Suffocating. The clock on the wall ticks too loud.
I set down my fork. My hands are trembling slightly under the table, so I press them flat against my thighs to hide it.
Now or never.
"I've been thinking," I start, and hate how my voice wavers. "I can't stay here forever."
Neither brother moves. The air itself seems to hold its breath.
"I need to figure out my next steps. Find a job, a place to live." I force myself to meet their eyes, first Theron's, then Weston's. "An actual plan for my life instead of just... hiding."
The word hangs between us. Hiding. From my father. From myself. From the truth growing inside me that I can't outrun no matter how far I go.
"I think it's time I move on," I finish.
The reaction is immediate.
Theron's face falls. His easy charm crumbles into something raw and wounded, like watching a mask shatter in slow motion. He opens his mouth. Closes it. Opens it again.
For once in his life, speechless.
Weston is harder to read. His expression doesn't change—stone doesn't change—but his hands curl into fists on the table. Knuckles bleeding white against the worn wood. A muscle jumps in his neck, ticking beneath stubbled skin.
He stares at me with those eyes, and I see something flicker behind them. Panic, maybe. Or grief. Or the desperate urge to speak that's choking on his own walls, dying somewhere in his throat before it can reach air.
Neither of them says a word.
The silence screams louder than any argument could.
I push back from the table. The chair legs scrape against the floor, obscenely loud in the quiet. "I should—I'm tired. I'm going to bed."
Coward. The word echoes in my skull as I flee. Coward, coward, coward.
But I can't sit there and watch their faces process this. Can't see Theron's sunshine dim or Weston's walls rebuild twice as high. Can't answer the questions they're not asking because the real answers would destroy us all.
I make it to my room. Close the door. Press my back against it like I can physically hold back whatever's about to come.
My hand finds my stomach. Still flat. Still unchanged. Still harboring the secret that's driving me away from the only place that's ever felt like home.
The irony isn't lost on me. I ran from my father's mansion, from the gilded cage he built around my life, and found something real here. Something messy and complicated and painful, but real.
And now I'm running again.
Because that's what I do, isn't it? Run. Hide. Perform until the performance becomes unbearable, then disappear before anyone can see the cracks.
Footsteps sound in the hallway. Heavy. Deliberate. They stop outside my door.
I hold my breath. Press harder against the wood. Wait.
A long pause. I can almost feel him on the other side—Weston or Theron, I can't tell—wrestling with words that won't come.
Then the footsteps retreat. A door closes somewhere else in the house.
I sink to the floor, back still against the door, and wrap my arms around my knees.
Tomorrow, I will tell myself. Tomorrow I'll figure out the bus schedule. Tomorrow I'll pack my meager belongings. Tomorrow I'll say goodbye.
But tonight, I let myself cry.
For Elena, who I never met but whose life I've been borrowing. For Weston, who lost everything and can't risk losing again. For Theron, who loves with his whole heart even when it's hopeless.
For the baby I'm carrying, who deserves better than a mother who runs.
And for myself. The girl who finally found somewhere to belong, and has to leave anyway.
The ranch settles into nighttime quiet around me. Horses shifting in the barn. Wind rustling through the fields. The old house creaking like it's sighing.
Somewhere in this building, two brothers are lying awake too. Processing. Planning. Probably building arguments to make me stay.
They don't know half of it.
And if I have my way, they never will.