CHAPTER 26 #4
"Yes."
"And you used that truth to avoid other truths."
He stared at his hands. In the dim, the old rope marks across his palms looked darker. "Yes."
She was quiet long enough that he heard the pump chain tick against metal outside.
"I love Beau," Wren said softly. "Not in a way that asks anything from her.
Not in a way that makes me Harlow or puts me where Harlow belongs.
I love the way she trusts small routines.
I love that she thinks crowns need sleep.
I love that she looks at me like I might still be good even when I am not sure. "
Colt closed his eyes.
The words did not frighten him the way he had once thought they would. They humbled him. Harlow's place in Beau's life was not a chair for someone else to take. It was a light that stayed lit. Wren seemed to understand that better than he had trusted her to.
"She asks about you because she feels safe with you," he said.
Wren swallowed. "Do not say that unless you mean it."
"I mean it."
"Then be careful with me too."
He opened his eyes. "I will."
"Careful doesn't mean quiet. It doesn't mean deciding what I can handle. It doesn't mean making a plan for me and calling it protection."
"I know."
"Do you?" she asked again, but there was less challenge in it now. More plea.
He turned toward her. "I'm learning it late.
I know that. Tomorrow morning I'll meet Bennet, and I will tell you what comes of it because hiding papers in drawers is done.
But I won't bring you numbers like bait.
I won't lay a future at your feet and expect you to step into it because I finally got brave enough to open an envelope. "
Her lips parted. For a second she looked young, the way he remembered from fence lines and summer evenings eight years gone, before pride and mothers and missing letters had made a ruin out of two people who had not known how to ask enough questions.
"What do you expect?" she asked.
"Nothing I have a right to demand."
"That isn't an answer."
He gave her the truest one he had. "I hope you stay.
I hope you choose Dusthallow because your work is here and your sister is here and your own life has room to grow here.
I hope I get to be part of that. I hope Beau gets to keep you in a way that is honest and slow and good for her.
But if you leave, I don't get to turn your leaving into proof you never loved me. "
Her face changed. Pain moved through it first. Then relief so fragile he barely trusted himself to breathe near it.
"You would have done that before," she said.
"Yes."
"Maybe I would have let you."
"Maybe."
The honesty hurt, but it did not poison the air. It cleared it.
Outside, the wind shifted. Mesquite smoke came back around the shed, faint now, carrying the last of the dinner with it.
Someone called for more trash bags. Tuck answered from near the gate.
Life kept making its ordinary demands, and for once Colt was grateful.
Morning feed would still come. Chairs would need stacking.
Cattle would need water. Love did not excuse him from any of it.
It asked him to stop hiding inside it.
Wren rose and fixed her dress. Colt turned his head while she did, though the gesture made her huff a small laugh.
"A little late for modesty."
"Still your choice."
Her hands slowed on the zipper. "That, I like."
He stood and put on his shirt after she handed it back. It carried her warmth for a few seconds before the night took it. He wanted to ask her to stay with him after cleanup, after the wedding, after every morning he had left unsaid for eight years.
The want stayed unspoken.
He picked up his hat and opened the shed door.
The pasture lights glowed beyond the windmill, softer now.
Della stood with Ruston near the cake table, his arm around her while she talked with fierce animation at Paloma.
Odette was nowhere Colt could see. Bennet remained near the gate, speaking with Fletch, his posture already arranged around tomorrow's business.
The old blades turned above all of them, slow and stubborn against the dark.
Wren stepped out beside Colt. Their shoulders did not touch. The space between them felt chosen instead of afraid.
"I need to go back before Della sends a search party," she said.
"I need to make sure the pit is dead out and Tuck knows which chairs can stay until morning."
"Morning feed waits for no wedding."
"No, ma'am."
She looked at him, and this time her smile reached her eyes for half a heartbeat before it faded into something more serious.
"Colt."
"Yeah."
"Tonight mattered."
His throat tightened. "It did."
"What you said at the table mattered. What happened here mattered. " She looked toward the chapel ridge where the bell waited for tomorrow. "But I am still the one who has to choose what my life becomes."
"I know."
She held his gaze, wind lifting the loose hair at her cheek, smoke and starlight and decision all around her.
"I'm deciding my own future before the wedding bells ring."