23. Chapter 23
Rebel
The truck idles rough in Mrs. Miller's gravel drive, exhaust chuffing white into the cold air that bites at my knuckles through the open window. The radio plays low … some country station out of Bozeman, singing about heartbreak I don't need to hear.
I kill the engine. The silence that follows is immediate.
Tana's in the small side paddock with Bean, wearing jeans with honest dirt at the knees and a faded flannel.
Her dark curls, catching the morning light, and wild as the horses she gentles.
The western sky has broken open behind the trees, and for a second the whole place looks too gentle for the conversation I came here to have.
I open the truck door and hop out. The walk out to her felt longer than the drive from Wild Mercy.
She is almost turned fully toward me by the time she sees who it is.
Then something in her eases and locks back down so fast I nearly miss it.
Not welcome. Not exactly. More like she is tired of this mattering and no closer to knowing what to do with it.
“What are you doing here, Rebel?”
There’s less edge in it than the last time. That does not make it safer.
I rest an arm on the top rail, roll the toothpick once against my teeth, then pull it free and slip it into my pocket. "I want you back at Wild Mercy."
She lets the words sit there and studies my face like I just proved a point she wanted not to be right about.
“You never waste time getting to the hard part, do you?”
"Probably because I know you’ll hear the false version before I get halfway through it." I leave both hands where she can see them. "So listen to the rest before you decide how far to throw me."
That earns me a look I can’t read cleanly, but it is at least direct.
I stay where I am.
“I’m not asking you to step back into what it was,” I say. “Not under me, and not in any setup where your footing depends on whether I handle pressure well that day.”
Bean noses into her sleeve, looking for comfort or a forgotten treat. She lets him crowd close, fingers catching for a second in the strap at his cheek before she looks back at me.
“You say that like forms can fix it.”
“They can’t fix it,” I say. “What they can do is change who holds the power when things go bad. That part matters.”
Something in her face shifts, not much, but enough.
“I’m not here because I miss you and want that to carry the whole thing,” I say.
“I’m here because if there’s any version of Wild Mercy you could ever come back to, it has to be a different place than the one you left.
It has to be built so you are not the one absorbing the damage when somebody else gets comfortable. ”
This time when she looks at me, she doesn’t blink.
“You’re asking me to go back to the place where trust broke the first time.”
“Yes.”
“And you’re asking me to believe you finally know the difference.”
“Yes.”
She lets that sit between us.
"That’s a bigger thing to ask for than love, Rebel."
I nod. "I know."
For the first time since I drove up that gravel road, what sits between us no longer feels ruined beyond use. It feels unfinished, and I know better than to push it faster than she can bear.
Tana studies me the way she studies a horse she doesn’t entirely trust not to kick.
"“Say it plainly,” she says. “If I came back, what would my life actually look like?”
I nod once. This part matters too much to blur.
“If you came back,” I say, “you’d answer to Wade on operations and Rhodes on breeding. Not me. Your housing would be your choice. If what you wanted was your own place, in your name, separate from me, that’s what it would be.”
Bean rubs his forehead against her hip. She bumps him back and keeps listening.
I look at the fence rail instead of her for a second, then make myself say the rest of it clean.
“If this were only about what I want, I’d tell you to come back to the house with me and never sleep anywhere else again.”
Her eyes lift to mine.
“But that isn’t the offer,” I say. “Not unless it’s what you want too, and not because the ranch leaves you with no better option. I’m not asking you to put your footing in my hands again.”
Bean mouths at the lead rope, ears flicking between us.
Tana lifts a brow. “That sounds suspiciously like partnership language.”
“It is,” I say. “I’m asking whether there’s any version of Wild Mercy you could come back to if it stopped demanding so much faith from you.”
She runs her hand along the top rail and looks past me toward the trees, where the pale gold has thinned into the clearer blue of morning.
When she speaks again, her voice has lost a little of its edge.
“That would be different,” she says.
The sentence is small, but I feel the grip of something ease low in my chest before I can stop it.
Bean decides he has had enough of being philosophical and jerks the lead rope sideways hard enough to snap both our attention to him. Tana catches the halter ring before he can twist out of it, but the buckle has worked itself half loose in all his fidgeting.
"Hold him," she says.
For a second, the simple order seems to stop the air between us.
I don’t move right away, because I understand that this is a small act of trust and she means to keep it that way.
Tana looks at me once, impatient now. "Rebel."
I step through the gate slowly, keeping my movements easy and visible, and take the lead rope from her hand. Bean tosses his head in mild protest, then settles when I slide my grip lower and stand at his shoulder instead of trying to win a strength contest with a pony with a bad attitude.
Tana drops into a crouch by the halter. Her fingers work the leather flat, rethread the tongue, and tighten the keeper. She doesn’t thank me when she stands, and I’m glad for it. A thank-you would have flattened this into something ordinary.
She takes the rope back, but her hand stays over mine just long enough to register.
"You still know how to handle the difficult ones," she says.
"Some of them."
That almost gets a smile out of her.
It isn’t much, but it is the first thing she has given me since I came through the gate that feels unforced, and I know better than to lean on it too hard.
"There’s one more thing," I say.
Tana goes so still the lead rope might as well be nailed in place.
"I know I already told you I loved you before I knew about the baby," I say. "I just want to tell you more."
Bean snorts and bumps his nose against her elbow. She absently pushes him off without taking her eyes off me.
"I don’t want a life with you because there’s a child between us," I say.
"I want a life with you because every version of the future that still feels like mine has you in it on purpose. I want mornings where we fight over feed orders and then fix them, and I want to build a place where your work stands because it’s yours, not because I made room for it.
I want our child growing up watching the way I look at you and knowing, from the start, that when you speak, I listen. "
The wind shifts through the paddock, carrying the fragrant morning air.
"I’m not asking you to say yes tonight," I tell her. "I’m not even asking you to decide whether you still want me. I’m telling you that if you ever choose me again, it won’t be because a baby made the choice for you. I’m offering you a life you can walk into with your head up."
She takes that in, and for once the silence between us doesn’t feel like something closing.
Bean, bored again with human complication, swings his head and bumps Tana’s shoulder hard enough to rock her back half a step. She steadies on instinct, one hand going to the pony’s neck, the other still wrapped around the lead.
I move before I think better of it, then stop close enough to catch her if she asks and far enough not to make the choice for her.
She notices that distance. I can see it in the brief lift of her eyes.
"You know you can touch me," she says quietly.
The words sound careful, measured, and more intimate for that than anything easier would have been.
I set one hand at her waist, but light enough that she could step away from it without effort. I can feel the fine tension held through her even through the denim jacket. Bean snorts, offended that neither of us is giving him the attention he deserves, and noses at Tana’s elbow again.
She lets out a little laugh. "He has terrible timing."
"He learned from the best," I say.
That brings her eyes up to mine. The look she gives me still has an edge to it, but it no longer lands like something meant to cut.
Tana reaches up and closes her fingers around my wrist where my hand rests at her side, then she steps closer.
Her forehead nearly reaches my chest when she says, very softly, "That's all I can do tonight."
"Then that’s all we do," I answer.
She nods once without lifting her head, and the trust in that is so slight, so exact, that it feels bigger than if she had thrown herself into my arms.
Bean has finally found a patch of grass worth his full attention, the lead rope hanging slack from Tana’s fingers.
I lift my free hand slowly and touch the loose hair at her temple, brushing it back from her face. She closes her eyes at the contact, not melting into it, just allowing it, and the care she keeps around herself goes through me harder than abandon would have.
"Tana," I say.
She opens her eyes and tips her face up the last inch on her own. That is answer enough.
When I kiss her, I keep it light at first. Her mouth is warm and cautious and achingly familiar, and then the caution changes shape. Her fingers tighten once at my wrist before they slide higher, curling into my shirt. The sound she makes is small, almost swallowed, but it goes straight through me.
Nothing about this feels like the shed, with its secrecy and hurry and damage waiting on the far side of want. Every second of it asks whether I can stay exactly where she puts me and want no more than she offers, and for once that answer comes easy.
My hand settles more firmly at her waist when she leans in, and I feel the child between us only as a sharpened sense of care, not distance. She breaks the kiss first, breathing harder now, and rests her forehead briefly against my jaw.
"Not here," she whispers.
"No," I say.
Her mouth brushes mine once more, almost a promise this time, and then she steps back just far enough to keep the rest of the night from outrunning what we have actually earned.
I take the lead rope from her hand and loop it over the fence post before I touch her again. Even that feels like part of it now ... nothing rushed or taken for granted.
Tana closes both hands on my shirt and draws me back to her with a steadiness that knocks the breath out of the hunger and leaves something heavier in its place.
The kiss this time is deeper from the first breath, not frantic, not hidden, but open in a way that makes me feel the full weight of what she is giving and how carefully I have to hold it.
My hands slide from her waist to the curve of her back and stay there until she presses closer on her own, asking for more without surrendering an inch of herself.
Beneath her jacket, the heat is unmistakable. I ease the jacket down her shoulders, and she lets it fall into the crook of her elbows. She looks at me with her mouth still parted from the kiss, dark hair coming loose around her face, chest rising faster now.
I kiss her until the small sounds she makes lose all their caution and start sounding like trust with its guard down.
When I lift her into my arms to carry her toward the tack room steps, she gives a breathless laugh against my mouth and wraps herself around me without hesitation. That sound stays with me, because it feels too much like the first clean thing we have had in a very long time.
I set her down and she brushes past me on the worn tack room steps, close enough that heat flashes between us.
My hands find her hips. Her breath catches when I ease her back to the wall, and then our mouths meet again, rougher this time, open and out of control.
My hands stay where they are for one hard second before they start to move, learning the weight and curve her body carries now, and the fullness of her breasts.
But knowing where we are, and out of respect, I check myself. "You're so beautiful," I whisper.
We come apart still pulling at each other, breath wrecked, clothes twisted, my hands hot from where they’ve been on her. Neither of us is steady yet, and neither of us is anywhere close to done.
When she looks at me again, what’s in her face is still careful, still new enough to break if I mishandle it, but it isn’t imagined anymore. It’s here now, between us, in the heat of her mouth, in the give of her body under my hands, in the fact that she let this happen and stayed.
If we do go back to Wild Mercy, we will carry this with us ... the first time we found our way to each other without secrecy, imbalance, or fear doing the choosing for us.