Chapter 2
RHETT
The horse clears the fence line before I even clock what's wrong with the picture, and I'm already running before I've decided to.
Boots pounding dirt. I time it off the horse, not the truck, and grab the trailing lead rope right as the truck stops a foot from my boots.
Dust drifts up between us. The horse circles me twice, blowing hard, and settles. I keep a hand flat on his shoulder, murmuring something soft, and don't look at the truck until he's gone quiet under it.
Cooper and one of the other hands jog up from the barn, already cussing about the rail that gave way, and Cooper takes the lead rope out of my hand without a word.
Then I do. And I forget how to breathe for a second.
Older. Sharper around the edges. Both hands locked white-knuckled on the wheel like she's still bracing for a hit that already didn't happen.
Sadie Collins.
She left for California, spent three years earning a sommelier certification half this town still gossips about like it's scandalous to want something outside these fences.
Word is she's home now trying to keep the bank from calling in the equipment loan before it takes Collins Cellars down with it.
She's leaner through the face than she used to be, and I catch myself staring longer than I should. Same fire in her eyes though. That much never changed.
She calls the whole thing dramatic. I tell her she was paying attention, which is more than I can say for myself right now. She doesn't recognize me at first, and I let it go a second longer than I should, steeling myself for the look on her face once she does.
"Rhett Beaumont," I finally say.
Her face goes still, like the name caught her somewhere she wasn't braced for.
"And you're Sadie Collins," I say back. Low. Careful. Like I've been holding onto it a while, because I have.
Six years since she left this town, and every mile of small talk we trade after that, California, the drive, the weather, feels like standing on a rope bridge neither of us trusts.
She says she should get going. I don't let her go easy.
"Sadie."
She stops.
I gave up any claim to her business the day I stood in my father's study and said nothing while he tore her family's name apart over the phone to half the county. I've spent years telling myself that silence was the safest thing I ever did.
"It's not luck you ran into me," I say. "There's things about your family's place you don't know. Things I should've told you a long time ago."
"What things?" Her voice comes out smaller than the version of her that just called a stampeding horse dramatic.
I open my mouth around an answer I've been rehearsing since the day she left and never once said out loud.
Then I hear myself, standing on the shoulder of a county road with an audience of ranch hands and a busted fence rail, and I know this isn't how it happens. Not thrown at her in the middle of the road before she's had a second to steady herself.
"Drive safe, Sadie Collins," I say instead, and step back.
She pulls away slow, tires popping over loose stone. I stand there long after her taillights clear the curve.
Cooper's still got the colt, still watching me like he's waiting for an explanation I don't owe him.
"You gonna fix that rail," I say, "or keep staring at me like I grew a second head?"
He goes. I don't move for a while.
Years, and I finally said her name out loud to her face, and I still didn't say the one thing that's mine to say. I bought the land under her family's winery through a company with no name attached to mine, to keep some developer from turning it into lake houses.
I have never once told her, and standing here now I understand exactly why. Because saying it means admitting how long I've been circling this.
Not months. Years.
I press my thumb hard against the fence post until the ache in it matches the one behind my ribs. It's what I do instead of saying things out loud, fixing what's broken with my own hands so nobody has to ask me twice.
Beck calls before I've made it back to my truck, parked up past the bend where I'd left it working cattle before any of this happened.
"Cooper says you nearly gave yourself a heart attack over a colt."
"Cooper talks too much."
"Cooper also says Sadie Collins was driving the truck." A pause, longer than it needs to be. "You want to tell me anything, or should I just wait for you to do something stupid about it."
"I'm already doing something stupid about it."
"Good," he says, and I can hear the grin in it even through the phone. "About time."
I hang up before he can ask what that means. Mostly because I don't fully know yet myself. I just know I'm not spending tonight the way I've spent all the years since, keeping my mouth shut and calling it loyalty.
By the time the light's gone soft and gold over the ridge, I'm parked outside Collins Cellars with no plan and less sense, still in the same shirt I've had on since before sunup, sweat-stiff from a full day working cattle instead of sitting behind a desk where the board thinks I belong.
Live oaks stand thick along her drive, the kind that have outlasted three generations of both our families. Somewhere past the tasting room, a windmill creaks against the evening air, and the first crickets are already tuning up in the tall grass.
The place looks smaller than I remember. Same weathered sign over the tasting room, same gravel lot gone thin in patches, same porch light already lit even though the sun hasn't fully dropped. Her truck sits parked out front, engine ticking as it cools.
She comes out onto the porch before I've made it halfway up the drive, arms crossed, like she already knew I'd show up doing something stupid.
"How far behind with the bank?" I ask, because that's easier than explaining why I'm here.
"Why do you care?"
"Because I do."
"You didn't before."
Fair. Fairer than she knows.
She heads for her truck again, and something in me refuses to let this be the whole conversation. I close the distance in two steps and put my hand flat against the door before she can climb in, near enough now that her shoulder brushes my arm on the way past.
She pauses, one hand on the frame, her fingers inches from mine, and neither of us moves to fix it.
"Will you let me help?"
That gets her attention. She turns slow, like she's waiting for the catch.
"Help how?"
"Beaumont has resources you don't. Distribution, equipment, a name that opens doors in Dallas, Austin, and Houston.
" I hear myself saying it like it's already decided, like I haven't spent the whole drive over thinking it through.
"A partnership. This season. Get Collins Cellars through harvest, buy you room to breathe with the bank. "
That, and Collins Cellars has an actual sommelier running it now instead of guesswork, which is more than half the wineries in this valley can say. Not that I say that part out loud.
The words are out before I've caught up to them. Beck's going to have a field day with this.
She stares at me a long moment.
"You want to partner with my family's winery."
"I want to help. It's your call what that looks like."
"Those aren't the same thing, Rhett."
No. They're not. And I know exactly why I'm offering, even if I can't say it out loud beside her truck with the light going down around both of us.
"Come by the house," I say. "Talk numbers with me and Beck. No obligation."
She doesn't answer right away. Instead she steps back from the truck, and I fall into step beside her along the vine rows nearest the house.
"Why would you do that?"
Somewhere past these rows, the tree line marks where her family's operation ends and Beaumont ground begins, at least as far as anyone in this valley still believes.
Ten feet of fence has been all that separated us for as long as I can remember, and it's felt like a hundred miles for longer than I want to admit.
Somewhere down past the creek bottom, a mourning dove calls twice and quits, the sound carrying easy across the flat evening air. Prickly pear crowds the fence line out there, same as it always has, stubborn enough to outlast every argument this valley's ever had.
I don't answer right away. We walk on, boots quiet against the turned earth between the rows.
She's filled out some since we were kids, curves in places that used to be gangly teenage angles, more sure of herself in the way she carries it now.
She's close enough now that I catch the smell of her shampoo under the dust and diesel, something warm, like vanilla and honeysuckle.
It's not a smell I should recognize after all this time. I recognize it anyway.
The last light catches along her cheekbone, and for one reckless second I let myself imagine stopping her right there, turning her toward me, and closing the last two feet myself.
Then I don't.
Because I've spent years watching this valley eat itself alive with old grudges, and I'm tired of being one more Beaumont who let silence do the talking.
Because the second I said her name back there in the road, something in my chest woke up that's been asleep a long time.
Because it's her.
I don't say any of that.
"Because it's the right thing to do," I say instead. Safe. True enough to hold up, not true enough to hurt either one of us.
She studies me, head tilted, like she's reading something in my face I didn't mean to show.
"Why would you help me now?" she asks.
I don't have an answer I'm ready to give her.
Not one that doesn't start with an apology long overdue, and end with the truth about exactly how long I've been waiting for a reason to say it.
The last of the light's sliding gold across her family's vine rows, evening settling in slow like it's got nowhere else to be tonight. I've got no idea how I'm supposed to say any of that out loud without losing her for good this time.