Rain hit like God had a personal vendetta, turning the ranch from functional to apocalyptic in approximately eight minutes.
Jake was already moving, throwing open the door with the kind of urgency that bypassed conversation. "The fence is down in the south pasture. Cattle are pushing toward the creek."
The creek. The one that had nearly killed him years ago.
"What do you need?"
He looked at me like he was calculating risk versus reward, then grabbed a rain slicker off the hook and shoved it at me.
"Stay here where it's dry. Or ride with me. Your choice, princess."
Manhattan Adison would've chosen dry. Would've made some quip about not being paid enough for this shit and poured another glass of wine.
But that girl felt like someone I'd known in a past life, before blisters and early mornings had carved someone different out of my exterior.
"I'm riding."
Something flickered across his face—surprise, even respect maybe—then he was out the door and I was following. Rain was already soaking through to my skin before I even got the slicker on.
The horses were spooked, eyes rolling white, but Jake had mine saddled in under two minutes. Muscle memory from decades of emergencies exactly like this one.
"Stay close," he shouted over the thunder. "If I tell you to go back, you go. No arguments."
I nodded, already swinging up into the saddle.
The night turned into chaos with a soundtrack. Gates swinging wild on broken hinges. And underneath it all, that metallic taste of fear sitting right under my tongue.
We reached the fence line and yeah, it was bad. Twenty heads of cattle pushing toward the gap, toward the creek that was already swollen and angry and making sounds that water shouldn't make.
Jake was off his horse, working the fence with Tommy—who'd appeared from nowhere looking half-drowned—while I tried to keep the cattle from stampeding through the gap.
Which would've been easier if I had any actual idea what I was doing beyond yelling and waving my arms like some kind of deranged traffic cop.
Then I saw it. Small shape in the water, getting pulled toward the fence line where the current was churning into something that looked genuinely murderous.
Calf. Maybe three months old. Bawling in terror.
I was off my horse before my brain caught up with my body.
"Adison, NO—"
Jake's shout got lost in the thunder as I waded in, the cold hitting like a physical slap. The current was stronger than it looked, trying to take my feet out from under me, but I locked my knees and pushed toward the calf.
Got my hands under its belly, small body shivering so hard I thought its bones might rattle apart. Lifted, except it weighed more than I'd calculated and the current was pulling and—
Jake was there, waist-deep in the water, taking the weight of the calf like it was nothing. Together we hauled it toward the bank, mud and water and cattle shit making everything slippery, making everything harder.
We got the calf onto higher ground and it scrambled away, bawling for its mother.
"That was good," Jake shouted, half praise, but his next words were pure warning. "But you don't get two chances with water like this. You understand me? What the hell were you—"
I was already turning back toward the fence to help with the others when my boot hit something slick. Went down hard, hands grasping for anything, finding nothing but water and current and the sudden, visceral understanding of what drowning actually meant.
Jake's hand shot out and caught my wrist in an iron grip. His other arm banded around my waist, yanking me back from the edge with enough force to make my ribs compress.
For a moment we stood there, his chest heaving against my back, and when I looked up at him, his eyes were wide with something that looked like terror.
"Are you insane?" Not a shout. Worse, a hiss that cut through the storm. "You could've— Jesus Christ, Adison, you can't just—"
"I'm fine," I managed, still catching my breath.
"You're not fine. You almost—" He stopped, jaw clenched so hard I could see the muscle jumping. "You don't get to do that. Not on my watch. You could have fallen in! You could have been swept downstream!"
His grip on my body was still tight, almost bruising, and I could feel him shaking before he released me abruptly. "Get on your horse. We're not done."
The scolding continued the entire way back to the barn. A litany of everything I'd done wrong, everything that could've gone worse, every way I'd apparently given him a heart attack. Tommy wisely made himself scarce.
By the time we got inside, the adrenaline was wearing off and I was starting to realize how cold I actually was. Soaked to the bone, shivering, mud everywhere that mud could possibly be.
Jake was the same, but somehow he looked less drowned rat and more action movie hero. Unfair.
"Here." He grabbed a blanket, wrapped it around my shoulders with hands that fumbled when they brushed my collarbone. Lingered half a second longer than necessary. "You need to change. Before hypothermia becomes the headline instead of flash floods."
The laugh came out shaky. "Would be a hell of a way to go. Manhattan socialite freezes to death in Texas barn. Marcus would love that."
"Don't." His voice was rough, and when I looked up, his expression was something I couldn't quite read. "Don't joke about… just don't."
We peeled off rain gear in silence, the kind of quiet that felt loaded with things neither of us knew how to say. My fingers were numb and stupid, couldn't work the zipper on the slicker.
"Let me." He stepped closer, helped with the zipper, with the sleeves that were stuck from being soaked.
His hands were warm compared to mine, careful in a way that made something twist in my chest. For one breath—maybe two—tenderness lived in those hands.
In the way he pulled the blanket tighter around my shoulders. In how his fingers lingered at my shoulders. In the look on his face that said he was still processing how close I'd come to getting swept away.
"You did good," he said quietly. "Stupid, but good."
"Highest praise from Jake Sullivan himself."
The corner of his mouth twitched. Almost a smile. "Don't let it go to your head."
Then he stepped back, putting safe distance between us, and the moment shattered like glass.
Later, on the house porch with rain still coming down in sheets, I sat wrapped in dry clothes and the same blanket Jake had given me, trying to process what had shifted inside my chest.
The scolding. That's what kept replaying.
My whole life, people had told me I was too much. Too reckless, too fragile, too likely to break or embarrass or require saving.
But Jake's fear tonight hadn't been about thinking I was incapable.
He hadn't told me to stay back because he thought I couldn't do it. He'd been scared because he knew I could, knew I would, and the thought of losing me to that decision made him lose his carefully controlled composure.
That was different. That was… God. That was everything.
He'd been there when I needed him. Solid and sure and exactly where he should be. But he hadn't treated me like glass. Hadn't tried to wrap me in bubble wrap and keep me from experiencing danger.
He'd let me ride out into the storm. Let me make the choice. And then caught me when I fell.
That recognition—that impossible balance of faith and protection—stirred something fierce in my chest. Something that felt like it might actually be real instead of the performance I'd been giving since I was old enough to understand what society expected.
The rain kept falling, and I kept sitting there, feeling something that might be feelings and might be feelings specifically for him.
Which was, objectively speaking, the worst possible development.
But I couldn't quite bring myself to care about the worst possible thing.
I cared about the way his hands had fumbled with my rain slicker. About the fear in his eyes when he'd grabbed me. About the tenderness he'd tried so hard to hide.
About all the ways Jake Sullivan was becoming less of an obstacle and more of a person I couldn't stop thinking about.
Fuck.