Chapter 33
Chapter Thirty-Three
Jasper
Warm morning sunlight spills in through the curtains, blanketing the room in a golden hue. This time of day is my favorite. When most of the world is still asleep and there’s no rush. I know I have to get up soon—we both do—but not yet.
Chesney’s sleeping beside me, his breathing slow and even.
One arm is tucked beneath a pillow, and his long, dark lashes rest against his cheeks.
He looks so peaceful. It’s the first time since his dad died that I haven’t seen grief etched into every line of his face.
I know it’s not gone. It’ll never be gone.
But at least it’s eased for a little while.
My chest squeezes. I never imagined we’d end up here.
Not after sixteen and the night in his yard.
Not after almost twenty long years of wondering if I’d imagined everything we’d once been to each other.
Every longing glance. Every nervous smile.
Every tender kiss. And yet, here he is, sleeping beside me like it’s the most natural thing in the world.
Like it’s how it was always meant to be.
“You’re staring.” Chesney’s voice is thick with sleep.
A smile tugs at my lips. “How do you know? You’ve got your eyes closed.”
“I can feel it.”
I snort. “Because that’s not creepy.”
One blue eye opens, and the other follows. His hair is sticking up every which way. It looks like he stuck his finger in a light socket. It’s adorable and somehow charming.
“What?”
“You’ve got bedhead.”
He feigns offense. “So do you.”
“Yeah, but I wear it better,” I tease.
Chesney huffs a breath through his nose. “Oh, is that right?”
Biting back a smile, I shrug lazily. “Maybe. Maybe not.”
His deep, throaty chuckle fills the room, and it’s like music to my ears. It’s not a sound I’ve heard much of lately. He stretches his arms over his head with a low groan before sitting up.
“Now that you’ve had a chance to sleep on it, how you feeling about my ranch-merging idea?”
I lean back against the headboard, slightly turning my head until my gaze meets his. “I’m just as into it as I was yesterday, if not more. It’s brilliant.”
Chesney barks out a laugh, then rubs a hand along his jaw. “I knew you’d love it.”
“Don’t get too cocky on me now,” I tease.
“Yeah. Too late for that.” Pressing a quick kiss to my cheek, Chesney slides out of bed and pulls on a t-shirt. It’s mine, and I do my absolute best not to stare.
Spoiler alert: I fail.
Double spoiler alert: He catches me.
Flashing me a flirty smirk, he says, “Like what you see, Smith?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Jennings.”
The teasing and the flirting feel so normal, like we’ve been doing this forever instead of barely finding our back to one another. It’s moments like this where I can almost forget the years between us.
We wander downstairs a few minutes later, taking turns making coffee while somehow managing to burn toast because we’re too busy talking to notice. Chesney scrapes the blackened bread into the trash.
“I blame you,” he drawls.
Chuckling, I say, “I’m not the one with an apparent inability to operate a toaster.”
He rolls his eyes and smiles, but doesn’t say anything.
Taking our steaming mugs out to the porch, we sit on the steps and breathe in the smell of a new day on the ranch.
Morning mist still hangs low over the pastures, and everything is quiet.
For now. The cabins sit in the distance, waiting for their new guests to arrive this afternoon.
Families. Couples. People looking for a few days of peace and tranquility.
It’s strange to think those same cabins were nothing more than blueprints and a whole lot of unfinished construction less than a year ago.
“We’ll be at full capacity this weekend,” Chesney says, following my gaze. “I checked reservations before bed.”
I can’t help but smile. That’s the most Chesney statement I’ve ever heard. “So, that’s what you were doing when I came out of the shower?”
“I had nothing better to do.” He shrugs and breathes out a small chuckle.
“So naturally, you looked at spreadsheets.” I laugh. “Sometimes, it’s like you’re eighty years old.”
He arches a brow. “Eighty-year-olds don’t know how to build booking websites and snazzy cabins.”
“Snazzy cabins!” More laughter falls out of me. “Never in my life did I imagine hearing you use the word ‘snazzy.’”
Chesney chuckles before taking a sip of his coffee. His expression turns thoughtful after a moment. “I keep thinking about Truett,” he says.
I nod. “Me too.” So much of the way he’s feeling lived in me too. And I guess it still kind of does some days.
“He shouldn’t have to do all this by himself.”
“He won’t.” My response is quick, and the certainty surprises even me.
Chesney turns his head, meeting my gaze, something soft in his eyes. “You sound confident.”
“I am.” Resting my hand above his knee, I tip my head toward the land around us. “The cattle, the cabins, the trails, all the equipment… We’re already sharing more than we realize.”
He nods slowly, but lets me continue.
“If we combine resources, buy feed together, rotate grazing pastures, split maintenance costs, just like you said yesterday, we could easily expand the guest ranch. We could double, or even triple, the size.” With every sentence, his eyes brighten even more.
“Hell, we don’t even have to stop there.
We could eventually build horseback clinics, or a wedding barn. We could offer weekend cattle drives.”
Chesney smiles. “A wedding barn?”
“People pay ridiculous amounts of money to get married in boots.” I shrug. “The point is, we’d have the space.”
“We’d have so much space,” he murmurs, looking across both ranches.
This could honestly, genuinely work. It may be a half-baked idea, but with some planning and a whole lot of elbow grease, it could become something real. It’s tangible.
“I keep thinking. This is how it was supposed to be.” Turning my head, I find Chesney already looking at me.
“Our grandfathers built something together. They were partners. They trusted each other.” I glance toward the property line separating our land.
A line I spent my entire childhood believing matters, and now, it just looks like another fence.
Laughing softly, I continue. “One affair, one badly kept secret, and decades of people forgetting why they hated each other. Decades of our families drifting further away from what the goal was all along.”
“I wonder what they’d think if they saw where we are now.” Chesney clears his throat. “Our grandfathers. Our grandmothers.”
“I’ve been wondering that too lately.”
“I think…” He pauses. “I think maybe they’d be relieved.”
Maybe Chesney’s right. All those years ago, before pride and heartbreak got in the way, this was the future they’d imagined.
Maybe deep down, even after all the hurt and the lies, they never truly wanted the divide between the ranches or the rival families.
Maybe they wanted to live a simple life.
A life hard-earned, but worth all the hours and the sweat and the blood and the tears.
Hope swells beneath my ribs. For the ranch, for us, for Truett, and for whatever the hell comes after this year.
I slip my hand into Chesney’s, lacing my fingers through his, and he squeezes back immediately.
Resting my head on his shoulder, we sit peacefully for a little while longer, looking out over two ranches that had spent decades pit against each other.
I can’t wait to see what they might become together.
What we might become.
Main Street is packed. String lights stretch as far as the eye can see, every storefront decorated with wildflowers and handmade banners.
Music drifts through the warm air, food trucks line one side of the street, kids dart between booths, carrying cotton candy bigger than their heads, the Girl Scouts are selling homemade lemonade, and Mr. Levinson entered his llama into the pet parade.
“Only in Sweet Briar,” Chesney murmurs with a chuckle.
I laugh. “Welcome home.”
Sweet Briar Jubilee. Dad used to drag me and my mom here every year. He insisted that he hated crowds, then we’d leave five hours later after he managed to talk to nearly every person in town.
Climbing out of the truck, Chesney glances at me. “You ready?”
I grin, my stomach doing flips. “Damn right, I’m ready.”
He laughs, then slips his hand in mine. It’s something so simple, so domestic, and yet, it makes my heart race faster than kissing him ever has. Especially given where we are.
“You nervous?”
The question catches me off guard. “Maybe a little,” I reply honestly.
“Me too. But in a good way.”
Tonight will be the first time people other than those closest to us will see us as more than business partners. It’s not that we’ve been hiding. There just hasn’t been a situation where it came up. But that changes tonight. Chesney squeezes my hand one more time before we cross the street.
The first person to spot us is Magnolia. Stepping out from behind the pie booth, she wipes flour off her apron and immediately beams. “Well, it’s about damn time.” She folds her arms over her chest.
Chesney’s face scrunches up as he looks from me to Magnolia. “What do you mean by that?”
She points between us. “I watched your nonsense in high school. When I saw you were back in town, I knew it was only a matter of time. You two have always looked at each other like one hung the moon and the other hung the stars. But I’m warning you, Chesney Jennings. Hurt my friend, and I will hurt you.”
Chesney glances from me to her. “I have zero intention of hurting Jasper ever again. And I plan to spend a lifetime proving that.”
“Good.” Magnolia gives him a sweet smile. “Then you ain’t got nothing to worry about.”
I snort, unable to help it. “Knock it off, killer.”
Magnolia leans in, resting her hands on my shoulders. “I’m happy for you.” The sincerity in her voice makes my throat unexpectedly tight.
“Thanks, Mag.”