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"And you don't have a way to reach him even if you wanted to, right?"

I wince. "Carla probably could get it."

Mama clucks her tongue. "What do you want, Lainey?"

I shake my head harder. "I-I don't know. I-I don't want to blow up a woman's life."

"Then maybe this decides itself. You raise this baby the way you were raised. Loved, and looked after, and never once made to feel like she was a burden instead of a blessing. And that man goes on with his fiancée and his ranch and his life, none the wiser, and nobody else's world gets blown up over one night you can't take back anyway."

Tears slide down my face again, but they feel different this time, less like grief and more like relief. It's like she's handed me permission to stop turning the same impossible question over and over. Still, I ask, "You really think that's right? Not telling him?"

"I think you've got two choices, and one of them ends with a woman's life falling apart and a daddy who might not stick around for this child either. The other one ends with you raising a healthy, happy little girl." She squeezes my hand one more time.

I nod, even though my chest still aches at the decision. It's like some stubborn, foolish part of me that remembers the exact weight of his hand at my waist and wants, despite every bit of sense I own, to tell him anyway. But that's just because I still want him and I have to think about what's best for my baby, not my selfish desires.

By the time I leave Mama's kitchen, we've settled on it together.

Jagger doesn't get to know.

Not about the baby, not that it's a girl currently doing somersaults inside me according to the ultrasound tech, not about any of it. So I drive home with one hand resting flat against my stomach, the radio off, and the night quiet in a way it hasn't been in months. For the first time since I woke up alone in that apartment, I don't feel like I'm grieving something. I feel like I'm starting something. It's small and terrifying and entirely mine. Whatever Jagger is doing tonight, wherever he is, whoever he's with, he has no idea about the one thing about that night I'll never regret.

I press my hand a little firmer against my stomach and whisper into the truck, "Just you and me, baby girl. We're gonna be just fine."

I almost believe it.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Jagger

November

The woman in my bed isn't Lainey. I knew that last night too, same as I know it every time. But knowing it hasn't stopped me from doing this exact thing a few dozen times since September, and it isn't stopping me now. So I lie next to some woman named Kayla or Kaylee, I genuinely can't remember which, breathing softly against my shoulder like she means something to me.

She doesn't.

That's the part I hate most, more than the guilt, or the specific brand of disgust that shows up right around the time my alarm goes off. It isn't that these women don't deserve better than what I'm handing them. It's that I know exactly what better feels like, even if it's only one single night of it. And stupid me keeps looking for a version of that feeling in women who are never going to give it to me. The only person who ever did, disappeared off the face of Texas eleven months ago and she's never coming back.

Kayla, or Kaylee, stirs, presses a kiss to my jaw that doesn't do a single thing for me, and murmurs, "You're up early."

"Ranch stuff." It's not a lie, just not the whole truth.

I get her out of my apartment within twenty minutes. Then I stand at the kitchen counter, staring at the coffee maker. I don't remember turning it on. It's another thing that keeps happening every morning since I started sleeping with random women.

Then the shame hits me. Along with relief she's gone. Then they mix together until I want to crawl out of my skin.

Underneath all those feelings, the same thought that never leaves me alone anymore appears.

Lainey wouldn't have left this easy.

She wouldn't have had to.

I never would've let her leave.

"Fuck this. Time to work," I say to nobody and leave the apartment, driving through the fog.

November's come in mean this year, cold enough that Dad's already grumbling about hay stores and whether we bought enough for the herd. So like every day this week, I spend the better part of my morning checking water troughs for ice instead of thinking about anything that matters less. It's good work for a man who doesn't want time to think. Problem is, I run out of troughs by ten most days, and the thinking catches up with me anyway.

Mason finds me leaning against the tailgate of my truck around noon, unwrapping a sandwich he packed for me. He grabs one out of the bag. "Heard you had company again last night."