Epilogue
“Just where do you plan on putting all these plants?” Hud asked, raking a hand through his hair.
“I’ll find places. Don’t worry.” Blair hung a basket planter above the sink, stepped back to look at it and grinned.
“It’s going to look like a jungle in here.”
She turned to face him. “Yeah, so?”
“Nothing.” He shook his head. “When I asked you to move in I didn’t think about all the plants.”
“If that’s a problem I’ll take them back to my place and stay there with them.” She put her hands on her hips, but he could see the corner of her mouth twitching.
He stared at her, then laughed. “I knew you’d be bringing them, and I’d have absolutely no say in it.”
“They’re good for you. They clean the air. Love me, love my plants.” She bit her lip trying to hold back a grin.
“Well, I do love you.” He looked around the kitchen at the trailing vines and hanging baskets and terracotta pots lined up along the windowsill. “The plants are going to take some getting used to.”
“They’ll grow on you.” She laughed at her own joke. “Get it? They’ll grow on you.”
“All that time wondering if I’d ever find the right woman, and the one I find thinks she’s a comedian.”
“You should have thought of that before you asked me to move in.”
He grabbed her and pulled her into his arms. “Your houseplants were the last thing on my mind when I did.” He kissed her temple. “Let me go bring in some more boxes.”
“Before you do, I talked to Abbie today. Creed is doing well but getting antsy to get back to work.”
“I’m sure he is. Rawley comes back to four days a week, starting Monday.”
“We should have everyone over for dinner soon. Rawley and Skylar, Creed and Abbie.”
“We will.” He pulled her close one more time and looked down at her. “But let me have you to myself for a little while first.”
Blair smiled and smoothed a hand against his chest. “I think I can live with that.”
“Dave did say he was going to have another agent come in to help since Creed will be out a while, and Rawley is still going to have to take it easy.”
“Another agent?”
“Yeah, the department does that sometimes. It’s how Killian ended up here. He stayed though.”
“Well, you’ll get some help then.” Blair kissed his lips.
He headed out to the truck for another load of boxes, and she turned back to her plants, already figuring out where the next one would go.
He stood at the tailgate for a moment in the quiet afternoon, looking back at the house.
There was a basket planter above the kitchen sink and probably six more where that came from still waiting to be hung.
The windowsills were going to disappear under greenery.
The place was going to look completely different by the time she was done with it.
He grabbed a box and headed back inside.
He made three more trips before the bed was empty.
He set the last box on the kitchen table and put the kettle on for her, then stood in the quiet kitchen listening to Blair moving around in the bedroom, the sound of drawers opening and closing, the particular domestic rhythm of someone making a space their own.
He looked around. There was already a plant on top of the refrigerator he was certain hadn’t been there ten minutes ago.
Two more sat on the kitchen table waiting to be placed.
A small succulent had appeared on the windowsill above the sink next to the one she’d hung earlier.
He shook his head. His phone buzzed. Rawley.
He stepped out onto the back porch and answered. “You’re supposed to be resting.”
“I’m sitting down.” Rawley’s voice was stronger than it had been two weeks ago. “Skylar made me promise not to stand up more than necessary. I’m honoring that from the couch.” A pause. “Blair get moved in alright?”
“She’s down the hall. The kitchen already looks like a greenhouse.”
Rawley laughed, which turned into a brief hiss Hud could hear through the phone. “Good. You needed something living in that house besides you.”
“That’s what she said.”
“Smart woman.”
“Don’t tell her that. She’s already insufferable.” Hud leaned against the porch rail and looked out at the ranch. The early evening light fell long and amber across the pasture, the grass lush and green, the hills beyond the fence line dressed in wildflowers. “You ready for Monday?”
“Been ready for weeks. Dave’s the one making me wait.” A pause. “How’s it feel? Having her there?”
Hud considered it. “Right,” he said finally. “It feels right.”
“Good.” Rawley’s voice was quiet and genuine. “That’s how it’s supposed to feel.”
They talked for a few more minutes, easy conversation between two men who didn’t need to say much to say enough. Before he hung up Rawley said, “Tell Blair we said hello. Skylar wants to have you both over soon.”
“We’ll be there.”
He stood on the porch a while after he hung up, his phone in his hand. The ranch stretched out around him in every direction, open and quiet and entirely his.
Not entirely his anymore.
He heard the door behind him and Blair came out with two mugs, handing him one without a word and leaning against the rail beside him.
She’d changed into worn jeans and a T-shirt, her hair pulled back loosely, and she looked out at the pasture the way he had, easy and unhurried, like she’d been doing it for years.
“Rawley called,” he said.
“How is he?”
“Good. Ready to come back.” Hud wrapped both hands around the mug. “Skylar wants to have us over.”
“I’d like that.” She was quiet for a moment, her eyes moving across the pasture to the hills beyond. “Hud. This place.”
“What about it?”
“It’s beautiful.” She said it simply, like it had just settled over her. “I knew it was but standing out here like this.” She shook her head. “I don’t know how you ever leave it.”
“It’s easier when there’s nothing to come home to.” He glanced at her. “That’s not a problem anymore.”
She looked up at him and smiled, then turned back to the view.
The light was fading fast, the sky deepening from amber to burnished orange along the ridge line, the shadows stretching long across the pasture.
One of the horses lifted its head toward the porch, then went back to the trough.
The air smelled of cut grass and something else he couldn’t quite name yet, something that had come in with Blair and her boxes and her houseplants and was already changing the way the place felt.
He put his arm around her, and she leaned into him without hesitation, her head against his shoulder.
“The bedroom’s mostly done,” she said. “I put a few things on your dresser. If you hate it just say so.”
“I won’t hate it.”
“You haven’t seen it yet.”
“I won’t hate it,” he said again, and she smiled into her mug.
He pressed his lips to the top of her head and held them there.
All those years of coming home to a quiet ranch, eating alone, sitting on this same porch alone, watching the same sunsets with nobody to hand a cup of coffee to.
He’d told himself he was fine with it. He’d almost believed it. He knew better now.
“You doing alright?” he asked.
She tilted her head up to look at him, her eyes warm. “More than alright.” She searched his face. “You?”
“More than alright.”
The last of the light slipped behind the ridge and the sky went a deep clear blue overhead, the first stars beginning to show. Neither of them moved to go inside.
He’d spent years being stubborn about the wrong things and had nearly lost her because of it. Some men spent a lifetime looking for what he was holding onto right now, and he didn’t plan on ever letting it go.
* * * The End * * *