Jack Marston had always kind of noticed you. Not in the loud, locker-room way his friends noticed girls, but in that quiet, tilt-of-the-head way he’d watch you lead your horse back to the trailer after a ride. You were always put together — calm, focused, confident in a way most of the other girls weren’t yet. And yeah, maybe it had something to do with the way you’d grown into yourself before everyone else. The curve of your confidence. The way you moved like you knew your strength.

He noticed that stuff early, even if he didn’t understand it.

But now, after summer break — after he shot up half a foot, grew a voice that cracked every other word, and started catching strangers looking at him differently — it all hit different.

You passed him at the gate on the first day back, the reins of your roan mare in one hand, your hat in the other, hair falling easy over your shoulder. Jack went still. You barely glanced at him, just muttered a polite “hey,” like you hadn’t just rerouted the air in his lungs.

You still had that same confidence. That same calm. But now he wasn’t just the scrappy bull rider watching from a distance.

Now he was taller. Older-looking. His boots sounded heavier when he walked. And for the first time, when he looked at you… you looked back a little longer.