Chapter 14
Callie
I woke up feeling like I'd been reassembled by someone who knew what they were doing.
My hips ached in a way that was going to make sitting interesting.
My inner thighs were tender from wrapping around him.
There was a bite mark on my shoulder that I vaguely remembered being enthusiastic about at the time, and was now going to require a high-necked shirt for the next three days.
I pressed my thighs together and felt the swollen, well-used tenderness between them, and a shiver rolled through me that had nothing to do with cold and everything to do with sense memory — his hands gripping my hips, his mouth on my neck, the sound he'd made when I —
Okay. I needed tea. Or a cold shower. something.
I hadn't opened my eyes yet. But I could feel him watching me.
The warmth of someone's attention on your face. The weight of being looked at by a man who, based on the evidence of the last twelve hours, had made a detailed study of every inch of me and was apparently reviewing his notes.
"If you're watching me sleep," I said, eyes still closed, "that's either romantic or serial killer behavior, and I need to know which before I open my eyes."
His laugh. Low. Close. The rumble of it through the mattress.
"Romantic. Definitely romantic."
I opened my eyes.
He was on his side, head propped on one hand, the sheet pooled at his waist. Bare chest. Bare shoulders.
The kind of upper body that had no business existing outside of a cologne advertisement — broad and sculpted and golden in the morning light, every line of muscle defined without trying because this man had spent his life throwing hay bales and holding onto two thousand pounds of fury.
The stubble on his jaw. The green of his eyes.
And the expression he was wearing — unhurried, warm, so openly adoring that it made my breath catch.
"Hi," he said. Like I was the best thing he'd seen all morning. Like I was the best thing he'd seen in his life.
"Hi." My voice was wrecked. I sounded like I'd spent the night either screaming or smoking, and we both knew which one it was. "How long have you been awake?"
"A while."
"And you've been... watching?"
"Couldn't help it. You do this thing in your sleep where your nose scrunches up, and you frown, like you're arguing with someone in a dream." He traced a line from my temple to my jaw with one finger. "I'm pretty sure you were dreaming about me."
"Oh, you're pretty sure ."
"Positive. You said my name. Twice." The grin was insufferable. Cocky and warm and so stupidly handsome that I wanted to hit him and kiss him in equal measure. "And then you smiled."
I rolled into him, and he caught me — arms wrapping tight, pulling me flush against him until we were completely tangled, legs threaded together, my hands flat against his back.
He buried his face in my neck and inhaled — slow, deep, like he was memorizing the scent of me — and the sound that came out of him was low and involuntary, a groan that vibrated against my throat and made my stomach flip.
"You smell incredible," he murmured into my skin. "How do you smell this good at seven in the morning?"
"I smell like you."
The groan again. Deeper this time. His arms tightened.
He pulled back just enough to find my eyes. And held them. The cocky grin was gone. What was underneath it — steady, unguarded, his whole heart right there on his face — made my breath catch.
We stayed like that. His hand on my jaw. My fingers on his chest. Neither of us speaking. Neither of us needing to.
"You are something else, Clay Blackwood," I said.
The smile that spread across his face was slow and warm and did things to my pulse that should have been illegal before breakfast.
I pushed him onto his back and climbed into his lap — knees on either side of his hips, my hands on his chest, looking down at him.
His hands found my thighs. His thumbs drew slow circles on my skin.
I leaned down and kissed him — soft, unhurried — and then folded against him, my cheek on his chest, his arms closing around me.
Neither of us moved for a long time. His fingers in my hair, drawing slow lines from my scalp to the ends. His heart beat steady and unhurried under my ear. The fridge hummed. A bird outside. The kind of morning where the world holds its breath and lets you have this.
"We need to get up," he said eventually.
"No."
"We do."
"Why? Give me one good reason."
"I have a surprise for you."
I pulled back to look at him. "What kind of surprise?"
"The kind where I can't tell you because that would ruin it."
My stomach clenched. Just slightly. An involuntary tightening that I recognized before my brain caught up — the old wiring, the one that said surprises are traps, not knowing is dangerous, someone else holding the plan means you're not safe.
Preston had loved surprises. They always came with conditions.
I felt Clay watching me. Felt him clock the shift — the micro-tension in my shoulders, the way my breathing changed.
"Hey," he said. Soft. "You're going to love it. And if you don't, we leave. Your call. Always your call."
The old wiring sparked and fizzled and went quiet. Because this was Clay. And Clay didn't set traps. Clay set the table, pulled out the chair, and waited for me to sit down.
"Okay," I said. And then, because the old me could go to hell: "Okay, let's go. What should I wear?"
His eyebrows went up. "Something comfortable. Jeans. Boots."
"Boots narrows it down. Are we talking cute boots or actual boots?"
"Actual boots."
"Are we leaving town?"
"Not telling you."
"Are we going to the ranch?"
"Not telling you."
"Am I going to need sunscreen?"
He kissed my forehead. "Get dressed, Callie."
I bounced out of bed. Actually bounced. He laughed behind me as I pulled open the closet and started flipping through hangers with a focus that probably looked unhinged for a woman who'd just been told to wear jeans.
I wore the good jeans. The ones that made my legs look longer. And the boots he'd complimented three weeks ago at the barn. And a white cotton shirt that was simple and clean and made me feel like myself.
We stopped at the bakery on Main. He held the door open. I ordered my tea and he ordered his coffee and we split a box of donuts that had no business being as good as they were.
"These are obscene," I said, powdered sugar on my chin.
He reached across the table and wiped it off with his thumb. Licked his thumb. Held my gaze while he did it.
"You're doing that on purpose," I said.
"Doing what?"
"That."
"I don't know what you're talking about." But the corner of his mouth twitched, and I wanted to climb across this table, but that was probably not appropriate at nine in the morning in a bakery where Clara Mae Henderson was pretending to read the newspaper two booths away.
We drove to the ranch. He parked at the main house, and before I could ask questions, Louisa appeared on the porch like she'd been waiting — which, based on her outfit and the fact that she was holding two mugs of tea and a photo album, she absolutely had been.
"Ninety minutes," Clay said, kissing my temple. "Maybe an hour. Momma will keep you company."
"Clay —"
"Trust me."
He disappeared around the side of the barn before I could protest. Louisa handed me a mug, looped her arm through mine, and steered me inside with the quiet efficiency of a woman who had been briefed.
The Louisa Blackwood Experience, as I'd come to think of it, involved the photo album (baby Clay in a cowboy hat, which I was absolutely going to use as leverage later), strong opinions about pie crust, and an interrogation style so gentle you didn't realise you were being interrogated until you'd already told her your life story.
"He's different with you," she said at one point, pouring more tea. "Settled. Like something clicked into place."
I didn't know what to say to that. So I drank and looked at baby Clay in the cowboy hat and something pulled behind my eyes, and I blinked and looked away before she could see.
He came back grinning.
Two horses saddled and waiting. Mine — the bay mare I'd been riding for weeks, patient and sure-footed — and his, the grey.
"Up," he said.
"Up where?"
"Up." He swung into the saddle. "That's the direction."
"That's not an answer, Clay."
"It's a perfectly good answer. Come on."
We rode the back trail — the one that wound through the creek bottom and up through the cedars where the light filtered green and gold.
The clearing opened up and I stopped.
The tent. White canvas, glowing in the afternoon light, strung with fairy lights that caught the sun like tiny stars.
Two Adirondack chairs side by side, facing the valley.
A table — just a plank on sawhorses, but someone had covered it with a cloth and set out wildflowers in a mason jar and two tin cups and a bottle of wine.
And the view — the whole valley spread below in golds and greens, the sky enormous above it.
"Clay." My voice cracked. "You did this?"
"Yesterday. And this morning."
"This is —" I shook my head. Blinked hard. "No one has ever —"
I couldn't finish. I dismounted and walked through the camp touching everything — the lights, the blankets, the wildflowers — the way you touch things to make sure they're real.
"Who helped you?" I asked, running my fingers along the fairy lights. "You didn't string all these yourself."
"Jack brought the tent up on the trailer yesterday.
Maggie did the lights — she has strong opinions about fairy light spacing, apparently.
Momma packed the blankets and the food. Even Liam drove out with the firewood, though he complained the entire time.
" He paused. "They wanted to. I didn't have to ask twice. "
I stood very still.
Preston's family had tolerated me. I'd been a useful accessory — appropriate background, appropriate manners, appropriate silence at dinner parties. His mother had never once packed me a blanket.