Chapter 3
Ivy
The road back to Copper Creek stretched like a lifetime, each mile marker a year I’d been gone, each curve a memory I’d tried to forget.
Before dawn, I’d done what I should’ve done weeks ago.
Mark stirred when I sat on the edge of the bed, his perfect hair a mess for once, his voice rough with sleep. “You’re really leaving today?”
“Yeah,” I said quietly, pulling my suitcase zipper closed. “And… I think that’s probably it, Mark.”
He blinked at me, still half-asleep. “It?”
“It for us.” It came out soft, but steady. “You’re a good man, but this isn’t working. Not for me.”
He laughed under his breath, disbelieving. “You’re just stressed about the trip. You’ll call me in a few days and—”
“I won’t.”
He sat up, the sheet falling to his waist. “Come on, Ivy. You don’t throw away something that works because of nerves. We’re fine.”
We were fine. That was the problem.
“I don’t want just fine,” I said, picking up my purse. “You deserve someone who wants all of this—who feels lucky every time you look at her. That’s not me.”
He frowned, trying to turn it into a negotiation, into something he could fix with logic. “Let’s talk when you get back. Don’t make decisions when you’re emotional.”
“I’m not emotional.” I met his eyes, calm and certain, letting the truth out for the first time in months. “I’m just done pretending.”
He shook his head, a little smile tugging at his mouth, the one he used when clients said something na?ve. “You’ll change your mind.”
I didn’t answer. There was no fight left to have.
By the time he drifted back to sleep, convinced I’d come around, I was already locking the door behind me.
The city was quiet at four a.m.—just delivery trucks and early joggers, skyscrapers still lit up like Christmas trees against the dark sky.
My Mercedes—the one indulgence I’d allowed myself after my first big bonus—was packed with clothes that suddenly felt all wrong for where I was going.
Designer blouses that would wilt in barn humidity.
Heels that would sink into soft earth around cattle chutes.
The armor I’d built for my city life was useless against the memories waiting for me in East Texas.
The skyline shrank in my rearview mirror as the sun came up, painting the glass towers gold before they disappeared entirely.
Dallas gave way to suburbs—cookie-cutter houses with identical lawns, strip malls that could’ve been anywhere in America.
Then the suburbs thinned out, replaced by something older, something that made my chest ache with recognition.
Gas stations became fewer and farther between. The ones that remained had been there forever—family-owned places with time-worn gas pumps. I stopped at one about an hour outside Dallas, needing coffee and a moment to steady myself.
The old man behind the counter had looked at my clothes, my car, and said, "You lost, honey?"
"No," I'd replied, though it felt like a lie. "Just heading home."
"Where's home?"
"Copper Creek."
His eyes had lit with recognition. "Blackwood country. Good people out there. You know the family?"
Everyone knew the Blackwoods. They were Copper Creek royalty, as close to aristocracy as Texas ranching allowed. Only a handful of other families were that big. The McLeods in Wild Creek were one of them.
"I used to," I said, and left before he could ask more questions.
The landscape changed gradually, then all at once.
City sprawl became farmland. Cotton fields stretched toward the horizon, their white bolls ready for harvest. Cattle grazed behind barbed wire fences that ran parallel to the highway.
Red-tailed hawks circled overhead, riding thermals in the morning heat.
The radio seemed determined to torture me.
Every station played country—not the pop-country that passed in Dallas, but the real stuff.
The music of my childhood. George Strait singing about Amarillo by morning.
Willie Nelson crooning about blue eyes crying in the rain.
Randy Travis wondering about the storms of life.
And then, because the universe had a cruel sense of humor, that Tim McGraw song came on. The one Wyatt and I had danced to at senior prom.
"It's your love, it just does something to me..."
“Oh, it does something to me all right,” I muttered, stabbing the power button hard enough to bruise my finger. “Gives me hives.”
The silence was worse. In the silence, I could hear everything. Ghost conversations that played on repeat in my mind. Wyatt explaining the difference between Angus and Hereford cattle, hands moving as he talked, passionate about bloodlines and breeding programs even at seventeen.
God, that boy could talk about cows like they were poetry.
His voice would get deeper when he talked about the ranch, about the legacy he was inheriting. Not arrogant, just... sure. Sure of his place in the world in a way I’d never been.
Louisa’s voice drifted through the years, patient and warm as she taught me to make cornbread in her kitchen. “The secret is buttermilk, honey, and not overmixing.” I smiled a little. “Guess that’s one secret I actually kept. Along with every bad decision I’ve ever made.”
Owen’s laugh echoed in memory, low and rumbling, the sound of a man who found joy even in chaos. He’d always made me feel like I mattered—like I belonged. I swallowed hard. “Great. Crying over cornbread now. We’re off to a stellar start.”
The boys. God, they’d be men now. Clay—thirty-one, probably still charming everything in a skirt and pretending it was accidental.
I could almost hear him laughing, that reckless gleam in his eye.
Hunter—steady, gentle, probably married to some lucky vet tech who bakes cookies for the entire county.
Luke—the baby. He was eleven when I left.
I’d probably have to stop myself from patting his head like a golden retriever.
And then there were the Walkers—Liam and Sophie. Liam would be thirty-two now, same as Wyatt. Texas Ranger material through and through. Quiet, intense, probably terrifying in an interrogation room. Sophie—sweet Sophie—had probably become exactly what she’d always wanted to be. A healer.
And Maggie. God, Maggie. Two years younger than me, she’d been my partner in crime, my late-night confidante. Probably running the whole damn ranch by now. The thought of seeing her again made something twist in my chest. Guilt, nostalgia, regret. Take your pick.
Ten miles out from Copper Creek, my hands were shaking so bad I had to pull over at the old Sinclair station that had been abandoned since before I was born. The green dinosaur sign leaned against the wind, stubborn and rusted, and I couldn’t help but think, Yeah, same.
A truck rumbled past, the driver giving me the two-finger country wave. I smiled despite myself.
For half a second, I considered turning around. I could call Doug, fake a family emergency. “Sorry, boss, can’t do the breeding contract. My goldfish died.”
Except no one lied to Louisa Blackwood and lived to tell about it.
I sighed, dropped my head against the headrest, and stared at my reflection in the rearview mirror.
“You can do this,” I said to myself. “You’re a professional woman with a master’s degree and excellent credit.
You have handled million-dollar accounts and irate executives.
You can handle one cowboy with a grudge and the bone structure of a Greek god. ”
Pause.
“Probably.”
But even as I said it, I knew I was lying.
Wyatt Blackwood wasn't just some cowboy.
He was my first everything—first kiss, first love, first heartbreak.
He was the standard I'd measured every other man against and found them wanting.
He was the ghost that haunted every relationship I'd tried to have since.
Five miles from town, I passed the old Baptist church where we'd hidden from a storm one winter night when we were seventeen.
The memory hit so hard I almost swerved.
We'd been driving back from a school basketball game when the storm hit—sudden and violent, the kind of Texas storm that could spawn tornadoes without warning.
The church had been closer than home, and we'd run for it, already soaked by the time we reached the door.
Inside, we'd stood dripping in the vestibule, laughing at how we looked like drowned rats. Then the laughter had died as awareness crept in. We were alone, truly alone, in a way we rarely were. The storm had knocked the power out, leaving us in darkness, broken only by lightning flashes.
"We should probably wait it out," Wyatt had said, his voice rough.
"Yeah," I'd agreed, though the storm outside felt safer than the one building between us.
We'd ended up in the back pew, supposedly to wait out the weather, but really just needing to be close.
He'd kissed me there in that church, soft at first, then deeper when I'd made a sound that might have been his name or might have been a prayer.
His hands had stayed respectfully on my waist, but I'd felt the tremor in them, the effort it took to keep them still.
"If this is a sin," he'd whispered against my neck, "I'll gladly burn for it."
"Don't say that," I'd whispered back, but I'd been thinking the same thing.
The storm had passed, as storms do, and we'd driven home in silence, both of us knowing we'd crossed some invisible line. Three weeks later, on my eighteenth birthday, we crossed all the rest.
The memory made my face burn even now, alone in my car with no one to see.
Then, there it was. The sign I'd been dreading and anticipating in equal measure:
Welcome to Copper Creek – Where the Heart Rides Free Population 2,847 – Friendliest Town in East Texas
Someone had added a smaller sign underneath since I'd left: Home of the Blackwood Ranch – Excellence in Cattle Since 1952