14. Whiskey River Nights #2
I think about it honestly. "I wanted to be a veterinarian when I was twelve. Spent two years completely committed to that plan. Read every book I could find, pestered the local vet for work experience, had the whole thing mapped out."
"What changed?"
"Got on a horse properly for the first time." I look at the dance floor. "Everything else just fell away after that. I didn't want to treat animals. I wanted to live alongside them." A pause. "The ranch made more sense than a clinic."
He's quiet for a moment, listening with his whole attention the way he does.
"Your turn," I say.
He considers it. "I played piano until I was seventeen. Seriously. Lessons three times a week, competitions, the whole thing." He looks at his hands. "I was actually good."
"Why did you stop?"
"My father thought it wasn't serious. Told me I needed to focus on something that would build a future." He says it without bitterness, just fact. "So I stopped. Went into business. Built a future." A long pause. "Haven't touched a piano since."
I look at him across the small distance between us.
Something about that lands quietly and stays there. Not the stopping. The why of the stopping. A seventeen-year-old boy who was good at something beautiful putting it down because someone told him it didn't count.
"There's a piano in the Silver Mesa ranch house," I say carefully. "It came with the property. Previous owner's wife played."
He looks at me.
"It's probably out of tune," I say.
"Probably," he agrees.
Neither of us says anything else about it.
We don't need to.
The bar thins out around ten-thirty.
Not empty. Whiskey River never fully empties on a Friday night anyway. But the families with kids have headed home, the early risers have made their excuses, the crowd has settled into its later, looser version of itself.
The band has come back from their break and moved into something with more edge to it, the fiddle doing something that makes the floor vibrate slightly under the table.
Remy left twenty minutes ago with a cheerful wave and no explanation, which is standard Remy operating procedure after nine o'clock. Silas finished his drink, said good night to the table with the economy of a man who considers goodbyes a formality, went home to the bunkhouse.
June squeezed my hand on her way out and said nothing, which from June said everything.
It's just me and Beckett.
The table feels different with just two people at it, smaller somehow, more deliberate. Like the whole room has narrowed down to this one quiet stretch of space between us.
Like the noise of the bar has organized itself into a frame around us rather than something we're sitting inside of.
He's been quieter since the piano conversation. Not withdrawn. Just thoughtful in the particular way he gets when something has settled into him and he's letting it sit rather than immediately doing something about it.
I've learned the difference between Beckett quiet because something is wrong and Beckett quiet because something is right, and he's paying attention to it.
This is the second kind.
"Can I tell you something?" he says.
"Yeah."
He turns his drink slowly in his hands. Looks at it. Looks at me. "When I was deciding whether to buy Silver Mesa I spent three weeks going back and forth.
Every analysis I ran said it was a reasonable investment but a poor lifestyle choice for someone with no ranching experience and a daughter in school." He pauses. "My attorney thought I was having a breakdown. My business partner offered to find me a therapist."
"What made you do it anyway?"
He's quiet for a moment. "There was one photograph in the listing.
Not the ranch house or the barns or the acreage.
Someone had taken a picture of the view from the front porch at sunrise.
" He looks at his drink. "I stared at that photograph for twenty minutes and felt something I hadn't felt in two years. "
"What did you feel?"
He looks up at me. "Like somewhere had been waiting for me."
The bar moves around us. The fiddle does something complicated. Somewhere behind us two people are laughing at something with the full body laugh of people who are very happy or very tired or both.
I hold his gaze across the small table.
"I know that feeling," I say quietly. "I felt it the first time I drove through the Silver Mesa gate. Four years ago. First day on the job." I look at my drink. "I knew before I got out of the truck that I wasn't going anywhere."
"Neither of us was going anywhere," he says.
"No," I agree. "We weren't."
He reaches across the table and tucks a strand of hair back from my face the way he does, slow, certain, like he has all the time in the world. His hand stays at my jaw for a moment, warm, steady.
"Laney," he says.
"Mm."
"I'm in love with you."
He says it plainly. No buildup, no dramatic pause, no performance around it. Just sets it down on the table between us like something he's been carrying for a while and has decided he's done carrying alone.
The bar keeps moving.
The fiddle keeps playing.
My heart does something large, complicated, completely inevitable.
I look at him across the small table with his hand at my jaw and his eyes steady on mine and thirty three years of careful self protection sitting very quietly in the background saying nothing useful whatsoever.
"I know," I say softly.
"Yeah?"
"I've known for a while." I hold his gaze. "I'm getting there, Beckett. I want you to know that. I'm getting there."
Something moves through his expression that isn't disappointment. It's patient, warm, completely certain.
"I know," he says. "I'm not going anywhere."
I look at him.
He looks at me.
The fiddle reaches a note that has no business being played in a public establishment.
"Take me home," I say quietly.
He leaves enough on the table to cover the bill without counting it, stands, holds out his hand.
I take it.
We walk out of Whiskey River into the warm Texas night and neither of us looks back.
The ranch is quiet when we get back.