44. Holden
HOLDEN
The lodge is quiet when I step inside. The crew is outside finishing up, taking advantage of the cool morning before the heat settles over the valley.
For a moment, I just stand there. The photo wall stretches across the far side of the room, sunlight spilling over the frames.
I’ve seen it before. Passed it. Glanced at it. But with everything that’s happened, I haven’t stopped long enough to really look.
Not until now.
I move closer. The photographs pull me in the way they seem to pull everyone else in.
The story of Wild Ember spread across an entire wall.
“She’s done a hell of a job.” Dad’s voice breaks the silence.
I glance over my shoulder. He’s standing near the reception desk, holding a coffee mug, a smile touching his mouth.
“Yeah,” I say. “She has.”
“I keep thinking how much your mom would have loved this.” His gaze drifts across the collection. “She would’ve loved Sage too.”
I can’t find the words to respond to that. But Dad doesn’t give me time to dwell on it.
“Taryn stopped by my office this morning.” He takes a sip of his coffee.
“Everything okay?”
He nods. “She’s still a bit shaken up.”
I can’t exactly blame her.
“She said she keeps replaying it,” he continues. “The bank collapsing. Sage hitting her head.”
A knot tightens in my gut. “I guess that’s normal.”
“Yep. I think she’s worried Sage blames her. She said if she’d only waited for the others, or if she’d been the one to go down with the calf, it wouldn’t have happened.”
I shake my head. “Sage isn’t the kind of person to blame anyone. It was an accident, that’s all.”
He nods. “Told her the same thing.” Then he lets out a slow breath. “But it’s easier said than done sometimes. Hell, I did it for years.”
My brows draw together. “Did what?”
With his focus fixed on the photographs in front of us, he says, “Replayed it.” He tips his chin up. “Your mom’s accident.”
My heart lurches and my stomach twists.
“I came up with a hundred ways that day could have gone differently. If I’d asked her to stop at the feed store first.” His voice is quiet.
“If she’d left ten minutes later. If the car in front of her had been slower.
If that man had pulled over when he started feeling sick.
” He shakes his head. “Hell, if I’d just kissed her before she got in her truck, it might have been enough. ”
The grief in his voice is old now, worn smooth by time. But it’s still there.
His gaze shifts to mine. “Thing is, none of those versions changed a damn thing.” He looks back at the story Sage built. “You know what else I figured out?”
I don’t answer, and he doesn’t seem to expect me to anyway.
“Every time I went through it again, every time I came up with another scenario, all I really got was another chance to hurt.” His jaw flexes. “And for a while, that felt important.”
It’s like he’s reached inside my head and put words to something I never could.
“For a long while, I thought I owed it to her.”
“Owed her what?”
“The hurting.”
The simplicity of the answer knocks the breath out of me.
He lifts one shoulder. “Didn’t seem right to move on, you know?”
I stare at him as he studies the image of the original ranch house.
“Eventually, I realized she’d have hated that.” He levels his gaze on me. “But you know what would’ve really broken her heart?”
I can’t answer.
He shakes his head slowly. “Watching you spend twelve years punishing yourself for a moment none of us could change.”
For a second, the room tilts. Every rodeo. Every motel. Every excuse. Every mile I put between myself and this place.
Punishment, not escape. Punishment.
Dad steps forward and squeezes my shoulder once, then turns and starts for the door. Halfway there, he pauses. “Sage texted.”
My heart kicks against my ribs, and he smiles like he knows. “They’re about ten minutes out.”
Then he’s gone. Once the door closes behind him, silence settles across the lodge again.
I look back at the wall. At evidence of generations who endured, who loved, who lost, and kept living anyway.
My gaze drifts across the photographs, across the story Sage somehow saw so clearly.
She would have loved Sage too.
Yeah, she would have.
With nothing but her on my mind, I wander back to the ranch house. Ten minutes turns out to be closer to fifteen.
Not that I’m counting.
I sink onto the porch swing, one foot pushing against the floorboards as my gaze drifts back to the driveway every few seconds.
The screen door creaks open behind me.
Taryn steps out onto the porch, easing it shut before sitting on the top step beside the railing. She folds her arms across her knees, staring out over the paddocks.
For a minute, neither of us says anything.
“You okay?” I ask.
She shrugs, but it’s not convincing.
“Dad told me you went to see him.”
Her shoulders stiffen. “I just…” She swallows. “I can’t stop thinking about it.”
“The accident?”
She nods. “What I could’ve done differently.”
I get to my feet and lean against the porch rail. “Yeah. I know something about that.”
Her eyes flick to mine before dropping again. “If I’d waited for the others. If I’d gone down after the calf instead of Sage—”
“Maybe it wouldn’t have happened.”
Her brows pull together, like she wasn’t expecting that answer.
“And maybe it would’ve been worse. That’s the problem. You can come up with a hundred different versions, but you’ll never know.”
Her eyes glisten. “I keep seeing her fall.”
I hate that she has that memory. “I’m sorry you had to see it.”
“I don’t know how to stop.”
Until this morning, I’m not sure I would’ve known what to tell her.
I cross the porch and crouch beside her. “I don’t know how you stop. But I know beating the hell out of yourself every time you remember it isn’t going to change what happened.”
Her mouth trembles.
“She’s okay, Taryn. And she would never blame you.”
She blinks hard, then gives a small nod, though I can tell she’s not ready to believe me yet.
I squeeze her shoulder once before standing again.
Silence settles between us, broken only by the breeze stirring through the cottonwoods.
Then the low rumble of an engine reaches us from the driveway. I take a half-step forward, Taryn scrambling to her feet behind me.
Mia’s truck appears between the cottonwoods.
My pulse kicks. I’ve been into town more than once since Sage went home with Mia. Sometimes she was awake. Sometimes she wasn’t. I kept the visits short. Figured she needed space more than she needed me hovering. As long as she was getting better, I could live with that.
None of that stops the anticipation crackling through me when the vehicle comes to a stop in front of the house.
The driver’s door opens first, and Mia climbs out.
My plan was to wait on the porch and do my best not to crowd Sage—let the rest of my family greet her first.
But I can’t. As everyone else pours out the front door, I’m already moving down the steps.
I swing the passenger door open and take her in, my heart trying to punch its way through my ribs.
She’s wearing a small smile and an oversized sweater that’s slipping off one shoulder. My attention catches on the strip of bare skin it exposes, but I force myself to look away. My family chatters all around, and Mia unbuckles Ruby from her car seat, but it’s all muffled—far away.
“You know I’m capable of getting out on my own, right?” Sage says.
I force out a few raspy words. “Wouldn’t want to have to patch you up again.”
She laughs softly, and then my hands are on her waist and hers are on my shoulders. Despite how badly I want to hold her tight, I lower her gently to the ground. The last few days disappear. The hospital room. The waiting. The sleepless nights. All of it.
She’s here. We’re both here. And for the first time since I walked away nearly two weeks ago, I can breathe again.
My hands linger on her waist, my eyes dropping to her soft lips. Bad idea, very bad. I make myself let go and step back. As much as I might like to, I can’t just pick things back up where they were before I walked away.
Taryn shoulders her way past me first. No surprise there. She visited Sage in the hospital and stopped by to see her at Mia’s too. But after our conversation this morning, there’s no missing the guilt on her face as she wraps Sage in a hug. Carefully. Like she’s worried she might break.
Sage’s smile is as warm as ever. “Have you been visiting Trouble for me?”
“Every day. He’s started following me around now.”
“He’s already forgotten me.” Sage laughs softly.
Taryn blinks. “Oh no. I’m sure as soon as he sees you, he’ll—”
Sage grasps her arm gently. “I’m just kidding.”
My sister swallows, but the worry leaves her face.
“You know, the doctor said I should be able to get back in the saddle in a couple of weeks,” Sage says casually. “I’m hoping you can take me out again.”
Taryn stares at her for a moment, then breaks into a smile. “I’d like that.”
I hang back and watch as my brothers and my dad surround her. Mia and Ruby come to stand next to me.
“Has she been okay?” I ask quietly.
Mia glances up at me, a smile playing on her lips. “I’ve taken care of wounded cats that make better patients. She doesn’t like sitting still all that much.”
I chuckle. “I can imagine.”
“She missed you.” Mia’s voice is lower now.
“I missed her too.” I watch Sage laughing with Taryn. “I just figured she needed time to recover.”
Mia nods. “She did.” She pauses. “I’m talking about before that.”
Tension ripples across my shoulders. I know what she’s really saying. “I screwed up,” I tell her. “But I’m going to spend however long it takes to prove I won’t run again.”
She studies me a moment longer, and with a satisfied nod, she turns toward where my family is still surrounding Sage. “Good. Because I have a shovel and I know how to use it.”
Ruby tugs at her mom’s hand, her head tipped back. “Can we go see the ponies?”
Mia smiles down at her daughter. “Maybe later. We’ve got to make sure Aunty Sage gets settled in first.”
River materializes at my side as if he’s been summoned. “I can take her. Bring her back in time for lunch.”