Epilogue - Lark
Istill can't get over the way the light falls on this place at golden hour.
The fence line runs west along a stretch of scrubby pasture they call the long forty, and I'm riding it slowly on a bay gelding named Chief, looking for busted wire and loose staples. My shirt is one of those Wild Vista Ranch button-downs. My braid is hanging down my back, since my hair has gotten so long there’s not much else I can do with it.
Chief is half-asleep under me. He's the oldest in the string and he knows this fence better than I do. So I drop the reins and let him plod, while I raise my face up into the sun and close my eyes.
The old Lark wouldn’t recognize me.
Past-Lark would take one look at this—a woman on a horse at the end of a shift, on the same ranch she was on last month, and the month before that, with a braid past her shoulders and a ring of keys on her belt for the gate, the tack room, and the little cabin in the oaks—and assume somebody had kidnapped the real Lark and stuffed this imposter into her boots.
But god help me, I’ve never been happier in my life.
My phone vibrates in my back pocket, and I fish it out one-handed. There’s a voicemail from Lyla. I thumb it on and hold it up to my ear because Chief is not going anywhere in a hurry.
"Larkie," comes her voice, and I wince and love it at the same time. "Guess who got a temp job. It’s not forever, but it’s with therapy horses, and it’ll hold me over until I can find something more permanent.
Anyway—I'm coming to see y'all next month, and I don't care if I have to sleep in a stall. Kiss your giant for me!"
I chuckle. Good for her.
We still haven’t gotten anything more from Laurel since she started her new job up in Hollow Peak a couple of weeks ago.
She sent one text—the guy who hired me is exhausting, send tequila—and then radio silence.
I’m sure she's in it, head down, stubborn as a mule, and trying to figure out whether or not she made a mistake.
Laurel always comes around; she just likes to do it on her own timeline.
I turn Chief around and point him home.
Home. I try that word out a lot these days, just to see if it still fits.
It does.
I unpacked my duffel bag a while ago. Everything I own lives in a cabin with a cast iron stove and a braided rug and a king sized loft bed.
Our cabin.
As Chief and I head in, the forge comes into view, tin roof catching the last of the sun. I swing down at the hitching post and tie his reins to it.
I walk through the open double doors.
The big scowly blacksmith has pretty much retired, and in his place is this man who smiles at me like I hung the sun above.
"Hey, cowboy."
"Darlin'."
He sets the hammer down as I walk over.
"How was the fence?"
"Boring. Best kind of boring." I fuss with a smudge of soot on his arm. "Carl wants me on the bigger trail string next week. The Willow Creek overnight."
He pulls back so he can look at me properly. "Yeah? Proud of you, darlin'."
"Oh, stop."
"I mean it."
"I know you mean it. You've gone soft on me." I give him a cheeky wink.
He doesn't deny it. He doesn't even pretend. One corner of his mouth moves.
"Gonna do somethin' about it, big boy?”
His free hand comes up and flicks my hat off as he pushes me back two steps until my shoulder blades hit the brick of the forge wall.
"Garrett—"
He dips his head and kisses me. A big Texas-sized kiss, with one of his huge hands flat on the wall by my head and the other sliding down the line of my side to my ass, and then squeezing hard.
His leg wedges between mine as his tongue slides into my mouth, unhurried and absolutely filthy.
He finds the top button of my shirt, pops it open, and drags his mouth down my throat.
When his beard scrapes over the skin at my collar, I know where this is going.
His hand slips inside, rough palm cupping my breast, thumb rolling my nipple until I'm up on my toes and moaning.
"Garrett—" I try again, breathless. "The doors are open."
"Mhm."
"Anybody could walk in."
"Mhm."
But he does ease off, with a pouty groan. He adjust my shirt, pressing a final kiss to the corner of my mouth.
“We’ll finish this at home," he rasps.
"Yes, sir."
His eyes go dark at that and I take note.
He leans on the wall next to me for a second, both of us catching our breath. The forge is cooling behind him, clicking the way iron does when it lets go of heat. Through the doors the pastures are starting to change colors.
He rubs the back of his neck.
"Didn't know I could be this happy," he says, looking out at the dusk.
"Garrett."
“You lit the whole damn place up, darlin'. I'm not the same man."
I have to swallow twice before I can speak. “Nowhere ever fit. I figured that was me. Figured some people just don't get the home thing." I smile at him. “But it's not me. It's that I hadn’t yet found you. You’re my home, cowboy.”
His throat works. He doesn't answer. He just reaches for my hand, laces our fingers together, and leads me out into the last of the light at Wild Vista Ranch.
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