Chapter 11
BLAINE
I stood in the driveway long after Caitlin's taillights disappeared, grinning like an idiot at the empty road.
She'd kissed me back.
Not just kissed me back—she'd fisted her hands in my shirt and pulled me closer like she couldn't get enough. Like she'd been waiting for this just as long as I had.
What if I don't want you to wait?
I replayed those words in my head, still not quite believing she'd said them. Caitlin Miller, who was careful and professional and had a boyfriend— had a boyfriend—had stood in my driveway and kissed me like her life depended on it.
And then she'd left. To end things with Preston. To do the right thing, because that's who she was.
God, I was in trouble.
The thing was, I'd kissed women before. Plenty of them.
Beautiful women, smart women, women who checked every box on whatever list I thought I was supposed to be working from.
And it had never felt like this. Like the ground had shifted under my feet.
Like everything before this moment had been a rough draft and this— this —was the real thing.
I thought about Serena. About all the Serenas before her.
Women who saw the bank account, the car, the success story.
Women who wanted the lifestyle, not the life.
Not once had any of them made me feel like Caitlin did when she looked at me across a sick horse's stall, covered in mud, telling me exactly what I was doing wrong.
She didn't give a damn about my money. Half the time I wasn't sure she even liked me. And somehow that made everything different.
Cisco nickered from his paddock, and I walked over to him, still floating somewhere above the ground.
"She kissed me back, buddy." I scratched behind his ears. "Actually, I think she kissed me first. Technically. The second time."
He nudged my pocket, looking for carrots.
"You're not even listening. This is a huge moment and you just want snacks."
Another nudge. I laughed and pulled out the carrot I'd stashed there earlier. "Fine. But I'm telling you, this is big. Life-changing. The kind of thing people write songs about."
Cisco crunched his carrot, thoroughly unimpressed.
"Tough crowd."
"Who's a tough crowd?"
I turned. Jake was standing on the porch, arms crossed, watching me with undisguised amusement.
"No one. Nothing. I was just—" I gestured vaguely at Cisco. "Checking on the horses."
"Uh huh." Jake's grin widened. "At ten-thirty at night. After walking Caitlin to her truck. For twenty minutes."
"It wasn't twenty minutes."
"Tre timed it."
Of course he did.
I walked back toward the house, trying and failing to wipe the smile off my face. Jake fell into step beside me.
"Good night?" he asked.
"Yeah."
He waited for more. I didn't give him anything.
We reached the porch, where Tre was waiting with three glasses of whiskey.
"Well?" Tre demanded, handing me one. "Did you kiss her or what?"
"Mind your business."
"That's a yes." He raised his glass. "About damn time."
I took a sip but didn't confirm anything. "She has a boyfriend."
"Had," Jake said.
"She went home to end it."
"Good." Tre dropped into one of the porch chairs. "That guy sounded like a tool anyway."
"You've never met him."
"Don't need to. Any guy who lets a woman like that get away is either blind or stupid." He took a long pull of whiskey. "She's not like the others, man. You know that, right?"
I leaned against the porch railing, looking out at the dark pastures. "Yeah. I know."
"I'm serious." Tre's voice lost its usual edge of humor. "All those women back in the city—Serena, whatever her name was, the one before that—they were looking at what you had. This one looks at who you are. Big difference."
Jake nodded, settling into the chair beside Tre. "He's right. And I don't say that often."
"Appreciate the vote of confidence." Tre clinked his glass against Jake's.
We sat in silence for a while, drinking whiskey and listening to the night sounds—crickets, a distant owl, the soft shuffling of horses in the barn. It was the kind of quiet that didn't exist in San Francisco. The kind of quiet that let you actually think.
"You going to screw it up?" Tre asked finally.
"Probably."
"At least you're self-aware." He finished his whiskey and stood. "I'm going to bed. Try not to stay out here mooning all night."
"I don't moon."
"You're literally mooning right now. You've got a moon face." He clapped me on the shoulder as he passed. "Happy for you, man. Don't overthink it."
He headed down the porch steps toward his cottage. Jake lingered a moment longer, swirling the last of his whiskey.
"He's not wrong," Jake said quietly. "About her being different."
"I know."
"And about not overthinking it." He stood, draining his glass. "You've got a good thing here, Blaine. The ranch. The crew. Now maybe something more." He looked out at the dark hills. "Don't let that brain of yours talk you out of it."
"When did you get so wise?"
"Always been wise. You just never listened." He grinned and headed for his own cottage. "Night, Blaine."
"Night."
I stayed on the porch a while longer, nursing my whiskey and watching the stars. They were impossibly bright out here, away from the city lights. A river of light stretching from horizon to horizon.
Somewhere out there, Caitlin was having a hard conversation. Ending something that should have ended months ago. And then—maybe—starting something new.
With me.
The thought still didn't quite feel real.
My phone buzzed at midnight.
I was still awake—too wired to sleep, staring at the ceiling and replaying the evening on endless loop. I grabbed the phone so fast I nearly dropped it.
Caitlin.
It's done. Preston and I are officially over.
My heart hammered against my ribs. I typed back: How are you feeling?
Three dots appeared. Disappeared. Appeared again.
Free. Scared. Relieved. Guilty about feeling relieved. A pause, then: Is it weird that I feel lighter than I have in months?
Not weird. Honest.
That's what Jess said.
Jess sounds smart.
She is. She also demanded all the details about tonight and called you "Horse Boy."
I laughed out loud in the dark room. I've been called worse.
She approves, for the record. Of you. Of this. Another pause. I told her about the kiss.
What did she say?
She screamed so loud I had to hold the phone away from my ear.
That seems like a good sign.
It is.
I stared at the screen, wanting to say so much. Wanting to tell her I hadn't stopped smiling since she left. Wanting to ask when I could see her again. Wanting to throw "slow and careful" out the window and drive to her house right now.
How did he take it? I typed instead.
A longer pause this time.
About how you'd expect. Surprised. Then angry. Then tried to talk me out of it.
Did it work?
I'm texting you at midnight, aren't I?
Something loosened in my chest. Something I hadn't realized was tight.
Fair point.
He called back an hour later. Said I was making a mistake. That I was throwing away something real for... I don't know. A fantasy.
What did you say?
That if what we had was real, I wouldn't have been looking for something else.
I read that twice. Then a third time.
That's... that's a hell of an answer.
Jess helped me practice. She's very invested in this.
Tell Jess I owe her a drink.
She says you owe her a whole bottle. Good champagne. None of that cheap stuff.
Done.
Another pause. Then:
Blaine?
Yeah?
I'm glad it was you. The first person I wanted to tell when it was over. I'm glad it was you.
Something expanded in my chest—something warm and bright and terrifying in the best possible way.
I'm glad it was me too.
Get some sleep, Horse Boy. Big day tomorrow.
Yes ma'am.
Goodnight, Blaine.
Goodnight, Caitlin.
I set the phone down and stared at the ceiling, grinning like a fool.
She was free. She'd chosen me.
And for the first time since I'd arrived at Sierra Sol, everything felt exactly right.
The next morning, reality reasserted itself.
I was up at five, same as always, stumbling through the dark toward the barn with a cup of coffee that wasn't strong enough to qualify as awake. The horses needed feeding. The stalls needed mucking. And somewhere in the equipment shed, there was a generator that still needed replacing.
Romance was nice. Ranch work was relentless.
Hector was already in the barn when I arrived, moving through the morning routine with the efficiency of someone who'd been doing this for forty years. The man was sixty-three years old and still beat me to the barn every single morning. I'd stopped trying to get there first.
"Morning," I said.
He grunted. Which, from Hector, was practically a warm greeting.
We worked in companionable silence for a while—filling water troughs, distributing hay, checking on each horse. It was meditative, almost. The rhythm of it. The simplicity. My hands knew what to do now without my brain having to direct every movement. That still surprised me sometimes.
I stopped at Sunrise's stall. She was getting bigger every day, her legs finally starting to look proportional to the rest of her. She came to the door when she saw me, nosing at my pockets.
"No carrots yet," I told her. "Breakfast first."
She snorted, unimpressed with my rules.
"Heard you had company last night," Hector said from somewhere behind me.
Of course he'd heard. Nothing happened on this ranch without Hector knowing about it. I was pretty sure he knew things before they happened.
"Dr. Miller came by for dinner. To discuss the Cole situation."
"Uh huh." His tone made it clear he wasn't buying it. "The Cole situation."
"We're being strategic."
"I'm sure you are."
I moved on to the next stall, checking water levels that didn't need checking. Hector followed, because Hector always followed when he had something to say.
"She's a good woman," he said finally. "Smart. Capable. Doesn't scare easy."
"No, she doesn't."
"Reminds me of someone."
I looked at him. He was focused on the hay bale he was breaking apart, but there was something in his expression I'd never seen before. Something softer.
"My wife," he said. "Rosa. She was like that. Tough. Didn't take any crap from anyone, least of all me." A ghost of a smile crossed his weathered face. "Thirty-two years we had together. Best thirty-two years of my life."
In all the weeks I'd been here, Hector had never mentioned a wife. Never mentioned much of anything personal. He was just Hector—solid, reliable, eternally unimpressed by my city-boy mistakes.
"She passed eight years ago," he continued. "Cancer." He said it matter-of-factly, the way you talk about old wounds that have scarred over but never quite healed.
"I'm sorry," I said quietly. "I didn't know."
"Nothing to be sorry about." He kept working, his hands never stopping. "Your grandfather helped me through it. Let me work as much as I needed, gave me space when I needed that too. Never pushed. Just... was there."
I thought about Grandpa Earl. The quiet strength of him. The way he'd made everyone feel like they belonged on this ranch, like they were part of something bigger than themselves.
"He was good at that," I said.
"He was good at a lot of things." Hector finally looked at me. "He would have liked her, you know. Dr. Miller. He always said you could tell a lot about someone by how they treated animals. How they handled pressure." He nodded slowly. "She passed both tests that first night. With Starlight."
"She did."
"Your grandfather also used to say that the good ones don't come along very often. When they do, you hold on." He fixed me with a look that felt like it went straight through to my spine. "You understand what I'm saying?"
"I think so."
"Good." He nodded once—a seal of approval I hadn't realized I'd been waiting for—and went back to his work.
I stood there for a moment, processing. Hector had just shared more about himself in two minutes than he had in the entire time I'd known him. And he'd done it to tell me something important.
The good ones don't come along very often. When they do, you hold on.
Yeah. I understood.
I was still processing that when Jake came jogging into the barn, his face tight with something that wasn't morning tiredness.
"We've got a problem," he said. "The security cameras caught something last night."
My stomach dropped. "What?"
"Someone on the property. Around two AM." He held up his tablet. "You need to see this."