Chapter Text
You take a week off.
You don’t disappear completely - John’s emails still got returned with your usual crisp professionalism, and you still picked up Rip’s calls when they were strictly work related. But you didn’t step foot on the ranch. Not once. Not after that afternoon behind the barn.
And Rip noticed. Every damn day.
When you did come back, it was like nothing had happened. You wore your usual jeans and hoodie faded from too many washes, hair twisted up with a pencil again, and you talked land use policy like you’d never been shoved into the dirt by a manic blonde tornado. No tension, no flinch, no edge in your voice.
And Rip… thought for sure you knew.
Beth had cornered him the night after you left, her mouth sharp, eyes wilder than he’d seen in years. It hadn’t been romantic. It had barely been kind. It sure as hell hadn’t meant anything - not even when Beth had left deep scratches on his back like an animal would mark territory by gouging a tree with it’s claws.
Still. You knew. You didn’t spend a night tabled with someone like you and not feel it when you started building walls.
What really got Rip wasn’t the way you looked through him that first morning back, or the way you smiled at John but didn’t linger. It was that you didn’t seem mad. Not even disappointed. You just… didn’t care. And it should’ve made thing easier. Clean break. One-night stand into something like a work friendship. You were a grown woman. Mature as hell. Controlled. Light on your feet and sharp with your words. You even laughed at one of Rip’s dry jokes during a fence-line walk, a little breathy thing you covered with the back of your hand.
It should’ve been fine.
But late that afternoon, as Rip walked past the parking lot, heading back from checking a busted gate, he caught sight of your car still parked under the trees. Doors closed. Engine off. Your silhouette hunched over the wheel.
He slowed. Squinted.
Then he saw your shoulders shake.
You were crying - quiet, hard, and trying not to be seen. Your forehead was pressed to the steering wheel, hands white-knuckled on either side, whole body curled inward like you where trying to fold yourself into something smaller. Rip’s stomach dropped.
He didn’t knock on the window. Didn’t startle you. Just walked around the front of the car and stood there, leant against the wheel, until you noticed him. You lifted your head slowly, eyes red, mouth trembling, cheeks blotchy from the effort of holding it in. You put the window down.
“Oh. Hey.” You sound like shit - voice all scratchy.
Rip didn’t know what to say. He hated moments like this - feelings thick in the air, too big for his hands to hold.
“You okay?” He asks anyway, because what the hell else was he supposed to ask?
You laugh, short and hoarse. “Not in the fucking slightest. But I’m working on it.”
He opened your door without asking and bent down beside you. Didn’t touch - just waited; like he was waiting out a skittish colt.
“I’m not mad,” You say quietly, looking out the window shield. “In case you’re wondering, or whatever. I just- we’re friends. Right?”
“We are,” Rip agrees, firm, the words feeling foreign and too small and oddly childish on his tongue.
“Then why do I feel disposable?”
That hit like a haymaker. Rip clenched his jaw, looked down at the dirt, the tread of your boots, anything but your face. “You’re not.”
Silence meets him. And maybe you don’t believe it. Maybe it didn’t matter that it was true. You could still be sharp and funny and keep your chin up in front of a storm, but you where still only twenty three. Still learning how much of yourself you were allowed to feel without people calling you dramatic.
Rip finally reached out, just resting his rough, calloused hand over yours. Quiet. Steady.
“I’m sorry,” he said - and meant it.
Not just for Beth - but for everything he didn’t know how to handle until it was too late. You don’t answer. But you don’t pull away, neither.
—-
Beth doesn’t get him back.
Because there is no “back” to go to.
Rip doesn’t fuck her again, no matter how many times she tries - drunk or sober, soft or sharp, wearing nothing but that wild look in her eyes. He doesn’t yell. Doesn’t make speeches. He just stops showing up. Stops being available in the way she used to count on.
Beth feels it - feels it in the cold of the bed, in the way he won’t meet her eye when she’s cruel to someone who didn’t deserve it. But Rip doesn’t explain himself. He’s done explaining.
And you? You never asked for anything to begin with. That’s what gets him.
The rain had rolled in around midday, soft at first, then steady - thick droplet making the roof of the main house hum with white noise. John had insisted on meeting at the long oak dining table, maps and notebooks spread out like battlefield plans. You sat cross-legged in one of the high-backed chairs, socked feet tucked under yourself, sweater sleeves pushed up to your elbows, hair having given up on being ‘up’, half tumbled down the nape of your neck.
You were trying to explain a rotation plan that would let both parties re-seed part of the lower pasture without killing grazing access entirely. Rip was half-listening, nodding in agreement here and there, throwing in a “that'll work” whenever John grunted and muttered about elk migration screwing everything up.
But mostly? Rip was trying very hard to not stare at your arse.
Because you’d stood at some point, leaning over the table to point out contour lines, and those goddamned jeans, the ones with a little mud on the cuff and a perfect stretch across your hips - were making it real hard to keep his mind on livestock. You were focused, oblivious, chewing on the cap of a pen, making John begrudgingly admit she might have a point.
And then you sneezed.
A full-body, ungraceful, startled sneeze that rocked you sideways just a little.
Rip was on his feet before he even thought about it, stepping beside you, one hand firm on your back to steady you. Right between the shoulder blades - warm, solid, instinctive, appropriate.
“You good?” He asked, voice low and warm and concerned.
You blink, sniffling with a faintly a disgruntled look. “Yeah just sneezed too hard. Fuck, I feel like i just reset my sinuses. Eugh.”
He meant to move his hand. He meant to. But you didn’t shift away. Just glanced over your shoulder with your warm eyes, a little dazed, a little amused, like you weren’t quite sure what to do with the attention. And Rip just… kept his hand were it was. It was nothing. (It was everything.)
The weight of his palm on your spine, the warmth of your body under his touch, the quiet that followed.
John didn’t say a word, just kept scanning the maps with narrowed eyes. You turned back to the table, continuing your explanation like your heartbeat wasn’t echoing in your ears.
And Rip stood there, hand still resting steady on your back, letting himself feel - really feel - what it meant to want something quiet and slow and real.
Not possession. Not legacy. Just you.
—-
You start touching him.
Not constantly. Not in the way Beth used to - clinging and clawing, like she needed to remind the world he was hers. No, your touches are… casual. Thoughtless. Friendly, even. Like when your boot get sucked ankle-deep into wet pasture mud and you grab his forearm without thinking, finger instinctually curling into his jacket as you hop awkwardly to yank it free. Or when you’re walking together and you want his attention, so you tap the outside of his wrist - two quick pants, like you’re knocking on a door. Or when he’s in the way of the tack shed again, broad-shouldered and oblivious, and you just hip-check him lightly with a smirk and a muttered, “Move, cowboy".”
But it’s warm. Unspoken. Trusting.
And it rattles the hell out of Rip.
Because it feels good. Too good. Like some part of him that’s always been braced for impact is finally starting to unclench. And he knows how slippery that slope is - knows what it feels like to mistake affection for permanence.
You don’t treat him like a hero or a caution sign. You treat him like a man. Just a man. Someone you like being around. Someone you on, not into. An Rip doesn’t know what the hell to do with that. Because you’re twenty-three.
Twenty-fucking-three.
He could’ve been your teenaged uncle. He has boots older than you. He remembers dial-up internet and when Marlboro still had TV ads. You’re young in ways that show - your optimism, in your frustration with bureaucracy, in how you still bother to carry film cameras and hope that someone prints the pictures right.
He watches you sometimes, when you’re squatting in the pasture to take a photo of new grass growth like ti matters, or arguing with John without flinching, or helping a ranch hand pick tocks out of a tire rut just because you saw him struggling.
And he thinks - What the fuck are you doing, Rip?
Because there’s something building there - something slow, sure and dangerous as a rising flood. And you touch him like it’s nothing. But for him? It’s starting to feel like everything. Because fucking you was one thing - dangerous and stupid and something he should’ve let blow over. He’s beginning to realise that hasn’t been an option for him here for a while.