Epilogue - Laurel
It may be thirty-six degrees on the porch, but my coffee is still hot in my thermos.
I gaze out at the paddock, watching Riot in a green winter blanket, breath steaming, hay sticking out of his mouth at a jaunty angle, as he keeps track of the two newbies in the next pen.
He’s gotten fat despite our workouts, and kinda smug. He is, as Beck likes to say, thriving.
I take a sip of my coffee and pull my coat tighter around me.
Down in the valley, you can already see the festival lights.
Every December, the whole town of Hollow Peak strings big white globes from the lampposts, across Main Street and up the fronts of the brick buildings, and from up here (mostly at sunset) the valley looks like somebody dumped a constellation into a soup bowl.
It’s magnificent and I love it more and more the longer I’m here.
I also love this cabin.
I love it in a way that feels almost embarrassing, because eight months ago I was not the kind of woman who loved a building.
But then, now I have a barn with my name over it.
Laurel & Co. Equine in stenciled black letters above the door.
I have two paying clients on the books, a third lined up for January, and a website Lark insisted on building me that has a little form people can fill out and a photo of me and Riot looking much too serious.
But it’s working so far.
The new horses are a buckskin gelding named Cricket who came in green and afraid of his own shadow, and a small chestnut mare named Apricot who is, as far as I can tell, the most dainty horse I’ve come across.
The funny part is that Riot adores both of them. He spent the first week pretending he didn't, then I caught him grooming Cricket's withers like a man teaching a boy how to tie a tie, and now we're all just admitting that he's the herd boss and that's that.
And yesterday, Riot opened Apricot's stall door and walked her to the round pen.
Honest-to-god, he waited until I was in the tack room, popped her latch with that magic mouth of his, and escorted her out by the halter rope.
He was standing there in the round pen looking expectantly at the gate like well, are you going to lunge her or am I?
I told Beck and he laughed until he wheezed. "That's my boy," he said, wiping his eyes. "Always managing the staff."
The screen door creaks behind me. "It’s colder than a witch’s tit out here, woman."
But he comes out anyway, in jeans, his Carhartt, and bed-mussed hair. He lowers himself into the rocker next to mine without one single hitch.
The orthopedist cleared him a while back, and I can’t hold him back from walking all over the place, taking stairs two at a time, and climbing into the saddle every chance he gets.
He hooks his arm over the back of my chair, and I lean in.
"Riot's getting fatter," I tell him.
"He's just a little plump."
"He has a belly, Beck."
"He's earned it."
I sigh. Because he has a point. Twenty years of explosions and dirt and stunt rigs…yeah, the horse has earned a paunch and a few minions to lord over.
We sit there for a while in our typical way, my legs over his lap, his thumb rubbing circles on my knee, both of us watching the pasture wake up.
The pines are dusted with a light snow, the air smells like woodsmoke from somebody's stove down the road, and Cricket is cautiously snuffling at an icicle near the fence.
"Talked to your mama yesterday." Beck's voice goes a touch careful, the way it does when he's about to negotiate something.
"You did what?"
"She called me, Laurel."
"My mother doesn’t call people."
"And yet." He grins. "She wanted to know if I'm coming up for Christmas with you."
I sit up so fast my coffee sloshes. "Really?"
"I told her I'd love to. I mean, I’ve never spent Christmas in Montana."
"Beck, you cannot just make plans with my mother—"
"Why can’t I tell her I’d be thrilled to spend Christmas with the woman I love and her family?" He looks at me with a sidelong glance. "That felt like the right answer, darlin'. Was I wrong?"
I close my mouth.
Apparently, he's smug now, too. I know where Riot gets it from.
"Okay, okay. You’re right," I say. "But I'm warning you. The whole family will be there. All of them—my mother, aunts, nieces, dogs, Maverick…and Lark and Lyla are flying in this year for a couple of days. Lark’s bringing her boyfriend, Garrett, too.”
"Sounds wonderful."
"It’s a war zone, Beck."
"I'll bring whiskey."
"You will need a case."
He laughs, and that easy rolling laugh he has—the one that took a while to coax out of him—settles in my chest. I lean back against him.
"Lyla's got news, by the way," I say. "C&A in Montana hired her. They want her to start an equine therapy program in the spring."
"Oh yeah? The animal sanctuary where Mav works?"
"Mhmm. Up in Deepwood Mountain. Mav and one of the senior wranglers named Carter…he was friends with Lyla's dad, before he passed…kept poking the owners about the program until they caved. She’ll be heading out in March."
"Big year for everyone it seems."
"Right? Lark's at Wild Vista Ranch with her blacksmith, I'm here with my retired stuntman, and Lyla's about to be hip-deep in therapy ponies, and somehow we’re all alive and flourishing."
I pick at a loose thread on his sleeve. "Speaking of Maverick," I add. "He's been acting weird."
Beck's thumb stops on my knee. "Weird how?"
"I don't know. Off. Distracted. He answered the phone yesterday like I'd caught him in the middle of a heist."
"Mm."
"And the time before that, I asked him a perfectly normal question about winter plans and he sounded like a man being slowly strangled and told me he'd call me back."
Beck just shrugs, suspiciously quiet.
I narrow my eyes at him and he raises his eyebrows. “He probably has work stuff," he says. "Maybe it’s a stressful time at the sanctuary. I’m sure he’ll be fine by Christmas when he has a few days off."
"Hmm." I’m still not convinced.
"You worry too much about your brother. The man’s a rock. And he’s not the type to hide anything from you if something was bothering him."
That’s true. So I let it go, because I'm in too good of a mood to chase something that might be nothing. And because Beck's smile has gone soft at the corner the way it does when he's pleased, and the festival lights have just blinked on down in the valley.
The world is too pretty to argue with right now.
In the paddock, Riot stretches his neck and lets out a long, satisfied sigh, like a man settling into a particularly good chair.
Beck's hand is still on my knee.
I get up and sit in his lap.
“Well, good morning, darlin’,” he drawls, putting his arms around me, nuzzling the back of my neck. “What is this all about?”
"Just warming up."
“What’re we warming up for?” He squeezes me tighter.
“I don’t have a client until this afternoon. Maybe we could go back to bed for a little while?”
But he’s already lifting me so I’m forced to stand. “Maybe? Please. I’m never going to turn that down.”
He spanks my ass and I yelp as he crowds me back into the cabin.
And before the door closes, we hear Riot snort in the paddock, smug and fat and entirely at peace with himself.
Same, buddy.
Same.
Thanks for reading!