Chapter 20
LEVI
I pull through the gate, and the ranch opens up in front of me.
It looks exactly the way I left it. The barn, the dining hall, the cabin rows, the tree line past the arena.
I half expected it to look different, the way everything else about this trip did.
It doesn't. That gets me more than I thought it would.
I park and sit in the truck for a second before I get out.
Long enough to feel the full weight of coming back on purpose instead of out of habit.
Kade is coming out of the barn when I cross the lot. He stops when he sees me. He looks at me for a beat, long enough that I know he's doing the same thing I am.
"Glad you're back," he says. "Did you get things taken care of?"
"Yeah. It's done."
He holds my gaze. "And Garrett?"
"We talked." I pause. “Really talked.”
Kade takes that in. "Well," he says, "some conversations take a while."
"About fourteen years too longer."
He almost smiles. "Take some time. See you in a while."
"Yeah. See ya."
Then he goes back inside.
I stand there for a second after Kade disappears inside. Nine years with that man. He said, “Glad you're back,” and that was enough.
Sawyer and Logan are on their porch with glasses of sweet tea when I cross the lot. She's off the steps before I'm halfway across the lot, and she pulls me for a hug. I hug her back.
She pulls back and looks at me. "I'm glad you're back. How are you feeling?"
"I'm good with it," I say. "It needed to happen."
"How'd it go with Garrett?"
"Rough." I pause. "I guess it needed to be that, too."
"Did you say what you needed to say?"
"Yeah. We both did."
She nods. "Is he okay?"
"He will be." I look at her. "He's got a job at a local ranch. He's been handling things on his own for a long time. "He didn't need me to save anything. He just needed me to show up."
Sawyer is quiet for a moment. "That's the harder thing, usually."
"Yeah," I say. "It is."
Logan comes down the steps, shakes my hand, and pulls me in briefly with the other arm.
"How was the drive?" Logan asks.
Well, I walked straight into the women's bathroom outside of Butte. Wasn't even a fumble, full stride, right through the door. I was too busy rehearsing what I was going to say to Garrett to read the door. Ran smack into a woman on her way out. She looked at me like I'd escaped from somewhere.
Sawyer laughs.
"Did you explain yourself?"
"I tried to. It just made it worse."
Logan laughs.
"How'd the bank go?" he asks.
"It took two hours of paperwork," I say. "The notary smelled like peppermint and had a lot of opinions about font size on legal documents."
Logan laughs, low and real.
"But it's done," he says.
"Yep. It's done."
He looks at me. "Good. Glad you're home."
Neither of us makes anything of that word.
***
I take my bag and my guitar to my cabin. The bag gets emptied into the laundry basket, my boots by the door, and my guitar in the corner. The whole process takes maybe ten minutes.
When I'm done, I sit on the edge of the bed and let the quiet land.
My mug is on the counter where I left it.
The window faces the arena, quiet and empty in the evening light.
Copper's out in the pasture with Cricket and the rest of them.
The cabin smells the same. Cedar, old leather and the laundry detergent Darla stocks in the supply room.
The longest I've stayed anywhere since I was seventeen, and it's never once felt like coming home the way it does right now, with nothing braced in my chest.
The conversation with Garrett wasn't a handshake and everything forgiven.
It wasn't tidy. It was two men sitting across a table in Sadler saying true things that neither of us had said out loud before.
Hard things. The kind that sit between people for fourteen years and get heavier the longer nobody touches them.
We said them anyway. All of them. And when we were done, Garrett walked me to my truck.
We hugged, brief and a little stiff, the kind that two people do when they're not quite sure how to be brothers yet, but they're willing to figure it out. Then I got in and drove.
That was enough.
The debt is closed. The note is paid. Every piece of what I left unfinished in Sadler is finished now.
I think about what Kade said at the pasture fence before I left.
That in nine years, he'd never once seen me stop trying with anyone.
That the day I did was the first time. I've been turning that over since Sadler.
I think I know what to do with it now. I think I'm going to spend a good while making sure of it.
I get up and go find Cass.
***
Her cabin door opens before I finish knocking. When she sees me, relief moves across her face, real and immediate. I get about two seconds of it before the declaration I've been carrying since Sadler comes out of my mouth without any setup at all.
"I've been in love with you since before I knew what to do with it," I say. "I'm done pretending otherwise."
She holds my gaze for one full breath. Her eyes go soft and then certain. Then she says it back.
"I love you too. I've known it. I'm done holding the door half open on something real because it scared me."
I don't move for a second. Her voice saying those words is its own thing to absorb.
I've been in love with this woman since week two, and hearing her say it back is not the same as knowing it was coming.
My chest tightens. Then she steps out, and I pull her to me, her arms coming around my waist, mine around her shoulders, and I kiss her.
I walk her back until her shoulders hit the door frame and keep her there.
I can feel her smiling against my mouth, and I pull back far enough to see it.
She pulls me right back in, and I kiss her the way I've wanted to for four days, open and deep, her mouth warm against mine, and neither of us comes up for air.
Long enough that I hear footsteps on the path and then a pause, and Rhea's voice comes up completely unapologetic.
"I'm going to need both of you to know that I've been right about this for weeks."
Weeks.
Cass pulls back laughing. I look down at her, and her eyes are bright. Rhea's footsteps are already moving away down the path.
"She's been right longer than that," Cass says.
"Don't tell her that."
"I absolutely am going to tell her that."
I pull her back in. This time we're both laughing, and that's its own kind of thing. Something I didn't know I was waiting for. All that time trying to make her laugh, and the whole point was to get here, where we could do it together, easily, with nothing in the way.
She pulls back and looks at me.
"I'm really glad you're back," she says.
"Yeah," I say. "Me too."
***
Darla has the counter loaded with pot roast, mashed potatoes, green beans, and cornbread.
I catch the smell of it from the porch, and it hits somewhere in my chest where I told myself on the drive back that I was coming home for exactly this.
Cass is beside me when we come through the door.
Darla catches us both and waves us to the counter.
She loads a plate, slides it across, and pats the back of my hand.
"Welcome home," she says. "Now sit. You look like you drove straight through."
"I stopped twice."
"For what?"
"For food and the bathroom." I pause. "Mostly in that order."
She gives me a look, then turns to Cass. "You eating or just standing there looking relieved?"
"Both," Cass says, smiling.
Darla loads her a plate, gives me a look and moves back into the room. I don't say anything else. Neither does she. The pat on the hand was enough for both of us.
We take our plates and find seats at a table.
The horsemanship group comes in first, moving through the counter line and finding their seats, conversation low and easy.
The crew filters in behind them, plates in hand.
Rhea drops into the chair across from me.
Kade sits beside her and picks up his fork, looking at both of us like we're mildly interesting weather.
Logan sits down, looks at Cass and me beside each other, then catches Sawyer's eye. She gives him the smallest nod.
Darla sets her plate down with the satisfaction of someone whose opinion has been confirmed. Mandy refills drinks without comment, but she's smiling when she turns back to the kitchen. Londyn sets a basket of cornbread on the table, already smiling when she turns away.
I reach for the cornbread, and Cass reaches for the same piece. I let her have it.
"Thanks."
"Anytime," I say.
She smiles and goes back to her plate. Rhea is studying the ceiling. Kade is eating like nothing in this room is interesting to him.
Cass leans her shoulder into mine.
I press back and stay there. She's leaning into me in a room full of people who are very conspicuously not watching. The whole crew knows. She knows they know. She did it anyway. I'm aware of every person in this room who isn't looking at us, and I'd sit here all night.
Then the dining hall door swings open, and Sutton comes through at full speed. He spots me across the room and changes direction completely. Before I can get a word out, he's launched himself off the ground. I catch him because there's no other option. He grabs my face with both hands.
"You came back on Friday," he says.
"It's Sunday, bud."
His face goes serious while he processes this. "That's close to Friday."
"It really isn't."
"Bingo has been waiting at the gate for you every single day," Sutton says.
"Bingo was only waiting at the gate with you," Logan says.
Sutton thinks about this. "That's basically the same thing."
Cass makes a sound beside me. I look at her. She's laughing, her hand over her mouth, her shoulders shaking, and she looks at me over the top of her hand and doesn't try to stop.
I look around the table, and nobody is holding it together. Logan's head is down. Rhea has given up on the ceiling entirely. Even Kade is smiling.
"Tell Bingo I'll see him after dinner," I say to Sutton.