The Best Thing
LILA
Ifind Cassidy outside the arena, leaning against the fence rail, arms crossed, looking out at the parking lot.
I put a hand on her shoulder. “Hey,” I say softly. “Are you okay?”
She laughs, short and humorless. “Sorry about that.”
“You have nothing to apologize for,” I say.
“He’s stressed. Work is insane right now and he didn’t want to come and…”
“You don’t owe anyone an explanation,” I say, still gentle, still waiting for her to say something real.
She looks at the parking lot for a long moment. Her eyes are bright.
“It’s just hard sometimes,” she says. “He doesn’t understand where I come from. The people I love. We’re from different worlds.” She shakes her head. “Relationships are just really hard.”
I choose my next words carefully. “Relationships can be hard. Life is certainly hard. But do you want to brave it with someone who helps you feel strong, or someone who makes you feel small?”
Her eyes fill with unshed tears. “What if you’re so used to holding everything together for everyone else that you don’t even know what you actually want anymore?”
On impulse, because she looks like she really needs one, I give her a hug. She holds on to me tightly.
When we part, those tears have spilled down her cheeks.
“I know that feeling,” I tell her. “I spent years trying to be what my family needed me to be. The version of me they wanted. The day I stopped doing that was the scariest day of my life. But it was also the first day I felt like myself. It’s been a tough road, and a lonely one, I won’t lie to you.
But I’ve never regretted forging my own path. ”
She gives me a watery smile. “Worked out for you, obviously. Your dream career. A husband who loves you for exactly who you are. You have the perfect life,” she sighs.
If only she knew.
A husband who loves you.
Does he? He’s never said the words.
But I think about the way he shows up to my office with lunch and stays to fix whatever’s broken, because he noticed before I mentioned it.
The way he’s carved out Sunday mornings as ours — no ranch, no phone, just coffee and me and whatever I feel like talking about.
The way he pulled me onto his lap at the latest Rhodes family dinner last week for no reason at all and just held me there, talking to his brothers like that was just where I lived now. On him. Against him. His.
And still. Still.
He’s on his path and I’m on mine. Love isn’t always enough to bridge the gap between two people’s lives.
Maybe Slade does love me, the only way he knows how to anymore. And I love him more than I’ve loved anything.
We’re still on a collision course with goodbye.
I swallow past the tightness in my throat. He and I were strangers not long ago. We’ll be strangers again, all too soon.
Maybe it will be easier someday.
When it feels like my voice will come out steady, I speak.
“Don’t settle,” I say to Cassidy. “That’s all I know.
Don’t settle for someone who makes you feel less than.
You deserve someone who loves you for exactly who you are.
Who’s proud of you. Who lifts you up instead of tearing you down.
” I give her a small smile. “Marry the man who thinks you’re the best thing that’s ever happened to him and treats you like it. Don’t take anything less than that.”
It’s a reminder to myself as much as her. Because the man I married treats me like that every single day. But he lost someone he loved more than anything once, and it broke something in him.
I wish I could fix it for him. I wish I could do what I do with every neglected space I walk into: see past the damage to what it was before and what it could be again, strip it back and start over and make it something that feels like home.
But Slade isn’t a project. And love isn’t a renovation. You can’t just decide a person is going to be okay and make it so. He has to find his way there himself.
All I can do is hope he hurries.
Cassidy looks back at the parking lot and blinks rapidly, refusing to let more tears spill over. Then her eyes focus on something behind me, and I turn to see.
Tanner has found us.
He’s still in his chaps, cutting through the crowd with his eyes fixed on Cassidy with an expression I’ve never seen on his face before, but with eyes I do recognize. Those Rhodes green eyes, intense and tender and deeply protective. Walker looks at Sadie that way. My husband looks at me that way.
And Tanner’s looking at Cassidy that way right now.
When he reaches us, his focus is all on her. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” The palm of her hand dashes to her eyes to catch the tears there.
“Cass,” he murmurs tenderly. With the pad of his thumb, he wipes away a streak of her tears. “C’mon now.”
“Derek and I had a fight, that’s all.”
Tanner’s eyes darken. “He made you cry?”
When she says nothing, the look darkens further. He’s already turning back toward the arena.
“Tanner—” Cassidy grabs his arm.
“Where is he?”
“Would you stop?” She steps in front of him. “I don’t need you to fight my battles.”
“Watch me,” he says fiercely.
“You don’t get to do that,” she says. “You don’t get to show up every time I’m feeling low and… Tanner.” Her voice cracks slightly. “Please. Not again.”
Somewhere behind the mountains, thunder rolls. Low and distant, the first real warning of the storm that’s been building all evening. A breath later, lightning splits the sky at the edge of the horizon, there and gone.
Neither of them notices.
They’re staring at each other, tension sparking between them like the electricity sizzling in the sky.
Whatever this is, it isn’t mine to witness. Luckily, I’m not sure they remember I’m here.
A warm hand finds the small of my back and I don’t have to look to know.
Slade.
Standing behind me, solid and close, his lips drops to my ear. “Let’s go, baby.”
I look at Cassidy and Tanner. He’s got his fists clenched, not in anger, but like he’s desperately trying to keep himself from touching her.
“It’s okay,” Slade murmurs. “Tanner’s got her.”
I let him guide me away, his hand steady at the small of my back, and I take one last look over my shoulder at the two of them arguing in low urgent voices, the storm moving in behind the mountains.
The first drops of rain hit my shoulders as we walk.
“Are you sure we should leave them?” I say.
“A Rhodes always looks after his woman.”
I raise an eyebrow at him. “‘His woman’ is engaged to another man.”
“Details.” His gaze slides to me, slow and certain. “None of us have ever let something small like that get in the way of what we want.”
He walks me to the truck without a word, rain soaking into his shirt, his hand firm and warm at my back. At the passenger door he stops.
“I heard what you said,” he tells me. “About marrying the man who thinks you’re the best thing that’s ever happened to him.”
I look up at him. Rain dripping from the brim of his Stetson, jaw tight, eyes very green and very serious.
“You are,” he says. “You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me. I need you to know that.”
The rain comes down between us. The rodeo lights blaze through the downpour, turning everything amber and glimmering, and the crowd inside the arena roars at something, distant and muffled, a whole other world from this parking lot, this truck, this man.
“What are you saying, Slade?” I whisper.
Instead of answering, he backs me gently against the cold wet metal of his truck door.
His hands find my face first. Both of them, cupping my jaw, tilting me up toward him, thumbs sweeping the rain from my cheekbones. He looks at me for one long second in the downpour, green eyes dark and deep and serious, and then he kisses me.
His mouth is warm against the cold wet of my skin and I feel it everywhere, that contrast, the cold rain against the solid wall of him pressed against me. I grab fistfuls of his shirt and hold on.
His hands slide from my face into my hair, cradling the back of my head, and he angles me exactly where he wants me and deepens the kiss until I forget what I asked him.
Until I forget everything.
He pulls back just enough to look at me. Breathing hard. Rain dripping from the brim of his hat.
“I’m not ready for this to be over,” he says.
“Neither am I,” I whisper. “But we still have time.”
“Not enough. It will never be enough.”
He kisses me again, harder this time, one hand fisted in my wet hair and the other flat against the truck beside my head, and I rise onto my toes to get closer, to close whatever distance is left between us. His mouth is urgent now, no longer slow, and I can feel him hard against my belly.
The rain comes down in sheets, cold and relentless, plastering my hair to my face and my clothes to my skin. Slade’s hands are warm. Everything else is cold.
When I press my palm flat against his chest, his heart beats hard under my hand.
Lightning arcs across the sky, and in that split second of white light I see him clearly. Rain-soaked, looking at me like I’m the only thing in the world, those green eyes on me so tender it takes my breath away.
I love him.
Even when the day of his departure to Denver comes and our marriage runs its course and the last thing we do together is sign the divorce papers, I’ll love him.