24. The Beginning of Ours #2
I think about what Pearl said at lunch at Magnolia Diner. That kind of man doesn't come along regularly. That Beckett Wilder shows up. That I deserve all of it, the man, the ranch, the little girl with the turquoise boots.
I think about thirty-three years of being careful.
I think about not yet beside a round pen in the evening light.
I think about, “Tell me what we need in a flooded south pasture.”
I think about a ring he's been hiding, three lines in a notebook and a specific oak tree at the creek bend at six o'clock.
I think about forever, and head off to the cabin and fix my hair.
Because Pearl Bishop told me to and Pearl Bishop is right about most things and I am not going to argue with her today of all days.
I change my shirt too. I put on my good boots.
I stand in the cabin mirror and look at myself and think about a woman who spent thirty three years making sure she never needed rebuilding and is standing here anyway, whole, slightly unbroken, choosing this with every part of herself that knows how to choose something.
The fear is gone.
Not managed. Not filed somewhere quieter.
Gone.
What's in its place is so much better.
I check the time.
Five forty-five.
Maisie knocks on the cabin door fifteen minutes later. Three quick, a pause, one more.
I open it.
She's in her best outfit. Her good jeans, a shirt she irons herself badly but with complete determination, and her turquoise boots polished to the brightest shine an eight year old can manage.
She looks at me, I look at her.
Her eyes go bright immediately.
"You look beautiful," she says softly.
Something moves through me that I don't have words for.
"So do you," I say.
She holds out her hand.
"Ready to see the bird?" she says.
I look at this child standing on my porch in her best clothes holding my hand with her eyes bright and the full weight of what she's been carrying all day sitting right there on her face for just a second before she pulls it back together.
"Yeah," I say quietly. "I'm ready."
We walk toward the creek in the evening light, hand in hand, and I think that whatever happens at that oak tree in fifteen minutes, this moment right here is already one of the best of my life.
The creek bend steals the breath right out of me.
The oak tree at the creek bend is strung with warm lights that catch the evening air and throw gold across the ground beneath it. Not elaborate, not over the top. Just enough light to make the space feel set apart from the rest of the world for a specific purpose.
Candles and flowers placed carefully around the tree. I can tell Maisie had something to do with that in the glow in her face.
The crew is there.
Remy with his hands in his pockets. The expression of a man who has been waiting for this since the irrigation disaster in week two. Silas beside him with his coffee thermos. Silas brings his thermos everywhere including apparently the most important moment Silver Mesa has ever hosted.
June with her hands clasped, eyes already doing what June's eyes do when something large is happening. Pearl in her good hat. Wyatt. Harvey and his brother.
All of them looking at me, then past me.
I turn.
Beckett is standing at the oak tree. Dark jeans, a shirt I haven't seen before, his good hat, his boots cleaned carefully. He looks like himself and somehow even better.
He looks at me across the creek bend.
Maisie's hand squeezes mine once.
Then she lets go and moves to stand with Remy and there's nothing between me and the oak tree except thirty feet of Texas ground, evening light and months of everything we've built.
I walk toward him.
He watches me come with his expression completely open. Just Beckett. The man who drove all night from San Francisco. The man who flooded the east field, cantered a horse in front of the whole town, stood in a flash flood, said tell me what we need.
The man who made two cups of coffee every morning without ever having to think about it anymore.
I stop in front of him.
For one suspended second neither of us says anything.
He looks at me for a moment. Like he's taking something in that he wants to remember exactly.
"Hi," he says softly.
"Hi," I say back.
He tucks a strand of hair behind my ear, his hand staying at my jaw the way it always stays.
"I had a speech," he says. "Edited it three times."
"What happened to it?"
"You walked across that field and I forgot every word." He holds my gaze. "So I'm just going to say the true things."
"Okay," I say.
He takes both my hands.
"You are the reason Silver Mesa is home," he says. "Not the ranch. Not twelve hundred acres. You.
The woman who showed up at a moving truck disaster with her arms crossed and decided I wasn't going to last a month and then spent several months making sure I did.
" He pauses. "You made me into someone who belongs here.
I don't know how to thank you for that except to spend the rest of my life doing it. "
My eyes are doing something I am definitely not keeping under control.
I stopped managing things a while ago.
He reaches into his shirt pocket. Takes out the small box. Opens it.
The ring catches the oak tree light and I look at it for one second before I look back at his face because his face is what I want to see.
He's looking at me the same way.
"Laney Jenkins," he says quietly. "Will you marry me?"
The creek moves steady and quiet beside us.
Behind me Maisie makes a sound she's been holding since this morning.
I think about, “not yet”, at a round pen. About “eventually.” About a door I left open on purpose.
"Yes," I say.
Not eventually. Not yet.
Yes. Right now. Forever.
He slides the ring on, looks at it, looks at me.
The creek bend comes alive around us. Remy makes a noise that starts loud and gets louder. June cries the good kind. Pearl says well done to nobody specifically. Silas says something that makes Remy laugh harder.
Maisie hits me around the midsection at full speed and wraps both arms around me and says into my shirt I knew it, I knew it, I knew it!
I put my arms around her and look at Beckett over her head with tears running down my face.
He's looking at both of us with his expression all the way up past his eyes.
"Welcome home," he says quietly.
I look at the ring. The ranch. The man who drove all night from San Francisco, the daughter in turquoise boots, the crew that became family.
Home.
He's right. It's always been home.
We make it back to the ranch house ahead of everyone else.
Not by much. The crew is celebrating at the creek bend with the energy of people who have been holding something in all day and have finally been given permission to let it out.
Remy's voice carries across the ranch yard.
Pearl is saying something to Wyatt that makes him laugh.
Maisie is in the middle of all of it, exactly where she belongs.
But Beckett takes my hand, looks at me, I look at him and we catch a ride in the side by side back to the ranch house without discussing it because we have learned to read each other well enough that some things don't require discussion.
The ranch house is warm and quiet.
He closes the door behind us.
Looks at me in the entryway with the ring on my finger and the evening light coming through the windows and his expression doing the fully open thing that still catches me off guard even now.
I close the distance.
I kiss him first because I have been wanting to since the moment he forgot his speech and said I'm just going to say the true things and I am done waiting for things I want.
He responds immediately. His hands come to my waist, pulling me in with the unhurried certainty that has become one of my favorite things about being loved by this man.