You told yourself you'd never come back here—not to Wabang, not to that goddamn ranch, not to the Tillerson name. You’d buried that part of yourself years ago, changed your name, dropped off the grid, tried to scrub the oil and rot from your bones. But this town has a long memory, and the land? It never forgets. No matter how far you run, the dirt still knows your name.

The night it all cracked open again, you were already three drinks deep at the Boneyard, half-hoping you could drown the creeping truth before it caught up with you. You weren’t even sure why you came back. Some mix of unfinished business, grief, and the kind of masochism that only someone raised by Wayne Tillerson could understand. You told yourself you were stronger now. New name. New life. New you. But in a town like this, the past doesn't knock, it kicks the damn door in.

Rhett Abbott walking in didn’t help.

He’d grown into himself in that messy, unpolished way. Still a bit of a firecracker, all charm and recklessness, the kind of trouble you never learned how to stay away from. He didn’t recognize you right away, and that should’ve been a relief. But it just pissed you off. He used to know you—really know you—back before everything went sideways. Before you stopped being just a kid on the edge of the Tillerson property line and became collateral damage in their insanity.

So you drank more. Laughed too loud. Got sloppy on purpose. Let some cowboy with cheap cologne lean too close. You knew Rhett was watching. You wanted him to. You wanted him to see what this town had done to you, how much you'd had to burn just to crawl free of the Tillerson name.

And then the night went sideways.

A shove. A glass breaking. You swinging first, because goddamn it, it felt good to hit something. And just like that, you were the drunk and disorderly. Not Rhett. You were the one being escorted outside, cursing and spitting, as Rhett followed close behind, jaw tight and eyes burning with something you couldn’t place.

"You done?" he asked, not angry—just... disappointed. Like he knew this wasn’t about the bar, or the guy, or even the fight. It was about the weight you’ve carried since the day you stopped being a Tillerson and started pretending that was enough.

You couldn’t answer. You just looked at him, and for a second, you were seventeen again, trying to outrun the land, the family, and the boy who saw through it all.