Epilogue #2
I lay there with him heavy against me, his breath even on my throat, and stared at the dark ceiling. Winston wasn't going to say no. I'd known that since the morning he told me he wasn't going back to Texas. What I didn't know was what to do with a yes once I had it.
I'd figure it out in the morning.
I let Winston sleep in while I showered and dressed. He was still out cold when I left to join Sierra in the kitchen. I hung my coat on the back of the chair where I could see it and sat down.
Sierra slid a mug across the counter without looking up. He'd known since the morning I'd come in asking about ring sizes. The man missed nothing and said less.
"He's out again," Rafe said from the window.
I turned. Rafe had his coffee in one hand and was looking out over the yard.
"Galahad?"
"Fence line's fine. Gate's open. You tell me."
I went to the window. The paddock gate stood open, and Galahad's tracks cut north out of it and up the wash toward the ridge, clean in the frost the ground had pulled on overnight.
The horse had been doing this since the first winter I'd owned him.
Ten years of it. He went up to the ridge when something in him told him to, and stayed up there until I came to get him.
He came home with me after. I didn't fight it anymore.
Today of all days, I thought. You son of a bitch.
I set my cup down. "I'll get him."
Rafe didn't turn from the window. "Take Winston with you."
"I was going to."
Sierra slid two hot breakfast tacos wrapped in foil across the counter toward me without being asked. Rafe finally turned from the window and gave me a look I couldn't read all the way. I took the tacos and went out to find Winston.
He was at the bunkhouse, standing on the porch with Coyote, both of them leaning against the rail. Coyote had Nimue wound around his forearm in a way that would have made any sane man take a step back. Winston had stopped taking steps back around the third week.
"Galahad's up the ridge," I said.
Winston pushed off the rail. "You want company?"
"Yep."
Coyote tilted his head at me, too far. His black eyes went across my face, then down to my coat pocket, then back up. He opened his mouth.
I glared at him.
He closed his mouth and put a finger across it and held it there with the considered solemnity of a man performing a religious gesture. Nimue slid up off his forearm and tasted the air by his ear.
Winston glanced between us.
"What's his problem?" Winston said.
"He's having a moment."
Coyote nodded behind his finger. "Ride safe," he said around it, muffled. "Tell the horse I said hello."
Winston clapped me on the shoulder, and we headed for the barn.
Faye came out of her stall, blowing steam.
Winston had her saddled before I'd finished with Galahad's halter and lead rope, and he moved around the barn like he'd been in it longer than he had.
I coiled the rope and slung it over the horn.
He held the mare's head while I mounted up behind the saddle, and when he swung up in front of me, she danced a step sideways under the added weight and settled.
We rode up the wash without talking. I wasn't going to be much good at talking today, and Winston had figured that out somewhere around the time we left the yard.
I'd been practicing the words for a week and a half.
Had a speech. Had three speeches. One of them had ended up on the back of a feed receipt at four in the morning, and from there into the stove, because reading your own handwriting back at yourself on a day like this was worse than going in blind.
Chance would've laughed at me and told me to get my head out of my ass. Just say the words, brother. Words ain't gonna kill you.
We came up over the last rise, and there he was.
Galahad stood in the middle of the clearing like he owned it, which, as far as he was concerned, he did. His breath fogged in white plumes around his ears, and his tail flicked lazy and pleased with himself.
I was going to strangle that horse.
Winston pulled the mare up about forty feet out and waited. He'd ridden with me enough by now to know that a man didn't come at a smart horse like a freight train. You let the horse see you, then you let him decide to be found.
"Galahad," I said in my best scolding voice.
His ears flicked forward.
"You know what you did."
He blew out a long breath and stamped a hoof.
"Stay up here," I said over my shoulder.
Winston didn't answer. The mare shifted a half-step and settled.
I swung down. My knees caught the cold when I hit. I'd been sleeping wrong for a week, and my left knee had been having opinions about it. I left Winston's horse and started across the clearing on foot, hands loose at my sides, the ring riding heavily in my pocket.
Galahad watched me come. His ears swiveled, one forward, one back. He liked Winston well enough. They'd come to an understanding over the summer that amounted to mutual suspicion with benefits.
I stopped about six feet off.
"You son of a bitch."
Galahad tossed his head.
"Don't give me that. You know what day it is."
He didn't, because he was a horse. But the head toss was better than nothing.
I closed the last of the distance and put my hand on the long muscle of his neck. He didn't shy. He bumped his muzzle against my shoulder once, hard, and pushed his forehead against my chest. I stood there for a minute with my hand flat on him and my breath coming out in clouds to match his.
"All right," I said. "You had your fun."
I took a long breath in. The air carried horse and frost and the sage that grew up between the rocks on the west side of the clearing. That smell had been my favorite thing in the world since I was eighteen years old. Today it was sharper than usual.
I slid my hand down his neck to his shoulder.
"Hold on a second."
I stepped back. Galahad watched me. I reached into my coat pocket, unzipped it one-handed, and pulled the leather square out. I held it flat against my chest for a second because I didn't know what else to do with it. Then I turned around.
Winston was still on the mare. He'd turned her a quarter so he could watch me without craning his neck.
"Winston."
"Yeah."
"Come on down off that horse."
He slid his boot out of the stirrup and swung down in one clean motion, which he hadn't been able to do in July. Six months on Pae Saco had put him back in his own body.
He walked over and stopped about three feet off, close enough to see his eyes. His breath was steady. Mine wasn't.
"Ransom?"
"Yeah."
"Is this what I think this is?"
"Depends on what you think it is."
I opened my hand and flipped the leather back.
It was a silver band, brushed so it wouldn't catch on tack.
The kind of ring a man could wear working a horse and not lose a finger over.
I'd spent two hours in Truth or Consequences picking it.
The jeweler had tried to sell me three different things with stones in them.
I'd told him the man I was marrying didn't wear jewelry and wouldn't know what to do with a stone.
"Keep those," I'd said. "Give me the plainest band you've got. "
Winston looked at the ring for a long second without moving. His jaw went tight, and he reached out and took the ring out of the leather. He held it up between his thumb and his finger.
"Jesus, Ransom."
"Yeah."
"This a proposal?"
"You want me to get down on one knee and ask you properly?"
His lips slowly turned up in a smirk. "Darlin', we ain't done nothing proper. Why start now?"
"So you'll do it? You'll marry me?"
"That's what I said." He took the ring and slid it on before holding up his hand to admire the ring. "Your claim looks good on me, darlin'."
The words made something low in my belly flutter. "Always has."
I put my hat back on and pushed it up my head a little more than usual.
"You're still gonna kill for him." Winston lowered his hand and looked at me.
"That all right with you?"
He took my hand and squeezed it once. "Long as you're mine."
He kissed me, lips tasting like coffee, cold air, and salt. I pulled him against me and slid my hand into his hair, holding him there. When we pulled apart, he pressed his forehead against mine and stayed there, eyes closed.
We stood like that for a minute. I don't know how long. Galahad snorted and shifted a hoof on the rocks behind us.
"We should head back."
"Yeah."
Neither of us moved.
"Winston."
"I'm going, darlin'. Give me a second."
He didn't give me a second. He kissed me again, quick this time. Then he stepped back and scrubbed a hand down his face. The ring caught the light when his hand came away. He looked at it, shook his head once, and started for the mare.
I clicked my tongue at Galahad, and he walked to me without a lead. No well-trained horse did that. Galahad was not a well-trained horse. I ran my hand down his neck, walked back to Faye for the halter rope coiled on her horn, and rigged him up.
I swung up bareback. He didn't argue.
Winston turned Faye around, and we started down the wash at a walk.
The sun was up higher now and the frost was gone out of the shadows.
The country was all pale yellow grass and sage, with the dark line of the mesa cutting east. It was the kind of clear February morning I'd seen a thousand times.
Today I was riding down it with a man who'd said yes.
Winston caught me looking at him.
"What?"
"Nothing."
"Bullshit."
"You're gonna let me get away with it, though."
He grinned. "For now."
When we rode down out of the wash and the ranch came into view across the flat, I pulled Galahad up. Winston stopped beside me.
The ranch sat low against the land. The roofs had gone dark with the morning's melt.
The smoke from Sierra's kitchen stack went straight up into the blue.
We'd rebuilt the barns we lost, bought and broken new horses.
Some of the bunkhouse boys had moved on.
But it was still the same as it ever was, give or take.
Winston didn't say anything. After a minute, he reached across the gap between the horses and put his gloved hand flat on my thigh. He left it there. Galahad didn't bite him or Faye, which was as close to a miracle as you could get in a place like Pae Saco.
"Ready?" Winston said.
"Yep."
We crossed the flat and rode up the lane. Sierra was on the back porch folding and refolding the same dish towel. Rafe was at the paddock rail. Coyote was up on the bunkhouse porch with Nimue around his neck, grinning wider than a reasonable man should grin.
Winston swung down off Faye and tied her off at the rail. I followed him down and tied Galahad next to her. When Winston turned, Coyote snatched up his left hand.
"Took you damn long enough!" Coyote said. "Was startin' to think you forgot what you drove to T or C for."
"You knew?" Winston called back.
"Maybe."
"Let him go, Coyote," Sierra said from the porch, and Coyote let Winston go.
Rafe pushed off the rail, walked over, and clapped Winston on the back. "Congrats, son. Welcome to the family."
Coyote whooped from the bunkhouse porch and started clapping, Nimue swaying along his arm with the motion of it. Sierra shot him a look, and Coyote stopped clapping. Only Sierra could stop Coyote with a look.
"You go fetch the soap," Sierra said. "It's bath day."
Coyote's eyes widened, and he looked at me, but I wasn't about to save him from the bathtub this time. He turned to Winston and opened his mouth.
"Bath," Sierra repeated, "or no pancakes."
Coyote scrunched up his face, then walked over to the kitchen window, opened it, and wiggled through.
Sierra sighed and watched him do it. "One day that boy's going to be the death of me," he muttered and shook his head.
Then the phone started ringing in the main house.
Sierra disappeared inside and came back a moment later, a shade paler. "Ransom. It's the hospital."
I crossed the yard faster than my knees wanted me to, ran up the porch steps, and went straight to the phone. Sierra stood back with his dish towel and watched me pick up.
"Pae Saco. This is Ransom speaking."
"Ransom. It's Maria."
Maria? Chance's nurse? In ten years, she'd never once called the landline. She'd text sometimes, but even that was rare. There were two reasons Maria would call, and I'd been bracing for one of them every morning for a decade. The other one I hadn't let myself think about in a long time.
"Ransom, honey, are you sitting down?"
"No."
"You're going to want to sit down."
The kitchen was very quiet. Sierra's dish towel hung from his hand. My pulse was loud in my own ears. Winston's boots came up the porch steps behind me. The screen door creaked. Winston stopped in the doorway, reading my face, and didn't come any further into the kitchen.
"Is he..."
"He's awake, Ransom. Chance is awake."