Chapter 15
SADIE
Iam standing in my childhood bedroom in the one dress nice enough for a Beaumont family dinner, and I am seriously reconsidering every decision that led me here.
The dress is red, simple, the kind of thing that looks like nothing on the hanger and everything on. I bought it two years ago for a competition banquet in Napa and never once thought I'd wear it to walk back into the house I used to hate driving past.
My mother sits on the edge of my bed, watching me smooth the fabric over my hips for the third time.
"Stop fussing," she says. "You look lovely."
"I look nervous."
"You look lovely and nervous. Both things can be true."
I turn to the mirror one more time. My dark hair is down, soft waves I spent twenty minutes on and will ruin the second I step outside into the wind. My mother reaches over and fixes a piece near my temple, her fingers gentle, familiar.
I wait for it. The warning. The reminder that Beaumonts smile with their teeth and mean something else entirely, the same speech she gave me the morning I left Red Oak Ridge and every time since that a Beaumont name came up in conversation.
It doesn't come.
She just tucks the strand of hair back and studies me like she's memorizing something.
"What?" I ask.
"Nothing." She smooths my shoulder, an idle motion, the kind mothers do without thinking. "You look happy. That's all."
The word catches somewhere soft in my chest. Happy.
I hadn't thought about it in those terms, not once, not through the fence line or the sabotage or the calls from Ashford Water Holdings that keep circling my family like buzzards.
But she's right. Something in me has loosened this week, some old, guarded weight I stopped noticing because I'd carried it so long.
"Mom."
"Hm?"
"You didn't say it. The thing about the Beaumonts."
She smiles, and it's not the tired smile she usually gives me when that name comes up. It's something else. Something that looks almost like relief.
"Maybe I don't need to anymore," she says. "Maybe I'm finally watching my daughter figure out the difference between the man and the name he carries."
I don't have anything to say to that, so I hug her instead, careful not to wrinkle either of us, and we stand there for a second longer than either of us needs to.
Some old, careful part of me knows exactly what letting my guard down for a Beaumont cost me last time. I let it happen anyway.
It hits me standing there in the mirror, the strange, quiet weight of it. All that time my mother spent building a wall around that name, brick by brick, warning me off it every chance she got. Tonight she just let me walk out the door.
I don't know what scares me more. That she's stopped worrying, or that some part of me has too.
Then my phone buzzes on the dresser. A rental listing alert, some app I forgot to delete, another kitchen in another town, the kind of place I told myself I'd need once harvest ended and I could leave without owing anyone an explanation. I turn the screen face down without reading it.
Headlights sweep across my bedroom window at exactly six o'clock. I know before I look that it's him, because Rhett Beaumont has never once in his life been late for anything.
I grab my purse and head downstairs. My mother is already waiting on the porch, arms crossed, watching from the doorway the way she used to when I left for prom.
Rhett is already out of the truck by the time I reach the bottom step.
He's traded his usual work shirt for something dark, quiet, the kind of simple fabric that costs more than it looks like it should.
It fits him the way good clothes fit men who don't think about clothes at all, stretched across his shoulders in a way that makes my mouth go dry before he's said a single word.
He stops at the base of the steps and looks up at me.
"Sadie."
Just my name. No smirk pulling at his mouth, no easy line waiting behind it.
His eyes drop once, taking in the red before they come back to my face, slow enough that I feel it everywhere the fabric touches.
"You clean up all right, Beaumont."
"You look beautiful."
No qualifier. No teasing follow-up, no joke to soften it into something safer. Just the words, plain and steady, like he's been holding onto them and finally decided to set them down.
Heat climbs up my neck. I glance back at my mother, half expecting her to say something, but she only lifts a hand in a small wave and steps back inside, leaving us to it.
"Ready?" he asks.
"Define ready."
That earns me the smallest curve of his mouth. He opens the passenger door before I can reach for the handle myself, a habit I've noticed and refuse to admit I like.
"You know I can open my own door," I say, sliding in.
"I know." He shuts it behind me anyway.
He rounds the hood, unhurried, like the whole evening belongs to him and he's not the least bit worried about proving it. By the time he drops into the driver's seat, I've already decided the shirt is a personal attack.
"You're staring, Collins."
"I'm assessing. There's a difference."
"Assessing what."
"Whether that shirt was a calculated decision or you just got lucky."
It's a habit from years of blind tastings, reading structure before I let myself trust the label. Rhett reads confident straight through, no apology built into it anywhere, the kind of thing you don't have to talk yourself into believing.
He pulls out onto the ranch road, one hand loose on the wheel, and doesn't even try to hide the satisfaction on his face. "Calculated."
"Confident," I say.
"You noticed," he says.
"I noticed you're insufferable."
"You noticed the shirt first." He glances over just long enough to make the words land, then puts his eyes back on the road like he hasn't just won something.
I cross my arms and look out the window so he can't see me fighting a smile. The radio hums low, some old country song filling the quiet between us, and the hills outside are going gold at the edges, the sun dropping fast behind the vines.
"You okay?" he asks, eyes still on the road.
"Define okay."
"Sadie."
"I'm fine." I study the fields sliding by. "It's just been a long time since I sat at that table and didn't feel like I was being watched."
"You're not being watched tonight."
"No?"
"You're being welcomed." He glances over just long enough to make sure I hear it. "There's a difference."
"You say that like it means something."
"It usually does."
"Was that the same thing, then? Driving me to dinner and claiming me at a gate in front of half your ranch hands?"
That gets me a real look, slow and deliberate, the kind that makes the truck feel smaller than it is.
"No," he says. "That one I meant exactly the way it sounded."
Heat crawls up the back of my neck. I turn to the window before he can watch it happen, but I feel him notice anyway, feel the quiet, certain amusement rolling off him like he already knows he's won this round too.
"You're awfully sure of yourself, Beaumont."
"I know what I want." He doesn't so much as glance over this time. He doesn't have to. "Never seen the point in pretending otherwise."
His hand leaves the wheel and settles over mine on the seat between us, warm and unhurried, like it belongs there.
He doesn't say anything else. He doesn't need to. His thumb moves once along my knuckles, slow, and every nerve in my hand lights up like it's the first time anyone's ever touched it.
I don't trust myself to answer that. I'm too busy trying to figure out when exactly I started believing him, and how long I've got left before I stop caring that I do.
He slows the truck at the last bend before the gate, and for a second neither of us reaches for a door handle.
"Sadie."
"Hm?"
"Whatever happens in there tonight, whatever my grandmother says, whatever Knox tries to start." He turns, one arm draped over the wheel, looking at me like the rest of the world outside this truck has stopped mattering. "You're not walking in there alone."
"I've survived worse dinner tables."
"That's not what I said."
I hold his eyes and something in my chest gives a little, quiet and unwilling. "No," I say. "I don't suppose it was."
He doesn't smile this time. He just nods once, like the matter's settled, and turns back to the road.
The gate comes into view, wrought iron and stone pillars catching the last of the light, and something in my stomach tightens the way it always does when I see this place. Not fear this time. Something closer to anticipation, unfamiliar enough that I don't quite know what to do with it.
Rhett parks near the front steps instead of the side lot, and I notice the small thing it is, the way he's chosen to bring me in through the front door tonight instead of the side entrance we usually use for harvest business.
The porch comes alive the closer we get.
String lights glow along the rail, strung up for no reason at all except that Evelyn always thinks the porch could use a little more shine.
Somewhere past the screen door, Knox's laugh carries loud over something, Beck's low reply cutting through it.
Beneath it all is the smell of Evelyn's roast drifting out into the yard, rosemary and warm bread and something sweet baking for later.
The whole house looks lit from the inside out, amber spilling through every window onto the grass.
Rhett comes around to my side and opens the door before I can. He offers his hand to help me down, and I take it, the weight of his palm familiar now in a way that still manages to surprise me every time.
We walk toward the steps together, the gravel crunching soft beneath us, the porch lights spilling gold across the yard ahead.
His hand finds the small of my back.
It isn't a big gesture. It isn't meant to be. Just his palm settling there, steady and certain, guiding me up the first step like it's the most natural thing in the world for it to be there at all.
I feel it everywhere.
The girl who left this town swore she'd never let a Beaumont close enough to matter again. She would have flinched at this exact touch, found a reason to put space between them before anyone could see it happen.
Standing here now, string lights glowing overhead, his hand steady against my back like he has every right to it, I think, for the first time since I came home, that maybe I'm allowed to want this.
Maybe I'm allowed to want him.