Chapter 9 #2
"The books will be there next time, baby."
"But what if they get lonely?"
Maggie grinned. "She's got you there."
"She's got me everywhere," Callie said. But she was smiling — the easy one, the one that came without effort when she was around people who weren't keeping score.
"It's a good town. It's — it took me a while to stop waiting for the catch.
In Dallas, everything came with conditions.
The neighborhood, the school, the women at the club.
Everything was transactional. Here people just..
." She trailed off. Picked up her fork. Put it down.
"Just what?" Momma asked. Gentle.
"Wave at you in the parking lot for no reason. Hold doors. Ask how Maisie's doing and actually wait for the answer." She shook her head. "Bev told me on my first day that Copper Creek grows on you like ivy. Slow, then everywhere. She wasn't wrong."
Momma and Maggie exchanged a look — the Blackwood women's silent language, the one that communicated entire conversations in a single glance.
"Well," Momma said. "You're ours now. That's how it works."
Callie laughed — surprised, warm, her head tipping back and her throat long and golden in the light. I forgot what forks were for.
Jack kicked me under the table. Gently. Pointedly. I closed my mouth and went back to my sandwich.
After lunch, Maisie demanded a return to the barn. Callie started to follow, but I caught her eye.
"Can I show you something? Maisie'll be fine with Momma and Maggie for a minute."
"Is this the cowboy equivalent of 'come look at my etchings'?"
I laughed. "It's a horse, Callie. My etchings are in the house, and you have to earn those."
She bit her lip. Trying not to smile. Losing. "Lead the way, Blackwood."
I took her to the south paddock. The bay colt was moving with that natural collection you couldn't train into a horse — it either had it, or it didn't.
"Watch him," I said. "See how he shifts through the turns? That's cutting instinct. He could be the foundation of something."
"Something?"
"Jack and I have been talking about a breeding program. Performance quarter horses — cutting, reining, ranch versatility." I watched the colt move. "I've been up past midnight studying bloodlines and I don't know if it's real or if I'm just running from the only thing I've ever been good at."
Callie watched the colt. Actually seeing it — the movement, the potential.
"You know what that voice is?" she said. "The one that says you're pretending?"
"What?"
"The landlord." She rested her arms on the fence rail. "That's what I call mine. The voice that says your plans are clutter. That you're not qualified for the thing you want. It doesn't pay rent. It doesn't contribute anything useful. But it acts like it owns the place."
"When did yours get quieter?"
"When I stopped giving it a key." The corner of her mouth lifted.
"I argue back now. Callie Monroe, attorney for the defense.
Of whatever I decide I want." She looked at me — direct, open.
"You should build your program. Because you lit up just now talking about that colt in a way you've never lit up talking about the arena. And I would know — I've been watching."
I've been watching.
So had I. And neither of us had been subtle about it.
I stared at her. She stared back. The yearling trotted behind us and neither of us noticed.
We were close. Both at the same section of fence, close enough that I could smell her shampoo over the dust and horse.
Her hand on the fence rail shifted — her pinky moving a centimeter closer to mine.
Not touching. Almost. The gap between our hands was more intimate than any kiss because she was choosing it.
Holding it. Not closing it and not pulling away.
"You're kind of terrifying, you know that?" My voice came out lower than I intended.
"I've been told. Mostly by opposing counsel.
" She pushed off the fence — and the break in proximity felt like stepping out of sunlight into shade.
"Come on. If we leave Maisie with your mother and Maggie for more than twenty minutes, they'll have enrolled her in Sunday school and assigned her a pony of her own. "
"You're not wrong."
"I'm never wrong. It's exhausting."
Late afternoon. Maisie in the paddock with Rosie and Jack. Callie on the porch with tea and her shoulders down for the first time all day.
I sat beside her.
"You've got hay in your hair," I said.
She reached up. "Where?"
"Here." I pulled a piece from behind her ear. My fingers brushed the skin there and the contact ran through me like a current. "Evidence of a good day."
"Or evidence that your barn needs sweeping."
"My barn is immaculate. Ask Jack."
"Jack seems honest."
"Brutally. It's his worst quality and his best. Don't tell him I said that."
Her eyes were on me — half amusement, half something she wasn't ready to name.
"Can I say something?" I said.
"That's usually a dangerous opening."
"I want to be on your list. Your call list. Your team. When something comes up — when you're stuck at work, when Maisie needs picking up, when it's an emergency or not. You've been doing this alone for a long time. You don't have to."
She didn't say anything for a long time. Watched Maisie lead Rosie in careful circles, pink boots in the dust, Jack steady beside them.
"We're friends," I said. Quieter now. "I care about you and that kid out there. That's not complicated."
"Nothing about you is uncomplicated, Clay Blackwood."
"This is. This one thing. Let me be on the list. No strings. No expiration."
She turned to look at me. Those eyes — the ones I'd first seen under the lights at Fort Worth, wide and blazing as she scooped up a lost little girl — were fighting something.
"You make it sound simple."
"It is with me."
Something raw and wanting moved across her face. She leaned sideways — just barely, just enough that her shoulder pressed against mine for three seconds. Warm. Solid. Chosen. Then she straightened, like she'd given herself a ration and the ration was up.
"Okay. You can be on the list."
They left at five. Maisie asleep in the back seat with dust on her boots and a new drawing: Starlight with a star that took up half the page. Below it, in careful letters with help from Momma: My horse .
Callie buckled Maisie in. Smoothed her hair through the open window. Walked around to the driver's side.
I followed. Couldn't not.
She reached for the door handle, and I got there first. Opened it. Didn't step back.
"Door service," she said. "Very chivalrous."
"Full-service operation, Monroe. Doors, picnics, horse grooming. I also do a mean two-step if you ever need a dance partner."
"I don't dance."
"Everybody dances. Some people just haven't found the right song yet."
"Does that line work on people?"
"I just made it up. Is it working?"
"Absolutely not."
"Liar."
Her smile softened. I was standing in the open angle of the door, one hand on the roof, and she was between me and the driver's seat.
Close enough to count the freckles on her collarbone.
Close enough that she had to tilt her chin up to look at me, and when she did, her eyes were wide and her breath was shallow and neither of us moved.
"Thank you," she said. Almost a whisper. "For the books. For today. For what you said on the porch."
"You don't have to thank me."
"I know." But her voice had lost its edge. What was left was just her.
Her eyes dropped to my mouth. She didn't try to hide it. Just looked, openly, and the want moved across her face like light across water.
Every nerve I had was screaming to close the distance. Three inches. I could see her pulse in her throat.
I leaned in.
She went still. Not pulling away — not leaning in — just still, the want and the fear so close together there was no space between them.
I pressed my lips to her forehead.
Slow. Deliberate. Tender in a way that cost me more than any kiss on the mouth ever had.
I let my lips rest there — against her skin, against the warm, smooth place above her brow — and I felt her exhale.
A shudder. Her whole body releasing something she'd been holding since the hilltop or maybe since long before me.
Her fingers found the front of my shirt and held on.
Two seconds. Three. I could feel her pulse through her knuckles, or maybe that was mine — I couldn't tell anymore.
Then she let go. Stepped back. Swallowed hard.
"Goodnight, Clay." Her voice was rough. Unraveled at the edges.
"Goodnight, Callie."
She got in the car. Her hands went straight to the wheel — knuckles white, gripping it like it was the only thing keeping her from getting back out.
She drove away.
I stood in the driveway and pressed my fingers to my lips. I could still feel her skin. The warmth of her forehead. The flutter of her pulse that close, that real, that mine for three seconds before she took it back.
In the barn, a carrot wrapper with horse stickers was still on the floor outside Starlight's stall.
I picked it up. Put it in my pocket. Evidence — that they'd been here, that somewhere in the accumulation of Saturdays, something was being built that I didn't have the blueprints for but could feel taking shape.
Momma appeared on the porch. "Good day?"
"Yeah, Momma." I was still looking at the place where her taillights had been. "The best day."
She went inside. The screen door closed behind her. The last light turned the dust gold, and I stood in my family's driveway with a carrot wrapper in my pocket and the warmth of her still on my mouth and the feeling that I was exactly where I was supposed to be.