Epilogue
THE FOLLOWING SPRING
The mornings started the same way, and I loved it.
I woke before the sun, pulled on jeans, a tank, and a plaid flannel and filled two thermoses with steaming hot coffee before walking out into the crisp air looking for Ryder.
This morning, he was already in the barn, breath fogging in the early light as he checked the mare’s leg one last time before turning her out.
He didn’t look up right away, but I knew he’d heard the screen door clanging shut behind me and my boots crunching on the gravel the second I left the house.
“She’s holding weight better,” he said when I reached him. His gaze moved over me the same way it always did now, slow and thorough, like he was checking that I was still safe, healthy, and whole. He took the thermos, drank, then handed it back, fingers brushing mine longer than necessary.
“You sleep okay?” he asked, his voice low.
That was most of our mornings. Quiet, practical, but never indifferent. Not with him.
He reached out and hooked two fingers in the front pocket of my jeans, tugging me closer until my boots bumped his.
His free hand settled at the small of my back, rough and warm, like he needed the contact just to start the day.
He didn’t kiss me, just held me there for a second, his forehead nearly touching mine, breathing me in like he’d been waiting all morning for this exact moment.
We ended up combining the two ranches, and it was the best decision I’d ever made. Combining the ranches took months of surveys, lawyers, deeds, inspections, and more paperwork than I ever wanted to see again. But when everything was finished, Kane-Shaw Ranch finally belonged to both of us.
When everything was recorded and the new documents came back signed and stamped, Ryder looked at me across the lawyer’s desk, eyes dark and absolute, and said, “Yours. Mine. Same thing now, sweetheart. Don’t ever forget that.”
I still woke up some nights turning it all over in my head. My father’s death and how Ryder had watched me for fourteen years without me ever knowing. Those facts didn’t go away just because I stayed and loved Ryder more than anything or anyone else.
Some mornings, the knowledge sat heavy under my ribs.
I’d look at him across the table and remember exactly what he’d done and why.
Then he’d set a plate in front of me or reach over and brush dirt off my cheek, and the weight would ease a little.
He never asked for forgiveness, but his expression showed me I had the quiet choice to keep living beside him despite what he’d done and the faults he saw within himself.
No one was perfect, least of all me. I was in no position to judge even if reality weighed heavy on my shoulders some days.
We tore my childhood house down before the first frost last year.
It took no time at all with a small crew and rented equipment.
Ryder handled most of the heavy work himself, quiet and methodical, the same way he did everything.
I helped where I could by hauling debris, sorting anything worth keeping, and watching the walls that had held so many bad memories come down one by one.
When the last section of the foundation was broken up and hauled away, we stood in the empty space for a long time without speaking.
We built the new house on the same rise, just far enough from the old footprint that it felt like a clean start.
Simple, solid, with a wide porch that faced west and enough windows to let the light in.
Ryder did a lot of the framing himself. I stained the wood, painted the interior, and lovingly argued with him over the kitchen layout until he finally submitted and gave me what I wanted.
By early fall, we moved in, and the first night we slept there, the house still smelled like fresh lumber and paint. It felt like our new start. I remember lying awake listening to the quiet and realizing the old fear had nowhere left to live.
I worked the ranch harder than I ever thought I would, and I loved every moment of it.
I learned to run the equipment, how to fix fences, and what animals liked which treats.
Ryder never treated me like I was fragile.
If I did something wrong, he told me once, showed me the right way, and that was that.
When I got it right, the praise he gave me was enough to make me wet and beg him to fuck me behind the bales of hay in the barn.
He always obliged.
He gave me all the independence I wanted or needed, but still, he was never far. If I was on one side of the pasture, he found a reason to be there with me. If I stayed too long in the barn alone, he appeared in the doorway like he needed to make sure I was okay.
We finished repairing a section of fence that had come down during last night’s windstorm. When the last post was set and the wire was tight, he leaned on the post and looked at me for a long second.
Without saying a word, he reached over and brushed a strand of hair from my face, his fingers lingering against my cheek a moment longer than they needed to, like he couldn’t quite make himself let go.
We headed back to the house, hand-in-hand, ate dinner and drank a beer, and found ourselves on the porch of the new house with Kash snoring at our feet.
The land we'd worked so hard to make our own stretched out dark and quiet in front of us.
I could still feel the ghost of my father sometimes, but it was thinner than it used to be.
I knew that one day it would grow further and further from my thoughts.
I shifted closer to Ryder on the porch swing, rested my head against his shoulder, and murmured, “Some days, I still can’t believe this is our life.”
His arm came around me, heavy and sure, his hand settling low on my hip like it belonged there. “All ours, sweetheart. Nothin’ is ever gonna change that.”
I shifted closer to Ryder on the porch swing and rested my head against his shoulder. It was chilly out, but he was big and strong and all heat.
Out beyond the fence line, the last of the daylight disappeared, and the ranch settled into the kind of quiet that only comes after a long day's work.
Ryder tightened his arm around me. “Whatcha thinkin' about, sweetheart?”
I smiled. “Home.”
His fingers brushed my cheek before he pressed a kiss against my temple. “Yeah,” he said quietly. “Me too.”
And for the first time in my life, I knew exactly what that word meant.
The End.