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For the first time in years, he wanted to be the man who came back when he said he would. Not for his name. Not for his work. For them. For her.

🧵✔️

He stared at the ceiling, thumb brushing over the tin she’d packed in his bag. The shortbread was gone now, but the parchment still sat folded in the tin. He didn’t throw it out. Couldn’t.

He hadn’t promised her forever, hadn’t even given her a date. Just as soon as I can. And somehow, that felt heavier than any vow he’d ever made. Because she wasn’t the kind of woman who waited lightly. And Daniel wasn’t the kind of child you could walk away from.

And sometimes, if he let himself drift further, he pictured Daniel curled against her chest. The kid asking for him by name, not understanding why he wasn’t there.

That image broke him in ways nothing else could.

He hit replay more often than he admitted. Not because of the words, but because of what they did to him.

Sometimes, if the message was long enough, he could almost see it — her in her room, hair unbraided, quilt pulled up, whispering into the phone while the house slept.

She never said much in the notes — just fragments of her day, the way the sheep had been restless, or how Daniel had refused to nap until she sang him down. But her voice carried all of it: grit, grace, the edge of fire that never dulled even when she was tired.

TALON POV

The hotel room was quiet in a way that didn’t sit right. Too sterile, too still. The kind of silence that crept under his skin instead of settling him.

He lay back on the bed, phone in hand, her voice crackling through his earbuds.

She doesn’t chase. That’s not who she is. But every time she sees his name light up her screen, every time Daniel asks for him, she feels the pull. And she hates it, and she loves it, and she doesn’t know which side of the feeling will undo her first.

—a fragment of him dropped into her day like a secret she has to carry quietly.

Now he sleeps in his crib again, and she lies awake listening to the dark. Sometimes she plays Talon’s voice notes on repeat, earbuds tucked in, his words scraping through her chest like he’s just down the hall instead of across an ocean. Sometimes it’s only a text waiting in the morning—

It wasn’t that Talon had ever taken that space. They’d never shared a bed. But he’d left a shape behind anyway — in her days, in her silences, in the sharp edge of goodnight. And with Daniel in her arms, she could pretend, just for a little while, that the ache wasn’t hers alone to carry.

The first couple of nights after Talon left, she kept Daniel with her. She told herself it was to soothe him — but the truth was quieter. Holding him close, feeling the steady rhythm of his breathing against her, eased something she couldn’t name.

At night it’s different.

The house settles into its creaks and sighs, the hum of her brothers’ video game banter muffled down the hall. She curls up in her bed, hair loose, quilt pulled high, and finally lets herself be still.

She gathers him close, kisses his curls, swallows hard so he doesn’t hear the catch in her throat.

Her brothers don’t miss much, but they don’t press. Not yet.

It’s Daniel who breaks her heart wide open. He toddles through the house clutching his cracker cup, his voice wobbling as he points to the porch or the door: “Tuh-nan?” Asking, waiting, searching in his baby way.

But when her phone buzzes in her pocket, there’s a flicker. The smallest smile. A shift in her breath. A voice note from across the ocean — rough, low, the scrape of Talon’s laugh wrapped in static. Or a quick line of text, sometimes hours late, sometimes right on time.

To anyone watching, nothing’s changed. She folds laundry on the porch, sings to Daniel as she rocks him, chops vegetables while her mother tells stories at the counter. Her hands are busy, her mind sharp. She works, she jokes, she keeps pace with the boys in every chore.

The sheep don’t care if she’s tired, the twins still argue over who throws hay straighter, and her father still insists on checking every latch even though she already has.

TIERNEY POV

The days don’t stop. They never do.

Tierney still wakes before dawn, still pulls her boots on, still finds herself in the barn with a bucket in one hand and a laugh for Logan in the other.

🧵 Life Goes On

Two lives, two beds, two kinds of silence. The farm doesn’t stop for her, the road doesn’t stop for him. Life goes on. And yet, in the ache of nights apart, they keep finding each other—voice by voice, word by word.

#CountryFire
#TierneyAndTalon

✍🏻✍🏻✍🏻
Scenes under WHERE SHE STANDS NOW weren’t posted chronologically.

To read as they happened:
1️⃣ The Night Everything Changed (3rd posted) → Bloodline and Bone
2️⃣ Then (1st, 2nd): A Clearing in the Norwegian Forest, Dusk and The Clearing, Nightfall
3️⃣ Resume with The Long Road onward

#Threadbound

bsky.app/profile/tier...

Not a fan waiting outside a set. Not a fling waiting for his call. A woman who made shortbread at dawn because she knew he’d need it when the silence caught up to him.

He wasn’t sure what to do with that. Only that he wanted to be worth it.

🧵✔️

Because Tierney had remembered, too.

Her voice echoed: When are you coming back?

He’d said the truth. As soon as he could. Not soon enough, not ever enough—but as fast as the world would let him. And for the first time in years, he felt the weight of someone waiting for him.

—boots planted, curls loose, mouth pressed to his like it was the only thing tethering her.

He touched the tin in the seat pocket, thumb grazing the lid. Inside, the parchment cradled her shortbread the way his mother once did. Fallon’s memory ached, but it didn’t hollow him out this time.

Talon POV – Later, Alone

Somewhere over the Atlantic, the cabin lights dimmed and the hum of the engines blurred into a low, endless drone. He should have slept, but every time he closed his eyes, he saw her on that curb—

The road unspooled in front of her, endless fences and open sky, but for the first time it didn’t feel like home had enough to fill her. Not without him in it.
——

She told herself not to be foolish. He had a life oceans away. Work. Commitments. A thousand reasons to stay gone. She didn’t chase, not even when her chest begged her to.

But his voice lingered, low and rough, when he’d promised her: As soon as I can.

Her fingers twitched once on the steering wheel, remembering how his palm had turned over to catch hers, how his thumb had brushed across her knuckles like it belonged there. She gripped harder, knuckles pale, as if holding on could keep the memory from slipping through.