5. Sawyer
FIVE
Sawyer
We didn’t work it out.
I stayed in New Mexico after Daniela left…we texted a bit, sweet and affectionate at first. It was nice, for a while.
But six months of separation is a long time when you’re trying to turn a one-night stand into something more. And we just didn’t have it in us…particularly because I was in an established career, busy as always, and because Daphne Wilder’s star was rising.
I'd watched it happen from a distance. Hard not to—her agent was good at his job and Daphne Wilder was everywhere by October.
An interview with a big film influencer.
A red carpet at some LA premiere where she wore something green that I saw on my phone at eleven at night in a New Mexico trailer and stared at longer than I should have.
The texts had slowed down around then. Neither of us made a decision about it. It just—stopped. Like a creek going dry in August. One day there's water and then one day there isn't and you can't point to the exact moment it changed.
I told myself it was fine. Made sense. She was building something and I was the horse master on a film she'd wrapped in June, and Millie's family, and nobody's love story.
I came back to Briar Hill in December and unpacked my trailer and checked on my horses and helped Gage with the back fence and didn't think about it.
Mostly.
Sunday dinners at the main house had been a thing since Forrest came home in 2020.
Aunt Peg had started it—showed up one Sunday with enough food for eight people, looked around at all of us rattling around the property like loose change, and just kept coming until it stuck.
Nobody argued with Peggy Holt about anything, and nobody wanted to.
Now it was standing. Wyatt and Haven walked over from the little house with Ethan on someone's hip. Dakota materialized from the guest room looking like a man who'd been asleep since Thursday. Gage was always already up with Millie and Bea and Blaise, in various states of disarray.
And Forrest came up from the cottage.
Forrest, who I was most worried about.
That was the thing I checked every Sunday without meaning to—whether the cottage light was on, whether he was already at the table when I got there, whether he was eating or just moving food around his plate.
Two years since Sophie. He was functional.
He was present. He showed up, did his work, said the right things at the right times.
He wasn't okay.
I knew the difference because I'd known him his whole life.
Forrest had been ten when we lost Mom and Dad.
I'd been thirteen. Old enough to understand what a car accident meant, young enough that the understanding had taken years to settle into something I could carry.
Forrest had done his grieving quietly, the way he did everything, and I'd watched him do it and not known how to reach him then either.
Some things didn't change.
Uncle Adam and Aunt Peg had taken us in without making a production of it—just folded us into the house like we'd always been there, which was the Holt way.
Gage had been eighteen and already running the ranch like he'd been doing it for years.
Wyatt had been sixteen and already half gone to whatever interior place he lived in.
Dakota had been four and hadn't understood any of it.
We'd figured it out. More or less.
I stopped by the cottage on the way over from my trailer and found Forrest sitting on the porch steps, petting one of the goats.
Dolly had really taken to him; mostly because he’d been bribing her for months with her favorite snack, goat-shaped animal crackers.
I sat down on the step next to him and Dolly ignored me completely, continuing to take animal crackers straight from Forrest’s palm.
“You up for dinner tonight?” I asked.
“You gonna take no for an answer?”
“No.”
“Then why ask?”
“Politeness.”
He fed Dolly another cracker. We sat there for a minute in silence, the December air cold and clear. The lights were on in the main house, the sound of Dakota’s laugh carrying across the property through an open window with the scent of food.
Dolly finished the crackers and wandered off without acknowledgment, done with Forrest now that the supply was gone. He watched her go.
"She does that every week," he said.
"Takes everything you've got and leaves?"
"Every time."
We sat there another minute. I wasn't in a hurry.
Forrest never was either, these days—he'd lost the sense of urgency he used to have, the one that had made him good at his job in the city, and replaced it with something that looked like patience but wasn't. More like waiting. For what, I didn't know if he knew.
I didn't ask. I'd learned not to ask.
"Aunt Peg made that thing with the cornbread," he said finally.
"How do you know?"
"I can smell it."
I stood up. Held out a hand. He looked at it for a second—that slight hesitation he had now before accepting anything offered—and then took it and let me pull him up.
We walked up to the house together without talking, which was fine.
Forrest and I had never needed to fill silence.
Even as kids, even right after the accident, we'd been able to sit next to each other and just—be there.
It was the thing I was most grateful for about having a brother. Not the talking. Just the being there.
The noise of the kitchen hit me all at once, the minute I stepped through the screen door.
Wyatt and Haven’s dog, Penny, came racing toward me; Aunt Peg was at the counter with Millie, while Uncle Adam sat at the table with Wyatt and Haven, the latter of whom had her son in her lap.
Gage was standing and rocking Blaise, who appeared to be throwing a fit about something.
Uncle Adam reached up. “Sawyer! And Forrest—glad you decided to join us tonight!”
Millie turned around, her eyes lighting on me, and she smiled.
“We have a guest tonight,” she said, tilting her head toward the living room. “You should go say hello.”
A peal of laughter echoed in from the living room—Bea—then a woman’s voice.
My heart did something I wasn’t used to.
I recognized that voice.
I squeezed Forrest’s shoulder before I moved to the entry to the living room…
…and for a second, it was like I was back in New Mexico last July.
Daniela was sitting on the floor—cross-legged, long dark hair down nearly to her waist, in jeans and a worn t-shirt that looked entirely alien compared to her usual designer looks from social media.
Bea was in her lap, facing her as Daniela made these ridiculous faces while Bea cackled uncontrollably.
She did it again.
Bea grabbed her face with both fists and shrieked.
“You think that’s funny?” Daniela said, pressing her nose to Bea’s cheek. “Huh? You tryin’ to mess with me?”
Bea grabbed a fistful of her hair. She’d been doing that since she was a kid.
“Ow—okay, okay, you win…”
I laughed softly.
Daniela looked up.
Fuck, she was gorgeous.
“Hey, stranger,” she said.
“Hey.”
Bea, sensing she’d lost Daniela’s attention, made her displeasure known by yanking her hair even harder.
“Wow, we’re still doing this—” Daniela gently extracted herself and looked up at me. “I didn’t know you’d be here.”
She was a damn good actress, but even I knew that was a lie. I gave her a quizzical look.
“Where else would I be?”
She shrugged. “...somewhere.”
“Like…?”
“Shooting a horse-themed Hallmark movie?”
I snorted. “Really.”
“It would be great.” She finally got her hair free from Bea’s fist. “The Horseman Who Stole My Heart.”
“Not to be confused with the Headless Horseman.”
“No, that’s the Halloween movie,” she said. She pulled Bea into her arms and pushed to her feet—and I couldn’t resist rushing forward to help her, extending a hand to grasp her elbows.
And touching her again…Christ.
It had taken all of two seconds for me to fall just as hard as I did last summer.
She looked down at my hands on her elbows. Looked back up.
"Thank you," she said. Dry. "Very gallant."
"You had a baby."
"I had a toddler. There's a difference." She shifted Bea to her hip and stepped back and I let go, which I was glad about because another two seconds and it would have been obvious. "She's gotten heavy."
"She's Gage's daughter. She was always going to be solid."
Daniela looked at Bea. Bea looked back at her.
"She really does look just like him," Daniela said.
"It's unsettling."
"Millie says she has his temperament too."
"God help us all."
Daniela laughed. Bea, delighted by the sound, grabbed her face again, and Daniela let her, turning her head to press a loud kiss to Bea's palm, which sent her into another round of shrieking.
I watched her with that baby and felt something I shouldn’t be feeling. Not about a girl who’d ghosted me, probably wanted nothing to do with me, and absolutely wasn’t looking to settle down.
"How long are you here?" I asked.
"Through Wednesday." She glanced up. "Maybe Thursday."
"Good trip?"
"Meeting in Austin on Friday." She adjusted Bea on her hip. "Then Millie guilted me into staying through the weekend."
"Millie doesn't guilt. She just looks at you until you agree."
"Same thing." The corner of her mouth pulled. "It's been a while since I've been out here. I missed—" She stopped. Looked at Bea. "I missed the kids."
I didn't say anything.
"What kind of meeting?" I asked.
“Film stuff.” She kept her eyes on Bea, playing it cool. But again…she had tells, and I could tell she was excited. “Ellis is doing another movie…wanted me to come in and read for the lead.”
My eyes widened. “Well, shi—” I eyed Bea. “Well…marbles.”
Daniela laughed. “Marbles?”
“It’s all I could think of.” I shook my head, still not sure how to take it. “That’s…that’s a big deal, Daniela.”
“It will be,” she said. “If I’m ready.”
“You’ll be ready.”
I said it without even a moment’s hesitation. Based on her reaction, it was exactly what she wanted to hear.
"Yeah?" she said.
"Yeah."
Millie called from the kitchen. The house moved toward the table—boots on hardwood, Penny's nails, Dakota's voice rising over everyone else's.
Daniela shifted Bea to her other hip and turned toward the kitchen.
"Sawyer," she said, without turning back.
"Yeah."
"It's good to see you."
She walked into the kitchen.
I stood there one more second in the quiet living room, and I thought about her in my arms in the June heat.
Then I followed her in.