16. Misunderstandings #3
Beckett comes through the front door at five-twenty with his coffee and his notebook and his hat and stops when he sees me in his chair.
He reads my face in the half dark with the accuracy he's developed over three months of paying close attention and whatever he finds there makes something in his expression shift.
Not relief exactly. More like a man who has been waiting for a door to open and is being careful not to rush through it.
He sits in the other chair.
Pours from his thermos into the extra cup he brought without being asked.
Still making two, even now.
That undoes approximately thirty percent of my composure before I've said a single word and I take a breath and remind myself that I came here to say something and I'm going to say it.
"I owe you an explanation," I say.
"You don't owe me anything," he says quietly.
"I do." I wrap both hands around my mug. "I heard part of your phone call with Marcus on Monday. Just the end of it. Just enough to hear the word exit and draw a conclusion that I should have asked you about directly instead of spending three days inside my own head about."
He's very still beside me.
"I heard exit, and I heard the pause before you answered. I filled in everything in between with every fear I've been carrying since before you got here." I look at my coffee. "That wasn't fair to you. I know that."
"Laney."
"Let me finish." I look up at him. "I'm not good at this. You know that. I've been careful with myself for a long time and careful people don't always handle new information well when it comes through a doorway at the wrong angle."
I pause. "But I should have asked. Instead of pulling away and making you feel like you did something wrong when you didn't."
The porch is quiet.
The ranch breathes around us in the dark.
Beckett looks at me for a long moment. Sets his coffee down on the rail. Turns in his chair to face me fully with his elbows on his knees and his expression completely open.
"Marcus asked if I'd thought about what the ranch was worth now versus what I paid," he says. "He said if I wanted to exit I'd do it comfortably." He holds my gaze. "I told him I wasn't looking to exit. He said keep it in mind. I said okay to end the conversation and went back to my notebooks."
I look at him.
"Forty-three pages, Laney. Two notebooks. A covered arena, a bunkhouse renovation, a garden off the south side of the ranch house because Maisie wants to grow things." His voice is steady, quiet, certain.
"I am not going anywhere. I told you that on this porch two weeks ago and I meant it then and I mean it now and I will keep meaning it every morning until you believe it in the same place you know it."
The hill line is going from gray to gold at the edges.
Somewhere in the barn Biscuit moves in his stall.
I look at Beckett in the early light, his elbows on his knees, his eyes on mine, steady, certain, offering me the same patient steady thing he has been offering since the night in the barn with Biscuit and the lead rope and not yet.
I reach over and put my hand on his.
He turns his hand over immediately and holds it.
"I'm sorry," I say. "For the three days."
"Already gone," he says.
I look at our hands.
Look at the ranch going gold in the morning light.
Look at him.
"The garden," I say quietly. "Off the south side."
"Good soil there," he says. "I checked."
Of course he checked.
I open my mouth to say something that is going to require the last of my nerve. Suddenly the morning light chooses this exact moment to come fully over the hill line. It hits the ranch in one warm sweep.
Beckett is looking at me with everything emotion he has, right there on his face. I think that I have been afraid of this exact thing my whole life.
Not losing it. Having it.
"Beckett," I say.
"Yeah."
"I love you."
Three words.
Plain. Direct. No qualification, no management, no careful distance between me and the thing I mean.
He looks at me for one long moment.
Then that smile. The real one. The wide undefended one that goes all the way up to his eyes and keeps going.
"I know," he says softly. "I've known for a while."
I narrow my eyes. "Don't be smug about it."
"I'm not smug." He brings my hand up, presses his mouth to my knuckles, looks at me over the top of it. "I'm just right."
I laugh.
He pulls me closer.
The ranch glows around us in the new morning light, and everything that has been sideways for three days settles back into its proper place.
It's hard to believe it was ever anywhere else.
Then his phone buzzes on the rail beside him.
He ignores it.
It buzzes again.
He picks it up with his free hand and glances at the screen and his expression shifts into something I can't immediately read.
"What?" I say.
He looks at me. "It's Marcus again."
My stomach drops approximately three inches.
"He's forwarding something," Beckett says slowly, reading the screen. "An inquiry. Someone's reached out to his office asking whether Silver Mesa Ranch might be available for purchase."
The morning is very still.
I look at him.
He looks at me.
"Who?" I say.
He turns the phone so I can see the screen.
The name at the bottom of the forwarded email is Weston Blackthorn.