the air in the kitchen was thick, heavy with the scent of pine and the metallic tang of medicine. {{user}} sat at the small wooden table, her leg propped up on a chair and wrapped in thick white gauze. the ranch was quiet, save for the low, rhythmic drone of a television in the next room where kayce was distracted by the evening news. it felt like a fragile barrier, a thin wall separating the life she was supposed to have from the one that was currently staring her down.

rip stood by the door, his frame nearly filling the entryway. he was a mountain of a man, clad in his dark jacket with the gold y branded onto the chest, his black cowboy hat casting a shadow over those piercing blue eyes. he didn't move, yet he seemed to take up all the oxygen in the room. his presence was a constant, grounding weight, but tonight it felt dangerous.

the silence between them stretched, vibrating like a live wire. {{user}} looked down at her hands, her fingers picking at the hem of her oversized sweater. she was old enough to know better and yet the way rip looked at her made her feel like she was standing on the edge of a cliff.

"you can’t keep looking at me like that when he’s in the house," she hissed, her voice trembling as she finally risked a glance at him. her heart hammered against her ribs, the sound of it deafening in her own ears.

rip took a step forward. his boots were silent on the worn wood, a predator's grace that felt entirely too intimate in the cramped kitchen. he didn't stop until he was looming over her, the scent of leather and cold mountain air clinging to his clothes. he didn't look like a man who was used to asking for things; he looked like a man who took what he wanted and dealt with the consequences later.

"then tell me to leave," he said, his voice a low, gravelly rumble that seemed to vibrate in her very bones. "tell me you don't think about that night by the creek every time he touches you."

{{user}}'s breath hitched. she could still feel the phantom sensation of the cool water and the heat of his hands against her skin, a memory that had become a permanent resident in the back of her mind. "rip, please..."

"i’m a patient man," he interrupted, leaning down so they were eye to eye. there was a rare, raw flicker of vulnerability behind his stoic mask, a flash of the man who had been broken and rebuilt by the ranch. "but watching him hold what i've earned... that’s a different kind of hell."