9. Epilogue 1
Brynn
Two Months Later
Beckett still complains about the tack room. I let him. It’s foreplay at this point.
We’re living together now. Not at the cabin.
Not at his place. We’re in the middle of building an addition onto the cabin, which means we’re sleeping in a construction zone and arguing about the bathroom tile and it’s the happiest I’ve ever been.
Raiford is funding the renovation as part of my compensation package.
Beckett insisted on doing half the work himself.
The man cannot accept help without turning it into a project.
It’s a Saturday morning in early June. The valley is green again, deep and alive, and the wildflowers are starting on the lower slopes. The air smells like fresh grass and warm dirt and the kind of promise that only comes with early summer in Montana.
I’m in the round pen with one of the new horses, a four-year-old mare with more talent than sense, when I hear a truck come up the drive.
Not a ranch truck. Something louder. Something with a rattle and a radio turned up too loud.
I look up.
The truck is dust-covered, well-used, with a horse trailer attached that’s seen better decades. A bumper sticker on the front of the trailer reads “COWBOYS DO IT IN 8 SECONDS.”
The door opens and a man steps out.
He’s tall. Muscular. Short dark beard. Long dark hair brushing his shoulders beneath a black cowboy hat.
There’s a limp. Left leg. Not dramatic, but I see it.
He’s got a grin that arrives before the rest of him, the kind that opens doors and starts conversations and has probably made every bartender in four states remember his name.
Then he turns back to the truck, pushes his seat forward and reaches in. A little girl climbs down.
She’s maybe two years old. Dark curly hair.
Big brown eyes. She’s wearing tiny cowboy boots on the wrong feet and a sundress that has what appears to be yogurt on it.
She’s holding a stuffed horse that’s seen better days.
She grabs the man’s hand and starts marching toward the barn with the determination of a child who knows exactly where she wants to go.
Beckett appears beside me.
“Cash,” he says. Not flat, exactly. More like the voice of a man watching someone he respects but doesn’t fully understand.
“So that’s the famous Cash Wylde.” I’ve heard the name plenty. Cash’s name comes up regularly, usually followed by a story that involves either a trophy buckle or someone shaking their head. Sometimes both.
“Raiford’s cousin,” Beckett says. “Bull rider. Won several big rodeos before an injury ended his career a few years back. Good cowboy. Can fix anything on a ranch, ride anything with legs, charm the paint off a fence post.” He pauses.
“He comes through every year or so. Stays a few weeks, helps out with whatever needs doing, then moves on. Been like that since the injury. Like he’s looking for something but doesn’t know what. ”
“And the daughter?”
“That’s new.”
Cash spots Raiford coming down from the house. The grin gets wider. He spreads his arms like he’s arriving at a surprise party he’s throwing for himself.
“Raiford!” His voice carries across the yard. Big and warm. The voice of a man who fills every room he walks into whether the room asked for it or not. “Miss me?”
Raiford stops walking. His expression is fond and exasperated at the same time, the way you look at family who keeps showing up unannounced because they know they’re always welcome.
“Cash.”
“In the flesh. And I brought company.” He swings the little girl up onto his hip. She grabs his hat and puts it on her own head. It covers her face entirely. She doesn’t care. “This is Lola. My daughter.”
Raiford’s expression changes. He looks at the child and then at Cash and then at the truck and the horse trailer.
“Her mama?” Raiford asks.
“Not in the picture.” Cash’s grin doesn’t drop but his eyes do, just for a second. Just long enough to see the man under the charm. A man who drove here with a toddler in a car seat and everything he owns in a horse trailer. “It’s just me and Lola. And we need a place to land for a while.”
The “for a while” hangs in the air. Every other visit, Cash has blown through for a few weeks and disappeared again. Easy. No strings. But he’s never shown up with a child before. A child changes the math. A child means this visit might not be a few weeks of helping out and moving on.
Elise comes out of the house. She walks straight to Cash and pulls him into a hug.
“Cash. It’s so nice to finally meet you in person.” She steps back, smiling. “Raiford talks about you all the time.”
“All good things, I hope.”
“Mostly.”
Then Elise kneels down. Lola is half-hidden behind Cash’s leg, the hat still swallowing her face.
“And who’s this?” Elise asks. Gentle. A woman who is very good with small things.
Lola pushes the hat up with both hands. She studies Elise with the serious evaluation of a two-year-old deciding whether a stranger is acceptable.
“Lola,” she says.
“Hi, Lola. I’m Elise. You’re very pretty. I love your boots.”
Lola looks down at her boots. They’re on the wrong feet. She doesn’t care.
“Horsey,” Lola says. Pointing at the barn as Cash picks her up.
“That’s right. We have lots of horseys.”
“He’s going to need help,” I say to Beckett. Because Cash is standing in the yard with no diaper bag visible. No snacks. No change of clothes. Just a toddler and a grin. “He can ride a bull for eight seconds but he can’t find her shoes. She’s wearing one sock.”
Beckett grunts.
“Will he figure it out, though?”
That’s when the second vehicle arrives.
A small blue hatchback, clean and sensible, pulls up and parks behind Cash’s disaster of a truck. The contrast is almost comical. His truck looks like it’s been through a war. The car looks like it gets washed every Saturday.
Cassie Benton steps out. I recognize her from the coffee shop. Canvas tote bag on her shoulder. She’s wearing a sundress and boots and her light brown hair is in its usual neat ponytail. She looks exactly like what she is: a put-together young woman who shows up prepared and on time for everything.
“Elise invited me to see the ranch,” she calls out, waving. “Said I could get some reference photos for my next book.”
She’s halfway across the yard when Lola spots her. The toddler has been squirming in Cash’s arms, trying to get down, and the moment he sets her on her feet she takes off. Full toddler speed. Cash’s hat bouncing on her head. One boot gone somewhere in the last two minutes.
“Lola! Lola, stop…” Cash is three steps behind her.
She runs directly into Cassie’s legs.
The impact is not dramatic. Lola weighs maybe twenty-five pounds. But it’s enough to make Cassie stumble and her tote bag drops, and three books and a notebook scatter across the gravel.
Lola sits down on the ground and looks up at Cassie with enormous brown eyes. The hat is covering half her face. She pushes it up with both hands.
“Horsey,” she says.
Cassie stares at the child. Then she crouches down, sundress pooling on the gravel, and picks up the stuffed horse that Lola dropped in the collision.
“Is this your horsey?” she asks. Her voice has gone soft.
Lola nods. Reaches for the stuffed horse. Cassie hands it to her.
“I think maybe he needs a bath,” Cassie says, looking at the matted, yogurt-stained stuffed animal with a smile.
“He doesn’t like baths,” Lola says. With absolute authority.
Cash arrives. One boot in his hand. Hat gone. He looks at Cassie crouching in the gravel with his daughter and his face does something complicated. The grin falters.
“I’m so sorry,” he says. “She’s fast. She’s really, really fast. I didn’t know kids could be this fast. I’ve ridden bulls that were easier to keep track of.”
He’s picking up her scattered books while he talks. Stacking them. Trying to get the tote bag upright. He picks up the notebook and a loose page falls out and he catches it. A sketch. A horse, from the looks of it. He stares at it.
“This is really good,” he says. Holding up the sketch. The charm is gone from his voice. This is just honest.
Cassie stands. Takes the notebook. Her cheeks are pink.
“Thank you. It’s a rough draft.”
“If that’s rough, I’d love to see finished.” He flashes the grin. Full wattage.
Cassie does not appear charmed. She looks at the grin the way you look at a campfire that’s a little too close to the tent.
“I’m Cash,” he says. “Cash Wylde. This is my daughter Lola. She’s two. She’s a handful.”
“She’s adorable,” Cassie says.
“That’s the same thing.”
Lola tugs on Cassie’s sundress. “Horsey.”
“She likes you,” Cash says. He sounds surprised. “She doesn’t usually like people this fast.”
Cassie looks down at Lola. Lola looks up at Cassie. The stuffed horse dangles between them.
“Would you like to go see the real horses?” Cassie asks.
“YES.”
Cassie takes Lola’s hand. They start walking toward the barn together. Cash stands in the yard holding his daughter’s lost boot, watching a woman he met thirty seconds ago lead his kid toward the barn like it’s the most natural thing in the world.
His face is doing something I recognize. I’ve seen it in the mirror. The look of someone who just got hit by something they didn’t see coming.
I elbow Beckett.
“Don’t,” he says.
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You were going to.”
“I was going to say that Cassie Benton seems like the most organized, careful, put-together person I’ve met in this town. And that man is the human equivalent of a junk drawer.”
“Not our problem.”
In the barn, Lola is reaching through the stall bars toward Birdie. Cassie is crouched beside her, one hand on the toddler’s back, steady and sure. Cash is standing behind them, and he’s not looking at the horse.
He’s looking at the girl holding his daughter’s hand.
Elise catches my eye from across the yard. She’s smiling.
“It’s almost like you planned this,” I mouth at her.
She shrugs.
This ranch has a way of collecting people who need a place to belong. Elise came here lost and found a home. I came here for a job and found a life. Now Cash is here with a limp and a daughter and nowhere left to drift.
And Cassie Benton is in the barn holding the hand of a two-year-old she just met while a cowboy with a grin and a limp watches her like she’s the first thing he’s seen in a long time that he doesn’t know how to charm his way through.
This could get interesting.