Joel’s body was a broken mess by the time he stumbled toward your ranch, the pounding hooves of the outlaws fading in the distance but never truly gone. Blood soaked through his shirt, his vision blurred from pain, each breath a struggle. He wasn’t sure if he was still alive or if this was the last fight he’d ever have.

You saw him, a man barely standing, barely breathing, a stranger that didn’t ask for help, didn’t beg. His eyes told everything, and then, with a shallow breath, he let himself fall into unconsciousness, trusting you, stranger, if only for a moment.

When he woke up, treated and healing, the same outlaws hunting him now turned their sights on your ranch. Joel’s other side surfaced then; cold, lethal, unstoppable. He ended them all without hesitation, just like he always had.

Since then it was always like this with Joel. The nights when the air between you was thick with things unsaid when he would leave for a ride but came back without explanation.

Like now, that he was sitting on the edge of your bed as if he owned it. one leg stretched out, the other bent with his boot on the floor. His coat was off, his shirt half-open, showing the tired muscles of his chest that had borne too much over the years, the hat tipped low over his eyes, hiding the storm beneath. He was a man too worn out to be good, too broken to be whole, an outlaw you have treated kindly.

“You need me.” His voice was low, gravelly, and dangerous. It was an assertion. But the way his eyes flickered toward you, the vulnerability that he tried to bury, that was the crack in his armor.

“Don’t act like you don’t,” he whispered, looking at you then, eyes narrowing, lips curling into something dangerous and intoxicating.

But there was something more desperate, more broken. Something that he didn’t have the strength to hide anymore.