CHAPTER 7
COLT
I pulled up June’s drive and killed the engine. My truck ticked and popped as I sat there with my pulse drumming against my temples.
I came to June’s so often I could navigate her land with my eyes closed, but today I couldn’t seem to make myself get out of the truck.
June had been helping with Ruby for the last two years, stepping in when Dad’s heart attack forced Mom to take over his care and me to take on even more responsibility at the ranch.
Turns out, it really does take a village to raise a kid. Between June, my parents, Hunter, and McCoy, we’d figured out something that worked. Most days, anyway.
But I still went to bed most nights feeling like I was letting my little girl down.
I groaned as I climbed from my truck, my body aching and stiff. I flexed my hands, working out the pain in my knuckles.
I walked up the porch steps and paused at the screen door. I’d long ago stopped knocking on June’s weathered, blue front door, so used to following after Ruby who ran barefoot into her house without so much as an announcement that we were here.
Today, though, I knocked.
I’d been nervous as hell when I dropped Ruby off this morning too, knowing Blaire would be here, and I was still anxious as I shifted my weight from one boot to the other while June’s voice floated from somewhere inside.
“One second!”
The day was already fading, the golden light of the sun touching every bit of the surrounding land, and I leaned back against the rail as I took it in. This town and my family’s ranch lying beyond that fence line, it was all I had ever known. It was all I’d ever wanted.
Besides her.
I’d always known taking over the ranch would be my duty, but it had never once felt like a hardship. My parents had blessed us with this land, with this life, and I knew in my gut that I was made to do this.
Dad had poured his soul into this dirt, and now it was bleeding me dry too. We’d always known it would be mine and Hunter’s one day, a thousand acres of responsibility I both craved and resented coming at me far faster than I’d ever expected.
June swung the door open, half her silver-streaked hair escaping the twin braids she always wore, and her smile was wider than normal. The scent of something warm and sweet wafted out with her.
“Well, ain’t you a sight,” she said, eyeing me up and down, her gaze stopping on my mud-caked boots. “Rough day?”
“You could say that.” I crossed my arms over my chest, my heart still hammering against my ribs, and nodded toward the door.
Part of me wanted to scoop Ruby up and disappear in my truck until the memory of last night blurred into nothing.
But another part, the part that had my palms sweating and a hard pull under my ribs, wanted to barrel past June and tear through every room in this house until I found Blaire.
All day her face had haunted me, the way her lips had parted slightly when our eyes met, and how I’d nearly lost my mind fighting the urge to close the distance between us. “Where’s my girl?”
June’s grin only widened. “Which one?” she asked, her voice teasing as she leaned against the doorframe, hands resting on her hips.
“Very funny,” I shot back, and forced myself to take a breath, trying to keep my voice steady. “Where’s Ruby?”
“We made you a strawberry shortcake,” June announced, turning on her heel and letting the screen door bang shut behind her.
I knocked my boots against the steps before following her inside, where the warm scent of vanilla and sugar enveloped me.
It smelled like my childhood, and I couldn’t help thinking about racing Blaire through this doorway whenever June would call out that she’d been baking and coming up with a new creation with her mountains of strawberries.
June emerged from the kitchen holding a white bakery box. “Thought y’all might enjoy this after dinner. Ruby helped for about ten minutes, right until Blaire whipped out the sunscreen, then I lost my little assistant before the timer went off.”
She handed me the box, her hands lingering over mine. “She’s down at the lake. They’ve been there all afternoon.” June’s gaze settled on my face, and I swear the woman could see straight through me.
“What?” My grip tightened around the box at the thought of Ruby with Blaire.
I owed June and half this town a debt I could never repay for stepping in when Ruby needed someone steady in her life, someone to fill the gaps I couldn’t seem to close no matter how hard I tried. But Blaire wasn’t part of that arrangement. She’d never been part of the plan.
Not for a long time.
Blaire had once been my world, but that was Ruby now. My daughter was the only light I had some days, the only reason to drag myself out of bed when the weight of the ranch and everything else felt like it was going to crush me.
The thought of Blaire being back in my world, being anywhere near Ruby, made something sharp and primal rear up inside me. I feared anything that might ruin the bit of steadiness I’d built for my girl.
I tried to imagine the moment she found out I had a daughter. Had she already known? Did June tell her the news over the phone like she had with me about Blaire’s engagement?
I’d spent years building up a wall between the moment I pushed her away and the world she lived in. Almost everything I knew about her had come from June or from seeing her on the news with her father.
“Ruby’s been wanting to swim all day, and I’m too old for it.” June huffed, and guilt settled in my chest. “She talked Blaire right into it, though.”
June’s eyes met mine with a look that was half apology, half challenge. Like she was daring me to say what I was really thinking, but there wasn’t a chance in hell.
“She get anything to eat?” I asked, rocking back on my heels as my eyes scanned over her living room.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” June rolled her eyes. “No, Colt. I starved her.”
A laugh escaped me as I rolled my shoulders, the tightness refusing to budge.
“What kind of bonus grandma do you take me for?” June crossed her arms, one eyebrow raised.
“I appreciate you, June. Don’t know what we’d do without you.”
“Damn straight,” she huffed, and I couldn’t help but chuckle.
“I’m going to head down there and get her.” I took a step back, boots scraping against her floorboards as I headed for the door. “I’ll probably have to wrangle her out of the water.”
“Good luck!” June chuckled as she called after me, her voice fading behind the slam of the screen door. I was already striding across the yard, reaching through my passenger side window to set the cake down on the seat.
I glanced back at the tailgate of my truck, and memories of Blaire and me stretched out together on a different one slammed into me.
I had tucked her head against my shoulder, and we’d talked about everything we wanted out of life like it was already ours.
She’d laughed as she imagined a little girl with her curls and my eyes, a boy with dark hair and my stubborn streak.
I’d listened to every word, clung to them and carved those dreams into plans of my own.
Ruby wasn’t that dream. She was something else entirely. She was my new dream, with my dark hair and blue eyes. She was better than anything I’d ever pictured, better than I deserved, and some days, I’d catch myself watching her sleep and feel a love so fierce that it lit me up.
But still, my chest ached with the thought of what could have been if Blaire had been the one cradling Ruby on her hip, teaching her to braid her hair like June’s.
But that wasn’t Ruby’s reality, and I’d be damned if I let anyone, especially Blaire Monroe, breeze through my daughter’s world only to vanish again.
Not after everything she’d already been through.
I started across the field, my worn leather boots sinking into the ground that was still soft and yielding from the rain we’d had earlier in the week. The late afternoon sun hung low in the sky and cast long shadows through the tall grass that brushed across my jeans.
June’s property was much smaller than the sprawling acres of the Calloway Ranch, but it was no less breathtaking.
Both our lands butted up to the edge of Willow Lake with twin weathered docks that had stood beside one another since before I was born.
When I looked to the left, my gaze swept over June’s pride: row after row of strawberry fields, the plants dotted with white blossoms and ripening fruit that peeked through the green leaves.
June was our only neighbor for miles, nothing but rolling hills, the wide lake, and open sky between us and town, and I’d always liked it that way. I loved the vastness of it all, the quiet.
A cluster of ancient oak trees marked the boundary of June’s property, their gnarled branches reaching toward the water.
The leaves rustled gently in the breeze, and the closer I got, the tighter everything cinched under my ribs, each step heavier than the last, like my body already knew what was waiting for me beyond those trees.
But then I heard it.
Ruby’s laughter reached me first, that bubbling, unfiltered joy that always loosened something in my chest. But then it mingled with another, a sound I hadn’t allowed myself to think about in years.
I slowed as I broke through the cover of the trees and saw them both at the end of the dock. Blaire sat in the sunlight, her bare feet skimming the water’s surface, and Ruby clung to her calves, half submerged, kicking up a storm of tiny splashes behind her.
Blaire lifted her legs, and Ruby rose from the lake like a giggling fish on a line before dropping back with a splash and a delighted shriek. Blaire was facing away from me, but I could make out her grin before she gently swept wet strands of hair from my daughter’s forehead.