Chapter Eighteen （Epilogue） #2
"What are you two conspiring about?" she asks, nodding after Deb, who's wandered off toward the fire pit with a studied casualness that fools absolutely nobody.
"Nothing yet." I press a kiss to her temple, the same easy, unthinking affection I used to give freely before I learned exactly how much it costs to lose the right to it and then earn it back. "Might be something, eventually. Not our business to rush."
"Mysterious."
"I'm allowed one mystery. I spent eight months with none at all."
She laughs at that, easy and real, and leans into my shoulder, and we sit together on the step while the party carries on around us, the fire crackling, Silas's voice booming out some old story he's told a dozen times before, Denise and Preacher's Amarillo crew mixing easy with our own charter like the two clubs have finally found their way to something like peace.
"I signed the papers today," Rowan says, quiet, just for me. "Not divorce papers. The other kind. Renewed the vows, if you want to call it that. Made it official again, at the courthouse, same judge even, believe it or not."
I go very still. "You didn't tell me you were doing that today."
"I know. I wanted it to be mine first, just for a few hours, before it became ours again.
" She looks up at me, something soft and certain in her expression that I don't think I'll ever get tired of seeing directed my way.
"I'm not the same woman who married you six years ago, Wyatt.
I don't think you're the same man either.
But I like who we've both become enough to bet on it again, scar and all. "
"Scar and all." I pull the folded paper from my jacket pocket, the one I've been carrying for three days without telling her, a match to whatever she's just described.
"I had the same idea. Went to see the same judge myself, actually, on Tuesday.
He remembered us. Asked if we wanted the same readings from six years ago or something different this time. "
Rowan goes very still, staring at the paper in my hand. "What did you tell him?"
"Told him different. Told him we're not the same people who stood in front of him six years ago, so it didn't seem right to pretend otherwise with the same words.
" I unfold it enough for her to see her own signature already there, added this afternoon before the party, timed, I realize now, to land on exactly the same day she'd chosen without either of us planning it.
"Guess we were both thinking the same thing this week, without saying it out loud. "
"Guess we were." She laughs, a little disbelieving, wiping at her eyes with the back of her hand. "That's either a very good sign or proof we've spent so much time together these last four months we've started thinking in sync out of self-defense."
"I'll take either explanation."
Silas catches sight of us from across the yard, something shifting in his weathered face, and he raises his own beer in our direction, a small, deliberate gesture that draws the attention of half the party before he says a word.
"To Frank Reyes's daughter," he says, loud enough to carry, and the yard goes quiet around us, Rowan's hand tightening in mine at the mention of her father's name.
"Man rode with this charter twenty-two years, told me once his proudest accomplishment wasn't a single mile he ever rode, it was raising a daughter tougher than half the patches at this table.
I didn't understand what he meant until I watched her walk into my clubhouse three months back and hand me evidence to bring down a man twice her size, calm as anything, because it was her business on the line and she wasn't about to let anybody else fight that battle for her.
" He raises the beer higher. "Frank, wherever you are, brother, she did you proud. Both of them did."
A rough cheer goes up around the fire, Preacher's voice loudest among them, and Rowan presses her face into my shoulder for a moment, overwhelmed, and I hold her there, letting the whole charter witness exactly how much this moment costs and means at once.
I kiss her there on the step, slow and certain, in front of the whole charter, in front of Silas and Preacher and Deb and Denise and every brother who watched me lose everything and then watched me claw my way back to this exact moment, and somewhere behind us I hear Silas's voice call out something about round two of drinks being on him tonight, and a ragged cheer goes up from the yard, and neither of us pulls back from the kiss to acknowledge it, too caught up in four months of unglamorous, earned, ordinary work finally arriving somewhere worth staying.
It's not the marriage we had before. It's better, harder-won, built out of the specific, unglamorous work of two people who know exactly what it costs to keep choosing each other, one ordinary evening at a time, for as long as it takes.
Across the yard, Deb catches my eye over Rowan's shoulder, something soft and unguarded on her face before she notices me watching and schools it back into her usual sharp composure, and beyond her, Preacher's still talking to Deuce by the fire, unhurried, patient, a man who's clearly decided some things are worth taking slow.
I think about what he told me that morning after church, the actual test isn't getting it perfect the first time, and I wonder, watching the two of them not-quite-looking at each other across a crowded yard, whether he's about to learn that lesson from the other side of it, the waiting side, the side that doesn't get to control the timeline no matter how ready it feels.
Whatever that turns into, it's not tonight's story.
Tonight belongs to a woman with paint-stained hands and a fresh pair of coordinates below an old compass rose, sitting beside me on a porch step with her signature drying on a piece of paper in my jacket pocket, choosing me again, clear-eyed, on her own terms, exactly the way she chose me the first time and the way I intend to keep earning, one unglamorous, ordinary evening at a time, for as long as she'll let me.