24. Callie
CALLIE
I wore navy and kept my head down.
The church sat at the end of Main Street, white clapboard with a narrow spire and windows that let in too much light.
People were already gathering on the lawn when I pulled in.
I recognized most of them. Small-town weddings were like that — everyone showed up whether they knew the couple well or not.
I'd come because the bride worked at the feed store and had always been kind to me, even after the news about the divorce got around.
Even after I'd become the woman who walked out on Wade Rutledge.
I was braced to be hurt. That was the truth of it.
I expected someone to bring up Wade, or Shelby, or the mess I'd left behind at the ranch.
I expected polite cruelty wrapped up in concern, the kind of questions that sounded like sympathy but cut like a knife.
I expected to feel like an outsider in a town I'd called home for ten years.
What I didn't expect was to see him.
Wade stood near the church steps, talking to someone I didn't recognize.
He wore a dark jacket and jeans, his hat in his hands.
The sight of him hit me like whiplash. My chest tightened, my pulse kicked up, and I had the sudden ridiculous urge to get back in my truck and leave.
Just drive away before he saw me, before I had to face him and pretend I was fine when I wasn't.
God, what was I even doing here?
I made myself walk toward the church. I told myself I could slip past him, find a seat in the back, and he'd never even notice I was there. That plan lasted about three seconds. Wade turned his head, and his gaze landed on me. He went still.
I stopped walking.
For a long moment, we just stood there staring at each other like idiots.
The noise of the crowd faded into something distant and unimportant.
My hands were shaking, so I shoved them into my coat pockets.
He didn't move. He didn't smile. He just looked at me with an expression I couldn't name, something raw and tired and honest.
Then he crossed the lawn toward me, and my heart was doing something stupid in my chest, hammering so hard I thought everyone could probably hear it.
"Callie," he said.
Just my name. Nothing else.
I swallowed hard. "Wade."
We stood there facing each other, close enough that I could see the lines at the corners of his eyes, the stubble along his jaw.
He looked thinner than I remembered. Worn down.
Like he hadn't been sleeping well, or eating right.
Like he'd been carrying something heavy for a long time and it had finally broken him down.
"I didn't know you'd be here," I said.
"Neither did I." He shifted his weight, turning his hat over in his hands. The brim was worn where his fingers always went. "Didn't know you would be, I mean."
Ugh. This was worse than I'd expected. We were talking like strangers who'd just met at a bus stop, awkward and uncertain and careful. I hated it.
"What have you been doing?" The question came out before I could stop it.
Wade looked at me for a second, then glanced away. "Night care at the rescue."
My breath caught. I knew that already — Jolene had told me weeks ago — but hearing it from him was different. Hearing him say it out loud made it real in a way it hadn't been before.
"The sick animals," I said.
"Yeah."
"All of them?"
"The ones that needed it." His voice was quiet, steady. "A calf with pneumonia. A mare with an infected hoof. A sick goat. Been staying up with them through the worst of it, until they turned the corner."
God. Those were the animals I would've been up with, if I'd still been there.
Those were the nights I used to spend alone in the barn, bottle-feeding and checking temperatures and staying until I was sure they'd make it.
Wade had done that. He'd done my work. The work nobody in his family had ever cared about or understood, the work they'd called a hobby and waved off like it didn't matter.
I didn't know what to say, so I just stood there staring at him like an idiot, my throat tight and burning.
Wade wasn't done. He shifted again, his jaw working. "Been doing the ranch work with my hands, too. The stuff nobody sees. Feeding the dogs every morning. Checking the fence lines. Pulling calves when they need it."
I blinked. Wade didn't do that kind of work anymore.
He had people for it. He'd had people for it for years, ever since the business took off and he became someone who spent his days in boardrooms instead of barns.
Someone who wore suits and closed deals and left the actual ranch work to hired hands.
"Why?" I asked.
He met my eyes, and the directness of his gaze made my stomach flip. "I ended the Bradshaw deal."
The words didn't make sense at first. I just stood there, trying to process them, my brain stumbling over the information like I'd heard wrong. The Bradshaw deal was everything to his family. It was oil money, expansion, all the things Marlene and Travis had been pushing for. It was Shelby.
"You—" I stopped. Tried to find words. Started again. "When?"
"Weeks ago."
"Your family?—"
"I broke with them." His voice was flat, final. "Told them I was done. Told Shelby the same."
My stomach flipped again, harder this time. I felt like the ground had shifted under me, like everything I'd believed about what was happening had just been pulled out from under my feet. Wade had walked away. From the deal. From his family. From all of it.
"Why?" I asked again. My voice came out shaky, barely above a whisper.
Wade looked at me, and something in his expression made my chest ache. "Because it's what you wanted."
"Wade—"
"I didn't do it to be seen by you," he said. "I didn't do it so you'd know, or so you'd come back, or so you'd think better of me. I did it because you were right. About all of it."
I couldn't breathe. My pulse was hammering in my throat, and I was so nervous it vibrated beneath my skin. I wanted to believe him. God, I wanted to believe him so badly it hurt. But I'd spent years waiting for him to choose me, and he never had. Not once. Not until I'd already walked away.
Wade took a breath. "I'm sorry, Callie."
Three words. Simple. Direct. No excuses wrapped around them, no logic to explain why things had happened the way they did. Just an apology, plain and real.
"I'm sorry I didn't see what was right in front of me," he said, and his voice was rough now, unsteady. "I'm sorry I let them treat you the way they did. I'm sorry I made you feel like you didn't matter, because you do. You always have. I was just too much of an idiot to show it."
My eyes were burning. I blinked hard, trying to keep myself together, but my hands were trembling and my throat was so tight I could barely get words out.
"I don't know what you want me to say," I whispered.
"Nothing." Wade shook his head. "I'm not asking you for anything. I just wanted you to know."
He wasn't asking. He really wasn't. There was no question in his eyes, no expectation hanging in the air between us. He was just standing there, looking at me like I was the only person in the world who mattered, and asking for absolutely nothing in return.
I noticed his hand then. The way he was holding his hat. And there in his palm, against the brim, was my wedding ring.
My heart stopped.
"You still have it," I said.
Wade glanced down at the ring in his hand, then back at me. "Yeah."
"The divorce?—"
"I know." His voice was quiet. He closed his fingers over the ring and slid it into his jacket pocket. "I'm not stopping it."
I stared at him. He had my ring. He was carrying it with him like it still meant something, like it was something he couldn't let go of. But he wasn't asking me to take it back. He wasn't asking me to stop the divorce. He wasn't asking me for anything at all.
It broke something inside me.
I stepped forward and kissed him.
It was a stupid thing to do. Reckless and impulsive and everything I'd told myself I wouldn't do, but I didn't care.
I just needed to feel him, needed to know he was real and this was real and I wasn't imagining the way he was looking at me.
His mouth was warm against mine, familiar in a way that made my chest hurt.
When his hand came up to cup the back of my head, his fingers sliding into my hair, I felt like I was coming apart at the seams.
God, I'd missed him.
The kiss was intense, desperate, full of all the things I couldn't say out loud.
I pressed closer, and he made a low sound in his throat, his other arm coming around my waist to pull me flush against him.
Heat radiated off him like a furnace, and my whole body responded to it like a live wire, flushing and aching and wanting him so badly I couldn't think straight.
Then I pulled away.
Wade's hand was still in my hair, his forehead almost touching mine. His breathing was uneven, ragged. Mine wasn't any better. I could feel his heartbeat against my chest, fast and hard, matching my own.
"Callie—"
"I'm afraid it won't last," I said.
The words came out shaky, too honest, but I couldn't take them back. They were the truth. I wanted him. I wanted this. But I'd spent ten years watching him choose everything else over me, and I didn't know if one apology and a few weeks of doing the right thing were enough to undo all of that.
Wade's jaw tightened. He didn't argue. He didn't tell me I was wrong, or that I should trust him, or that everything would be different now. He just stood there, his hand still cradling my head, and nodded.
"I know," he said.
I stepped back. His hand fell away. The space between us felt like a canyon, impossible to cross.
"I don't forgive you," I said.
I needed him to understand that this wasn't over, that I hadn't decided anything, that I was still holding all the hurt he'd caused me and I didn't know what to do with it.
Wade's face didn't change. "Okay."
"The divorce is still happening."
"I know."
"I'm not asking you to wait for me."
"I know that, too."
He wasn't fighting me. He wasn't arguing or trying to convince me or asking me to give him another chance.
He was just standing there, accepting everything I said, and somehow that made it worse.
I wanted him to fight. I wanted him to ask.
But he didn't, and I didn't know if that meant he understood what I needed or if it meant he'd already given up.
People were moving toward the church. The wedding was about to start. I glanced over my shoulder, then back at Wade. He was watching me with that same tired, honest expression, like he could see right through me.
"I should go in," I said.
Wade nodded. "Yeah."
I turned and walked toward the church, my legs shaky, my heart pounding so hard it hurt. I didn't look back. I couldn't. If I looked back, I'd see him standing there with my ring in his pocket, and I didn't know what I'd do.
Inside, the church was full of people and flowers and soft music, but I barely noticed any of it. I found a seat near the back and sat down, my hands folded in my lap, trying to keep them from shaking. My bare finger felt wrong. Empty. Like something was missing that should've been there.
I wanted Wade. I wanted him so badly it was like a physical ache in my chest, a weight pressing down on my lungs and making it hard to draw breath.
But I was still afraid. Afraid he'd slip back into old patterns.
Afraid his family would pull him away again.
Afraid I'd let myself believe this was real, and then wake up one day to find out it wasn't.
The music swelled. The bride walked down the aisle, smiling and beautiful, and everyone stood. I stood, too, but I wasn't looking at her. I was looking at the back of the church, where Wade had slipped in and taken a seat across the aisle from me.
He wasn't watching the bride, either.
He was watching me.