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"Me too. Guess we know the full damage of it now." I glance back toward the guesthouses, half expecting to see Lainey's truck already pulling away, some paranoid animal part of my brain refusing to fully believe she's still there until I can see it with my own eyes.

He shakes his head, muttering, "This town."

"I need you to not say anything. Not to Willow, not to Mama, not to anybody in this family yet. I need time to figure out what I'm even doing before the whole ranch starts weighing in on it."

"You know that request has an expiration date on it, right? This family doesn't keep secrets. Ever," he reminds me.

"I know. I just need a few hours." I grip his shoulder, more urgent than I mean to be. "Please, man. I mean it. Not one word. Not even Willow. I need to talk to Lainey without her mama breathing down my neck and wanting to slaughter me on the dining room table."

He studies me, then nods, slow and serious. "Not one word. You've got my word on that. But how are you going to get her and the baby away from her mama without anyone seeing?"

Relief loosens something tight in my chest, one small, manageable piece of an otherwise completely unmanageable day. "I'll figure it out. Might need your help."

"Whatever you need."

I slap his back. "Thanks."

"You gonna tell me the rest of what happened in there, or am I supposed to just stand here in the cold digesting the fact that you've got a secret daughter?"

"I'll tell you everything. I just—" My phone buzzes hard in my pocket before I can finish the sentence. Dread hits me. I already know from the specific, irritated rhythm of the ring that it's Dad. And he's the only man alive who can make a phone somehow sound impatient.

I grunt and answer it anyway. "Yeah."

"Where the hell are you?" Dad's voice comes through gruff and rushed, wind roaring behind him loud enough that I can barely make out the words. "We've got that brush pile down by the south fence that needs burning. With this wind, we're going to need to make sure it stays manageable. Alexander's already out there."

"Dad, I'm kind of in the middle of⁠—"

"In the middle of what? Get your ass down to the south pasture. Now."

The line goes dead before I can argue. I stand there a second, torn clean in half between a brush pile that isn't going to wait and a guesthouse three hundred yards behind me that I can't stop watching out of the corner of my eye.

"Brush burning?" Wyatt guesses, reading my face.

"Brush burning." I shove the phone back in my pocket, frustration boiling up hot and useless in my chest. "I have to go. If I don't show up, he'll send Mason to drag me out there, and then everybody's going to be asking why I look like I got hit by a truck."

"Want me to go?"

"No. He'll still demand I'm there. You know how he is," I state.

Wyatt nods. "Yeah. Sorry, man. You're right."

"I can't just leave." I glance back at the Butterfly House again with the same paranoid, animal instinct clawing up my throat. Lainey ran from me once already. Her mother looked ready to load a truck and drive straight back to wherever they came from the second I was out of sight. And I don't have a single reason to trust that the guesthouse will have the same three occupants by the time I get back from a chore that could take hours. "Wyatt, I need a favor."

"Name it."

"Watch that house." I point toward the Butterfly House, low enough that the wind nearly swallows it whole. "Not obvious about it. Don't knock, don't bother them, don't let Lainey know you're even out here. Just keep an eye on it. If that truck starts loading up, if anybody looks like they're fixing to leave this ranch with my daughter in it, you call me. Immediately."

Wyatt's eyebrows draw together. "You think she'd just take off?"

"I don't know what I think anymore." The honesty of that costs me more than I expect it to, standing here admitting out loud how little solid ground I've got under me right now. "I know she ran from me once today already. I know her mother looked at me like she was already planning the quickest route out of Texas, never mind this town. All I do know is I can't lose her again, Wyatt. And I'm not losing my daughter."

Wyatt's face softens, with the same steady loyalty that's gotten both of us through worse moments than this one. "Okay. I'll watch the house. Nobody's taking that baby anywhere without you knowing about it first. You've got my word."

"Thank you." I mean it more than two words can carry, and judging by the look on his face, he knows it too.

"Go deal with your brush pile. I've got this."

I don't want to leave. Every single instinct in my body is screaming at me to plant myself on that porch and refuse to move until somebody lets me hold my own daughter. Rules, chaos, and Lainey's mother's murderous glare be damned. But some more practical, more exhausted part of me knows that a man who just promised to give Lainey room to breathe can't turn around twenty minutes later and abandon a ranch emergency to go sit outside her window like some kind of lovesick stalker.