25. Wade
WADE
I'd rented a house with four rooms and nothing that mattered.
I'd been here a week. Seven days in a place that wasn't mine, waiting for something I couldn't name and half-convinced would never come.
The couch sagged in the middle. The kitchen counter had a water stain shaped like Texas that I'd stared at over too many cups of bad coffee.
The bedroom had a window that looked out onto someone else's backyard, and every morning I woke up disoriented, forgetting for half a second where I was before it all came back.
I kept Callie's ring in my front pocket. Every time I shifted it pressed against my thigh like an accusation, like a promise I'd already broken. I'd take it out sometimes, turn it over in my fingers, and wonder what the hell I thought I was doing keeping it.
She'd kissed me at the church, and for one perfect second I'd held her, and then she'd said she was afraid it wouldn't last, and stepped back so my hand fell away, and said she didn't forgive me.
Then she'd gone inside and sat near the back, and I'd sat across the aisle, and I hadn't heard from her since.
I didn't blame her. God, I didn't blame her for any of it.
The knock came at three in the afternoon on a Thursday, sharp and uncertain at the same time, and my chest went tight before I even stood up from the couch.
I knew. Somehow I knew it was her before I crossed the room, before I turned the knob, and when I pulled the door open she was standing on the porch with her arms crossed and her hair pulled back in a ponytail that made her look young and tired and like everything I'd lost.
My heart kicked against my ribs. Hard.
"Hey," I said.
"Hey."
We stood there. I wanted to reach for her, wanted to pull her inside and tell her I'd been going out of my mind, but I didn't move. She'd come this far on her own. I wasn't going to be the one to push.
"I came to see how you were doing," Callie said. "Can I come in?"
The fact that she had to ask—that she thought she needed permission to walk into any place I was—made my throat close up. I stepped back, holding the door wide.
"Yeah. Of course."
She walked past me into the living room, and I caught the smell of her as she moved, something clean and familiar that hit me like a live wire.
My stomach twisted. I closed the door and turned to find her standing in the middle of the room, looking around like she was cataloging what my life had turned into.
The sagging couch. The blank walls. The single coffee mug I'd left on the side table that morning, a ring of dried coffee at the bottom because I couldn't be bothered to wash it. Her gaze landed on each piece, and I felt every bit of it like a judgment I deserved.
"You want something to drink?" I asked.
"No." She turned to face me, and her eyes went to my hands. "I'm not staying long."
That shouldn't have hit me as hard as it did. My throat tightened, and I shoved my hands in my pockets to keep from doing something stupid like reaching for her. The ring was there, smooth and warm from my body heat, and I closed my fingers around it without thinking.
Callie saw. She always saw everything, every tell I thought I was hiding.
"You still have it," she said.
I pulled the ring out, held it in my palm. The gold caught the light from the window, and for a second neither of us said anything. It sat there between us, small and impossible and heavier than anything I'd ever carried.
"Yeah."
"Wade—"
"I'm not asking you to take it back." The words came out fast, harder than I meant them. I gentled my voice, tried again. "I just . . . I'm keeping it. That's all."
Her jaw tightened. She looked at the ring, then at me, and I could see her working through something I wasn't allowed to ask about.
The silence stretched out, pulling thin, and I made myself wait.
Made myself stand there and let her decide whatever she needed to decide without me trying to tip the scales.
Finally she nodded once, sharp, and turned away.
"The divorce is still happening," Callie said.
"I know."
"The lawyer called yesterday. Papers should be ready in two weeks."
Two weeks. Fourteen days until it was official, until the ten years we'd built together got reduced to a stack of paperwork and a signature. My chest felt tight, like someone had wrapped a fist around my lungs and squeezed.
"Okay," I said.
She spun back to me, and there was frustration in the line of her shoulders, the set of her mouth. "You're not going to fight it?"
I wanted to. God, I wanted to fight it, wanted to tell her to burn the papers and come home and give me another chance, but that wasn't what this was. She hadn't driven all the way out here for me to make it harder. If she needed this to go through, I wasn't going to stand in her way.
"No," I said. "I'm not gonna fight it."
"Why not?"
"Because it's what you want."
The words hung there. Callie stared at me, and something shifted in her expression, something I couldn't read.
Her mouth opened like she was about to say something, and my pulse kicked up because I didn't know if what came next would wreck me or save me, and before she could get it out there was another knock at the door.
We both froze. The knock came again, louder this time, and I wanted to ignore it, wanted to tell whoever it was to go to hell and come back never, but Callie was already stepping back, putting distance between us.
"You should get that," she said quietly.
I bit back a curse and crossed to the door. Pulled it open harder than I needed to. A neighbor stood on the porch, older guy from three houses down, holding a casserole dish covered in foil. He grinned when he saw me.
"Wade, hey. Saw your truck, thought I'd bring this by." He lifted the dish. "My wife made too much lasagna. Again. You know how she is."
"That's kind of her. Thanks."
He peered past me into the living room, and his grin widened when he spotted Callie standing there. "Oh, hell, I'm interrupting. Sorry about that."
"You're fine," I said.
"No, no, I'll get out of your hair." But he didn't leave.
He shifted the casserole to one hand and clapped me on the shoulder with the other, solid and friendly.
"Before I go, though—I wanted to say I heard about what you've been doing out at the rescue and over on the ranch.
That's good work, Wade. Real good work."
My stomach dropped. Callie was right behind me, ten feet away. I could feel her there, listening.
He kept going. "Those animals don't take care of themselves, you know, especially at night when nobody else is around to see it.
She said she ran into your mother at the store last week, and Marlene was going on about all the work you've been handling.
Said you've been out there every night for months, doing the feeding and the health checks, keeping the whole operation running smooth.
" He squeezed my shoulder. "That's the kind of thing that makes a difference.
Real difference. Not just for the animals, but for the family name.
The Rutledges have always had a reputation for taking care of what's theirs, and sounds like you're keeping that alive. "
I opened my mouth. Closed it. Every instinct I'd built over ten years told me to take it, to nod and thank him and let him think whatever the hell he wanted to think.
That's what I'd always done. That's who I'd been—the guy who let people give him credit he didn't earn, who let his family build a reputation on work that wasn't theirs, who stood by and said nothing while Callie got overlooked for everything she'd given.
I glanced back at her. She was standing in the middle of the living room with her arms still crossed, watching me with an expression I couldn't name. Not hope. Not forgiveness. Something quieter than that, something careful.
My hands were sweating. I wiped them on my jeans and turned back to him.
"That wasn't me," I said.
He blinked. "What?"
"The night care. The feeding, the health checks, making sure the sick animals get through the night. All of it." I met his eyes, made sure he heard it. "That was Callie."
His grin faded into something more serious. He looked past me at her, then back at me. "I thought—Marlene said?—"
"My mother was wrong." The words came out flat.
"Callie's been doing that work for ten years.
Every night. Rain, snow, doesn't matter.
She's the one out there at two in the morning making sure the orphan calves get fed, checking on the sick ones, keeping everything running.
The ranch's reputation, the rescue's reputation, all the goodwill people have for how we treat our animals—that's her. Not me. Not my family."
The neighbor shifted the casserole, cleared his throat. His expression had changed, gone thoughtful. "That so?"
"Yeah," I said. "That's so."
"Well." He looked at Callie again, nodded slowly. "Guess I should've known better than to take Marlene Rutledge at her word." He tipped his head to her. "Ma'am. Sounds like we owe you a debt of gratitude."
Callie didn't say anything. She just stood there, her arms still crossed, and nodded once. Her face was unreadable, but something in the set of her shoulders had changed. Softened, maybe. Or maybe I was seeing things I wanted to see.
He handed me the lasagna, said his goodbyes, and headed back down the porch steps to his truck. I watched him go, then closed the door and stood there with a casserole dish in my hands and my heart beating too hard.
When I turned around, Callie was still in the middle of the living room. Still watching me.
"You didn't have to do that," she said.
"Yeah, I did."
"He was giving you credit. You could've just taken it."
"I didn't want it."
Her eyes narrowed, sharp and searching. "Why not?"
I set the casserole on the counter and shoved my hands back in my pockets, felt the ring press against my palm.
"You earned it," I said.
Callie took a step toward me. Stopped. Her hands were still crossed over her chest, but something in her posture had shifted. The frustration was still there, but there was something else underneath it now, something I was afraid to name.
"Wade . . ."
"You don't have to say anything," I said.
"I wasn't—" She stopped, breathed out hard through her nose. "I don't know what I was going to say."
"That's okay."
We stood there in the rented house with its sagging couch and its water-stained counter and its blank walls that didn't belong to either of us, and I thought about the church, about the kiss, about the way she'd pulled away and said she was afraid it wouldn't last. I wanted to tell her it would.
I wanted to promise her everything I should've promised ten years ago, lay it all out and make her believe me, but I'd learned enough in the last two months to know that words didn't mean a damn thing if I couldn't back them up with something real.
So I didn't say anything. I just stood there and waited for her to leave, because that's what she'd said she was going to do. She'd said she wasn't staying long, and I had no right to ask her for more time than she wanted to give.
But she didn't leave.
She shifted her weight from one foot to the other, glanced at the door, then back at me.
Her jaw worked like she was chewing over something she didn't want to admit, and my pulse kicked up because I knew that look.
I'd seen it a thousand times over ten years.
It was the look she got when she was trying to talk herself out of something she wanted, when she was weighing whether the risk was worth it.
"I should go," Callie said.
"Okay."
"I've got—there's things I need to do."
"Okay."
She didn't move. Neither did I. The afternoon light slanted through the window behind her and caught the side of her face, turned her hair gold at the edges, and God, she was so beautiful it hurt to look at her.
My chest ached with it. I curled my fingers around the ring in my pocket and made myself stay still, made myself let her decide without me trying to influence it one way or the other.
The seconds stretched out. She looked at the door again. Looked at me.
"Maybe I could stay a little longer," she said quietly.
My chest went tight, so tight I could barely breathe. "Yeah?"
"Just a little."
"Okay."
She nodded, and the tension in her shoulders eased just enough that I could see it happen.
She walked over to the couch and sat down, careful, like she wasn't sure it would hold her.
I stayed where I was, giving her space, giving her time, giving her every damn thing I should've been giving her all along.
Callie looked up at me, and there was something in her eyes I didn't deserve, something fragile and uncertain and tentative. Something that might've been the smallest edge of hope if I was lucky enough for that.
I didn't ask her why she'd come. I didn't ask her what it meant that she was staying, if she'd forgive me, if we had a chance. I just walked over and sat down on the other end of the couch, a careful three feet between us, and let the silence settle over the room like dust.
She stayed.
That was enough.