The silence in the small cabin was a third presence, thick and suffocating. After the storm of their arrival, the shouting match that had left them both raw-throated and bristling, the quiet of the night had been a weapon. Jed had taken the lumpy sofa, Cole the single bed, and the space between them had crackled with a hostility so potent it felt like it might spontaneously combust. Every creak of the floorboards, every sigh of wind through the pines, was an accusation.

Morning arrived not with sunlight, but with a deeper, more oppressive gray. And a new sound.

Plink. Plink. Plink.

The noise was maddeningly persistent, a tiny, rhythmic torture. Cole sat up first, his face a mask of grim exhaustion. His eyes, the color of a stormy sky, scanned the room before landing on a dark, spreading stain on the ceiling planks directly above the small pine table. A fat drop of water gathered, trembled, and fell, hitting the wood with another sharp plink.

“Damn it all,” he growled, the words scraping his throat.

Jed was already on his feet, his gaze fixed on the same spot. He didn’t say a word, just moved to the table and slid it out of the way, his movements economical and sure. For a moment, they stood on opposite sides of the growing puddle on the floor, the unspoken reality hanging between them: the cabin, their temporary prison, was failing. Their feud wouldn't keep them dry.

“Attic access is in the closet,” Cole said, his tone clipped. It wasn’t a request; it was a reluctant statement of fact.

Jed just nodded, pulling the rickety wooden ladder from the cramped closet. The air that puffed out from the attic hatch above was stale, smelling of old wood, dust, and forgotten years. Cole grabbed a heavy-duty flashlight, and without another word, they ascended into the gloom.

The space was even tighter than they’d imagined. A coffin-tight crawlspace, crisscrossed with heavy, low-slung rafters that forced them to crouch, their shoulders and hips constantly brushing. Dust motes danced like frantic sprites in the beam of Cole’s flashlight. The rhythmic dripping was louder up here, a steady, hollow drumbeat against a sheet of old tin someone had laid down as a half-hearted patch years ago.

For the first few minutes, they worked in the same tense silence that had defined the night. Cole held the light, pinpointing the source of the leak, while Jed shifted warped planks and assessed the damage. But the job required more than one pair of hands.

“Need to pull that tarp over,” Jed grunted, gesturing with his chin. “Tuck it under the main beam.”

Cole moved to help, the flashlight now clenched between his teeth. The tarp was heavy, stiff with age and cold. They had to work together, pulling and shifting in the claustrophobic dark. An unspoken rhythm developed between them. When Jed pulled, Cole pushed. When Cole braced his feet, Jed used the leverage to haul another section of the heavy canvas into place. It was a silent, efficient ballet, a synchronicity that belied the animosity simmering just beneath the surface. For the first time, they weren't adversaries; they were a single unit working against a common foe. The realization was unsettling, a crack in the armor Jed had worn for years.

He was watching Cole, not with suspicion, but with a new, confusing awareness. He saw the play of muscle in his rival’s back as he strained, the determined set of his jaw illuminated by the light from his mouth. They were almost done. Jed reached across Cole to secure the final corner of the tarp, needing to anchor it to a nail sticking out of a rafter.

As he stretched, the back of his hand—calloused and rough from years of ranch work—brushed against the inside of Cole’s forearm. Cole had his sleeves rolled up, and his skin was bare, warm, and shockingly soft beneath Jed’s rough knuckles.

It wasn't a spark of static. It was a deep, resonant jolt, a current of pure heat that shot from the point of contact straight up Jed's arm and detonated somewhere deep in his gut. He froze. Cole went rigid beside him, his breath catching in a sharp hiss. The flashlight beam wavered, dancing across the dusty planks.

Slowly, Jed pulled his hand back, but his eyes were locked on Cole’s. The overt hostility was gone from his rival’s gaze, replaced by a wide-eyed shock that mirrored his own. In the dim light, Jed could see the pulse hammering at the base of Cole’s throat, a frantic, vulnerable beat. The air, already thick with dust, now felt heavy, charged with something new and terrifyingly potent. The silence returned, but it was a different kind of quiet now—not empty, but full of the echo of that single, accidental touch. The truce over the leaky roof was over. A new, far more treacherous one had just begun.

They descended from the attic into a cabin that felt both smaller and larger than before. The physical space was the same, but the charged territory between them had expanded, a no-man's-land humming with the memory of skin on skin. The dripping had stopped, but the silence it left behind was worse. It was a watchful, waiting quiet, thick with questions neither of them dared to ask.

Jed paced the length of the small room, the floorboards groaning under his boots. He felt caged, cornered not by the storm but by the man watching him from the bed, Cole’s stormy eyes tracking his every move. The air was unbreathable. On his third pass, Jed’s heel caught on a floorboard near the hearth that shifted with a hollow clunk. He stopped, nudging it with his toe. Curiosity, or maybe just a desperate need for distraction, made him crouch and work his fingers into the seam. The plank lifted easily. Nestled in the dark space below, cocooned in a dusty rag, was a half-full bottle of amber liquid. Whiskey.

He pulled it out, wiping the dust from the glass with his thumb. He didn’t look at Cole, but he felt his gaze. “Looks like the old bastard who built this place had his priorities straight,” Jed said, his voice rough. He broke the wax seal with his thumbnail and took a long, burning swallow. The heat was a welcome shock, a clean fire that cut through the thick tension. He held the bottle out in Cole's direction. It wasn’t an olive branch. It was a challenge.

Cole hesitated for a beat, then pushed himself off the bed and closed the distance between them. He took the bottle without a word, his fingers brushing Jed’s as he did, and the ghost of that jolt from the attic flickered between them again. He took his own swig, his throat working as he swallowed, his eyes never leaving Jed’s over the rim of the bottle.

The whiskey worked quickly, loosening the knots of restraint.
“You think you’re so much better than me, don’t you?” Cole said, his voice low and laced with the liquor’s bite. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Riding in on your high horse, acting like that land is yours by divine right.”

“It’s my family’s legacy,” Jed shot back, snatching the bottle. “Something your kind wouldn’t understand. You buy history. You don’t earn it.”

“My father built his fortune from nothing! He earned every damn cent that bought that land,” Cole snarled, stepping closer, crowding Jed against the cold stone of the fireplace. “Your family is sitting on a decaying inheritance, too proud and too stupid to see it turning to dust around you.”

“Don’t you dare talk about my family.”

“Why not? It’s the truth. You’re clinging to a name, a ghost. You’ve got nothing else. That pride of yours? It’s hollow, Jed. It’s all you have left.”

The words hit like a physical blow. All the frustration of the past twenty-four hours, all the fury of their years-long rivalry, all the confusing heat from the attic, coalesced into a single, blinding point of rage. In a sudden, violent movement, Cole lunged forward. He grabbed the front of Jed’s flannel shirt, yanking him forward until their faces were inches apart, his knuckles digging into Jed’s collarbone. The air crackled, the smell of whiskey and pine and rain-soaked earth overwhelming them both. Cole’s intent was clear in the murderous clench of his jaw, the fire in his eyes. He was going to finish this. He was going to put his fist through Jed’s teeth.

But then his gaze dropped to Jed’s mouth. He saw the defiance there, the way Jed’s lips were pressed into a thin, furious line, and something inside him broke. The impulse to destroy twisted into a different, more desperate urge. The rage was still there, white-hot and consuming, but it was no longer aimed at Jed’s jaw.

With a sound that was half-growl, half-groan, Cole crushed his mouth to Jed’s.

It wasn’t a kiss. It was a collision. A brutal, angry claiming that tasted of whiskey and fury. There was no tenderness, only force—the hard press of lips, the scrape of teeth, a battle for dominance fought in the space of a breath. Cole’s hand fisted tighter in Jed’s shirt, pulling him impossibly closer, while his other hand came up to tangle violently in the hair at the nape of Jed’s neck, angling his head for a deeper, more punishing angle. For a frozen second, Jed was rigid with shock, but then a firestorm of his own ignited in his veins. His hands shot up, grabbing fistfuls of Cole’s shirt, and he kissed back with all the pent-up aggression he’d held for years. It was a clash, a war, their mouths moving against each other with all the raw, desperate force of their long-standing feud, a terrifying and undeniable spark of desire finally igniting the fire that had always smoldered between them.

They broke apart, the sound of their ragged breaths filling the sudden, deafening silence. The air in the small cabin crackled, thick with the phantom taste of whiskey and rage, charged with an energy more volatile than lightning. They stood inches apart, eyes wide with a shared, horrified shock that was quickly being consumed by a dawning, unwelcome arousal. The echo of the kiss hung between them, a physical presence more potent and binding than any chain, more final than any spoken threat.

Jed’s fingers, which still fisted the rough cotton of Cole’s shirt, trembled violently. He felt the tremor travel up his arm, a testament to the chaos detonating in his chest. His mind screamed at him to shove Cole away, to put a lifetime of animosity back between them, but his gaze was trapped. He could see the frantic, desperate hammer of the pulse in Cole's throat, a visible sign of the life and vulnerability thrumming just beneath the skin of the man he’d sworn to ruin. In Cole’s eyes, beneath the shock, was a raw, unguarded heat that mirrored the inferno in his own gut. The fight had irrevocably shifted. The battle lines, once so clearly drawn across deeds and property lines, had just been redrawn across their own bodies.

A low, guttural sound escaped Jed’s throat—a sound of denial, of surrender, of pure, unadulterated want. His mind lost the war with his body. Instead of pushing, his trembling fingers tightened their grip, twisting the fabric and pulling Cole back toward him.

This time, it wasn't a collision. It was a conquest.

Cole met him halfway, a groan of his own swallowed by Jed’s mouth. The kiss was no longer just anger; it was a desperate, searching exploration. It was the brutal claiming from before, now layered with a terrifying curiosity. Jed’s tongue swept past Cole’s lips, seeking, demanding, and Cole answered with a ferocity that stole the air from Jed’s lungs. One of Jed’s hands left Cole’s shirt to tangle in the thick, dark hair at the nape of his neck, pulling him closer still, arching his own body into the solid wall of his rival’s.

Cole’s hands came up, not to push Jed away, but to seize him with equal force. His palms splayed across Jed’s back, fingers digging into the hard muscle there, pulling him flush against him until there was no space, no air, no rivalry left between them—only the searing heat of their bodies and the frantic beat of two hearts hammering out a dangerous, synchronized rhythm. They stumbled backward, a clumsy dance of aggression and desire, until Cole’s back hit the rough-hewn timber of the cabin wall with a solid thud.

The impact broke the kiss. They gasped for air, foreheads resting against each other, their breath mingling in hot, whiskey-laced clouds. Jed’s hand was still tangled in Cole’s hair, his other pressed flat against Cole’s thundering chest. He could feel the rasp of denim against his own, the hard ridge of Cole’s arousal pressing against his thigh, a blatant, undeniable answer to the same ache coiling deep in his own belly. He looked into Cole’s dark, dilated eyes and saw his own ruin reflected there. The war for the valley, for his father’s legacy, for every pine tree and inch of dirt, suddenly felt like a child’s game. This—the raw, possessive heat in Cole’s gaze, the tremor in his own hands, the terrifying, exhilarating feeling of being both conquered and conqueror—this was a fight for the soul. And it was a war he was terrified he had already lost.