Chapter 7 Carson
seven
Carson
Past ten. The ranch is quiet.
I am re-oiling a bridle that doesn't need re-oiling. Hands are busy. Head is not cooperating.
I have a story ready. I’ve been building it since her phone goes off.
She'll call whoever needs calling, she'll be practical about it because that is who she is, and she'll leave on Sunday like she's always been going to.
And I'll let her, because that is the right thing.
Because she doesn't belong to Saddlehorn or to Wild Vista or to me.
She's come here to face something and she's faced it, and going home isn't betrayal. It is just the arc of things.
I've made peace with it.
Mostly.
The ride back is quiet in a way that is different from our other silences.
Before, the quiet between us was companionable.
Two people who don't need to fill the air.
This is two people keeping something down.
I've watched her from the corner of my eye the whole way down from the ridge and can't get a read on her, which isn't something I'm used to.
When we get back, she unsaddles Bonnie herself. She's been paying attention all week and knows the way things go. After Bonnie is settled, she walks out without looking at me, and I tell myself that is the beginning of the exit, and I start building the wall then.
I hear her footsteps on the barn path before she gets to the door. I know them already. That is its own problem.
She comes through the barn doors. I look up.
"I quit my job," she says.
The world zooms in and swirls around me, focusing only on her.
She is standing there in the low barn light with her chin up and her shoulders straight. Not uncertain. Not apologetic. Certain. The same way she is certain that first morning when she shows up five minutes early instead of not at all.
Not: I'm thinking about it. Not: I need some time. Quit. Past tense. Already done.
I had the whole story ready. She'll get the call, get that look, be polite about it, leave on Sunday. I've had it all built.
She's blown it apart in one sentence.
I stand there with my hands not doing anything useful and think: she quit her job.
Ten years of people leaving. My ex Lauren, the circuit, and anyone I've let close enough to eventually go. I've made peace with it as a fact of my particular life. Some men get the one who stays. I've decided I'm not one of them.
I've been wrong.
Something moves through me, fast and certain, the way it hits sometimes with a horse you've just met. Before you've tested anything, before you've earned the right to be sure. Just: this one. This is the one.
I cross the barn.
I kiss her like I mean it. I do mean it. With all of my heart. I kiss her with both hands in her hair, her face tipped up to mine. Everything I've been keeping tamped down all week, every time I've talked myself back from the edge of this, released all at once. She grabs a fistful of my shirt.
We break apart enough to breathe.
"Josie," I say.
"Yeah."
"I love you." Short. Real. No speech in me, just the fact of it. "That's not going to change whether you're here or in Dallas or on the damn moon. But I'd really like it if you stayed."
She puts her forehead against my chest.
"Okay," she says, muffled. "Yes. Obviously."
I wrap both arms around her. Stand there in the barn with the horses shifting and the spring dark coming through the open doors and feel something settle in my chest I haven't felt in a long time.
Maybe ever. The particular weight of something you thought you'd lost being handed back to you, still intact.
"You're really not going back?" I say.
She pulls back to look at me. Eyes bright and steady. "I've got a month-to-month lease and a savings account I never touched because I was scared to quit. I'm really not going back."
"Saddlehorn's a small town."
"Saddlehorn's got that diner. Lorna keeps my coffee full." A beat. "I asked her this morning."
I laugh, and Bonnie swings her head over the stall door to look at us.
"Hi, Bonnie," Josie says.
The mare snorts. Josie reaches up and puts her hand flat on that bay nose without bracing, without flinching, without the small private war I've been watching her fight all week.
Just reaches out and touches her. Easy. Like she's always known how.
I watch them. My woman and my horse, in the barn that Carl gives me when I need a place to land.
I think about what she says the night before, about the door I've left open.
I don't know if that is true. What I know is that she's walked through it on her own, and that is the only thing that matters.
Mine, I think. Finally.
Both of them. Everything.