Chapter 31 #2
Instead, his brother nodded. “You’re right. We need a plan for protecting this place that goes beyond hoping the next batch of thugs gets caught before they reach us.”
James leaned forward, elbows on the table. “Thomas.” His tone shifted—gentler, more deliberate. “Are you and Kate still planning to head for California?”
His throat tightened. California. The word that had driven him for weeks. The escape he’d been so certain he needed.
He glanced at Kate. Her hazel eyes met his, steady and clear. No pulling back like she’d done on that ride to town—was that really only yesterday? No guardedness, no walls.
Just...permission. Trust.
She was leaving it to him. Whatever he decided, she would stand beside him.
The realization stole his breath.
He turned back to his brothers, and Kate’s hand squeezed his beneath the table. Warmth spread through his chest, loosening all that had been wound tight for longer than he could remember.
“No.” The word came easy. “Unless Kate wants to go somewhere, we’d like to stay here. On the ranch. With the rest of you.”
Kate’s fingers tightened on his, and when he looked at her, tears shimmered in her eyes. Good tears though. The kind that came with relief.
He added, “You’ll need every hand you can get if Reginald sends more men.”
Enoch studied him a long moment, those blue eyes seeing deep. Then he leaned forward, bracing his forearms on the table. “I’m glad you want to stay here. We’ll need you. And more than that, we want you.”
He cleared his throat. “And I’ve been thinking about how to make things easier for everyone. With three of us married now—” He glanced at Rose, then at Mandie, then at Kate. “It might be time to spread out a bit.”
Thomas blinked. He hadn’t expected this turn.
“I know we’ve...” Enoch paused, and for the first time in Thomas’s memory, his brother looked almost uncomfortable. “We may have dismissed your ideas at times. Made it too easy to still think of you as the unruly youngster of the family.”
Thomas couldn’t speak. Couldn’t have spoken if the house had been on fire.
“But you’re not that anymore.” Enoch’s blue eyes held his, steady and direct. “You’re a man with a family of your own now. And you’ve proven that in ways that matter a great deal more than any of us gave you credit for.”
Thomas’s throat constricted. He stared at his brother, searching for any trace of pity or obligation. He found none.
“There are some good spots not far from the main house,” Enoch continued.
“South, along the creek, or up on that rise overlooking the east pasture. Close enough to help protect each other, but far enough to have your own space. Your own place.” His gaze moved between Thomas and Kate.
“If you and Kate wanted to build something, we’d all pitch in.
Each couple can build their own life while still being part of the whole. ”
The words hung in the air like the first notes of a song Thomas had never dared imagine hearing.
Your own place.
Part of the whole.
Everything he’d wanted—not the running, not the escape, but the thing beneath it. The thing he’d been too afraid to name because naming it meant admitting how badly he wanted it.
A place that was his. A life he could build with his own hands. And a family that saw him—truly saw him—not as the youngest brother or the charming afterthought, but as someone whose presence mattered.
His vision blurred, and he blinked hard against it. Swallowed twice before he trusted his voice.
Kate’s hand held onto his with a fierceness that said everything words couldn’t.
He looked down at their joined hands, her slender fingers laced through his rougher ones. The burn marks on her wrists from the ropes were still raw and red, a reminder of what she’d endured. What they’d both endured.
And yet here they sat. Together. Home.
“I’d like that.” His voice came out rough, stripped bare of the charm and the deflection and the easy humor he’d hidden behind for so long. “We’d like that very much.”
Enoch nodded once—that firm, decisive gesture that meant the matter was settled.
James raised his coffee mug. “To building.”
The others lifted their cups. Even Kate, who managed the motion left-handed because she didn’t let go of his hand.
He didn’t let go of her either.
As the conversation continued around them, Kate leaned into his side, just slightly. As if closeness was something she’d finally given herself permission to want.
He turned and pressed a kiss to her temple. She smelled of lavender and willow bark and the warmth of a woman who’d walked through fire and come out the other side still standing.
Home wasn’t California. It had never been California.
Home was this table. These people. This woman whose hand fit so perfectly in his.
And for the first time in as long as he could remember, he had absolutely no desire to be anywhere else.
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I pray you loved Thomas and Kate’s story!