8. Chapter 8
Ty
Iwake up Friday morning with Kayla pressed against my back, her arm over my waist, her face between my shoulder blades. She’s still asleep. She does this. She starts the night on her side and by three AM she’s attached to me like I’m generating heat she can’t get anywhere else.
I don’t mind. I didn’t know I was a man who wanted to be held until she started doing it.
The light is gray through the curtains. Early. My internal clock says five thirty. The cattle need checking. The south fence has a post that’s been leaning since the wind last week. There are invoices on my desk and a farrier appointment at ten and Caldwell’s lawyer wants to schedule the closing.
The closing. The Caldwell land is mine in two weeks. Four hundred acres. Elk Creek. The windbreak. Everything I’ve been working toward for nine years.
Kayla shifts against my back. Her fingers curl against my stomach. She makes a sound that isn’t a word and presses her face harder into my spine.
I lie still. I let her sleep.
I think about the fact that a month ago this bed was empty every morning and the house was quiet and the only thing I was trying to hold onto was four hundred acres. Now the land is almost mine and so is the woman behind me and I didn’t plan for either of them to feel this essential.
She wakes up at six fifteen. Her breathing changes and her arm tightens around me and then she stretches and groans.
“Morning,” I say.
“No.”
“It’s six fifteen.”
“That’s not a real time.”
“I’ve been up since five thirty.”
“That’s a travesty.”
I turn over. She’s got her face half on the pillow and her hair is everywhere and she is squinting at me with one eye.
“Coffee?” I say.
“Please. Immediately. Before I have to use more words.”
I get up and make coffee. Two mugs. Blue and white. I bring hers to the bed because she hasn’t moved and I’m not sure she’s going to.
She sits up and takes it with both hands. She drinks. Her eyes close. She makes a sound that is closer to religious experience than beverage consumption.
“Better?” I ask.
“I’m becoming a person. Give me five minutes.”
I sit on the edge of the bed. I drink my coffee. We’re quiet. The morning light is coming through the window and the cattle are moving along the fence line and this is the most ordinary moment in the world and I want it every day for the rest of my life.
She sets her mug on the nightstand and pulls her knees up and looks at me. “What?”
“What do you mean?”
“You have a face.”
“I always have a face.”
“You have a specific face. You’re about to say something important and you’re working up to it.”
She knows me. A month and she knows me better than anyone else.
“The closing is in two weeks,” I say. “Caldwell’s lawyer sent the papers yesterday.”
“That’s great.”
“It is.” I look down at my coffee, then back at her. “And you said you weren’t packing your boxes.”
Her mouth curves. “I remember.”
“I’ve been thinking about that.”
“That sounds dangerous.”
“I don’t want you to stay because it’s convenient. I don’t want this to be temporary anymore.”
Her smile disappears.
“I want you here because this is your home too. I want the life we have when you’re in it. But I don’t want to manage you or plan your future or decide things for you. I want to be next to you while you do all of it yourself.”
“Ty.”
“If you need more time to figure that out, take it. I’m not going anywhere.”
She puts her hand on my jaw. She looks at me with an expression I’ve seen once before, on the ridge above the Caldwell acreage, when she was looking at four hundred acres of land and seeing something worth wanting.
“I don’t need more time,” she says.
“You sure?”
“I’ve been sure since the bookshelf.”
“The bookshelf?”
“You moved a bookshelf into my room because my books were falling over. You did it while I was at work and you didn’t mention it and when I asked, you said it seemed easier.” She pauses. “That’s when I knew.”
“That was week one.”
“I know. I’ve been panicking about it quietly ever since.”
I laugh. She smiles. I pull her against me and kiss her and her arms go around my neck and the bedroom is warm and full and mine. Ours.
“One condition,” she says against my mouth.
“Of course there’s a condition.”
“We’re buying more forks.”
“How many?”
“A normal amount. Like twelve total.”
“Twelve forks.”
“Minimum.”
I kiss her again. I kiss her because she’s staying and the land is mine and there are going to be twelve forks in the drawer and none of this was the plan and all of it is better than anything I could have imagined.
“Also,” she says.
“There’s more?”
“A bookshelf. A real one. For the living room.”
“Done.”
“And a blanket for the couch.”
“Okay.”
“And we’re keeping the plant.”
“I assumed.”
“Even though neither of us knows what it is.”
“Even though.”
She looks at me. She’s smiling and her eyes are wet and her hair is a mess and she’s sitting in my bed in my T-shirt with coffee on her breath and she is the best thing that has ever happened to me.
“One more thing,” she says.
“What?”
“I love you.”
It hits me somewhere behind my ribs. Not because I didn’t know. Because hearing it is different from knowing it.
“I love you too,” I say.
“Good. Because I already mentally committed to the new paint color for the barn and it would be awkward to undo that.”
I laugh. I pull her into my lap and she wraps her legs around me and I hold her and she holds me and the coffee goes cold on the nightstand and neither of us cares.
We drive to the Wylde Mountain Ranch that afternoon. Kayla wants to drop off the final Roundup paperwork for Cash, and Caroline said she’d meet her there.
Cash is at the barn when we pull in, finishing up with one of the kids from his youth horsemanship program. He sees Kayla get out of my truck and his eyebrows go up.
“Well,” he says.
“Don’t,” I say.
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You were going to.”
“I was going to say she looks happy.”
I glance at Kayla. She waves to him before walking toward his cabin with the paperwork, her braid swinging, and she does look happy. She looks like a woman who decided something and is at peace with it.
“She is,” I say.
Cash nods. He doesn’t push. “She might be a while. Caroline said she was stopping by, and once those women get talking… Wanna help with a fence?”
“Happy to.”
“I’ll grab the wire.”
We work. It’s simple and good. Cash talks about the youth program growing faster than he expected. I listen and I think about how I might not have met Kayla if it weren’t for the Roundup. I make a mental note to give a bigger donation next year.
Kayla comes back from the cabin with Caroline. They’re laughing about something, and Caroline gives me a look that says she knows exactly what’s going on and approves.
“Ty,” Caroline says.
“Caroline.”
“I hear congratulations are in order. The Caldwell land.”
“Closing soon.”
“And other things?” She glances at Kayla. Kayla shakes her head.
“I don’t know what you’re referring to,” Kayla says.
“Sure you don’t.”
“We are simply two people who live in the same house.”
“With one bedroom.”
“There are four bedrooms.”
“And you use how many?”
“Caroline.”
Caroline smiles. She squeezes Kayla’s arm and walks back toward the cabin.
Kayla comes to the fence where I’m working. She leans against the post.
“Caroline knows,” she says.
“Everyone knows.”
“Nobody’s said anything.”
“This is Wylde Mountain. Everyone knows everything and nobody says anything until you’re ready.”
She looks out at the valley. The mountains. The aspens that are mostly bare now, the branches white against the November sky.
“I like it here,” she says.
“The ranch?”
“The valley. The town. The lodge. This.” She gestures at me, the fence, the land. “All of it.”
“Good.”
“It’s home.”
I look at her. She’s looking at the mountains with the wind in her hair and she said “home” about this valley the way I’ve been saying it for fifteen years.
“Yeah,” I say. “It is.”
She leans over and kisses my cheek. Then she steals my water bottle and drinks half of it and we walk back toward the truck.
I am thirty-eight years old. I own a ranch. I’m buying four hundred acres of the best grazing land in the valley. I have a woman who loves me and a house that finally sounds like someone lives in it.
I spent fifteen years building a ranch and thinking I didn’t have room for anything else. Turns out the room was always there. I just needed someone who made it feel like home.