Chapter 27 - Maggie
Maggie
The drive home took three days, and I savored every mile.
We started as a caravan—Liam and Stephanie in the lead, Jack and me following in his truck, Sully sprawled across the back seat like he was finally allowed to relax. But somewhere in Wyoming, at a gas station with a view of the Tetons, I pulled Liam aside.
"Go on without us," I said.
He raised an eyebrow. "You sure?"
"We'll be a day behind you. Maybe two." I glanced back at Jack, who was filling the truck and pretending not to watch us. "I just... I want some time. Just the two of us. Before we get back and everything gets real."
Liam studied me for a moment—that quiet, assessing look he'd inherited from our father. Then his mouth curved into something that was almost a smile. "Take your time. I'll let Aunt Lou know you're coming."
Stephanie was less subtle. She hugged me tight and whispered, "Get a nice hotel room. Order room service. Don't come back until you're ready."
"Stephanie—"
"I mean it." She pulled back, her eyes sparkling. "You just chased a man across three states and got your heart put back together. You deserve a honeymoon. Even if it's just a practice one."
So Liam and Stephanie drove south toward Texas, and Jack and I turned west.
We spent that night in Jackson Hole—a little inn with a view of the mountains and a fireplace in the room.
We ate dinner at a restaurant where they didn't know our names, didn't know our story.
We were just a couple in love, holding hands across a white tablecloth, making plans for a future that suddenly felt possible.
After dinner, we walked through town in the cool mountain air.
Jack bought me a turquoise bracelet from a Native artist's stall because I stopped to admire it.
I bought him a worn copy of "Lonesome Dove" from a used bookstore because he mentioned he'd never read it.
Small gifts. The kind of things people do when they're learning how to be together.
That night, in front of the fireplace, we drank whiskey and talked about nothing and everything.
Not big declarations. Not heavy confessions.
Just... us. The kind of conversation that wanders wherever it wants to go—childhood memories and stupid jokes and what we'd name a hypothetical goat if we ever got one.
He said Gerald. I said absolutely not. We talked about books we'd never finished and songs that made us cry and the best meal we'd ever eaten.
He told me about the summer he tried to teach himself guitar and gave up after two weeks.
I told him about the time I got lost in a corn maze for three hours and had to be rescued by a twelve-year-old.
He laughed at that. Really laughed. And I realized I'd do just about anything to keep hearing that sound.
Somewhere in the easy flow of it, the conversation got quieter. Deeper. I told him things I'd never told anyone—not the facts, he already knew those. But the shape of it. The way I'd rearranged myself around someone else's cruelty until I couldn't remember what my original shape had been.
Jack listened without interrupting. When I was done, he pulled me close and held me, and somewhere in the mess of tears and firelight and his steady heartbeat under my cheek, I felt something finally let go.
The next morning, we drove through Yellowstone—taking the long way, the scenic route, because we could.
Because we had time. Because for the first time in my life, I was just..
. present. With Jack. Watching geysers erupt and bison graze and the world unfold in ways I'd never taken time to notice before.
We stopped at an overlook somewhere in the park, and Jack pointed to a herd of wild horses in the distance.
"Someday," he said, "we're going to have horses like that. Not wild, but free. Bred for heart, not just bloodlines."
I leaned into him, his arm around my shoulders, and watched the horses move across the landscape like poetry. "Tell me more."
So he did. He talked about patience and trust and the way you could rebuild something broken if you were willing to take the time.
He wasn't just talking about horses. I knew that. He knew I knew.
"I want that," I said. "All of it. With you."
Jack kissed the top of my head. "Then that's what we'll build."
We crossed into Colorado that afternoon. We talked about everything—the land, the business plan I'd been building in my head for years, finally given permission to become real.
We talked about the hard stuff too. Jack's grief, still raw but no longer suffocating. He told me more about his family—stories from childhood, memories that made him smile instead of flinch.
"I'm going to miss them forever," he said somewhere in the mountains, his voice quiet. "But I don't have to run from that anymore. I can miss them and still build something new."
I reached over and laced my fingers through his. Didn't say anything. Just let him know I was there.
Somewhere in New Mexico, I said the thing I'd been afraid to say.
"I'm going to mess up." The words came out rough, almost defensive. "I'm going to get scared and pull back and forget how to be vulnerable. It's what I do."
Jack glanced at me, then back at the road. "I know."
"And when I do? When I build walls or shut you out or say something stupid because I'm scared?"
"Then I'll still be here." His voice was steady, certain. "We'll figure it out."
"What if I hurt you again?"
He was quiet for a moment. The highway stretched out ahead of us, flat and endless, the kind of road that makes you feel like you could drive forever.
"Then you'll apologize," he said finally, "and we'll talk about it, and we'll keep going." He looked at me again, his eyes warm. "That's what partnership means, Maggie. Not never making mistakes—just being willing to work through them together."
I could do that. I wanted to do that.
We crossed into Texas as the sun was setting, painting the flat land gold and orange and something that looked almost like hope. I felt something loosen in my chest—a tension I'd been carrying so long I'd forgotten it was there.
Home. I was almost home. And this time, I wasn't coming back alone.
"I called my mother from the last gas station," I admitted. "Told her we were coming."
Jack raised an eyebrow. "And?"
"And she's planning a welcome home dinner. Which means the whole family will be there. Which means—" I took a breath. "Which means I get to introduce you properly. The way I should have from the beginning."
Jack's hand found mine on the console. "You don't have to make a big thing of it."
"I want to." I squeezed his fingers. "I want everyone to know. I want to stand in front of my whole family and tell them that I love you and I'm choosing you and I'm done being afraid." My voice caught. "I owe you that. I owe myself that."
Jack didn't argue. He just lifted my hand to his lips and kissed my knuckles, the way he did when words weren't enough.
We arrived at Copper Creek just after dark.
The ranch looked the same as it always had—the main house lit up warm against the night, trucks parked in the yard, the barn a solid shadow against the stars. But something felt different. Lighter. Like the whole place had been holding its breath and was finally ready to exhale.
Or maybe that was just me.
By the time Jack parked, the front porch was full of people. Momma emerged first, wiping her hands on a dish towel. Daddy followed, steady and solid as always. Then Wyatt and Ivy, Hunter with a beer in hand, the whole Blackwood clan spilling out to welcome us home.
My throat tightened. My family. My loud, impossible, fiercely loving family.
Jack came around the truck to stand beside me, and Sully jumped down to investigate the familiar smells. For a moment, everyone just looked at each other—the family on the porch, the couple in the yard, three thousand miles of road and a lifetime of fear bridged by the simple fact of showing up.
Then Momma came down the steps and pulled me into her arms. "Welcome home, sweetheart," she whispered. "I'm so proud of you."
I held on tight. "Thanks, Momma. For everything."
When I pulled back, she was looking at Jack with that knowing expression she wore when she'd already decided something. "And you," she said, reaching out to cup his face the way she did with her own children. "Thank you for waiting for her."
"Yes ma'am." Jack's voice was rough. "She was worth the wait."
The rest of the greetings blurred together—Daddy’s firm handshake and gruff. "Good to have you back," Wyatt's nod of respect, Ivy's warm hug. Hunter's "About damn time" made everyone laugh, cutting through the emotion with his usual irreverence.
But I wasn't done yet.
I took Jack's hand and turned to face my family, all of them gathered on the porch, all of them watching with various degrees of curiosity and hope.
"I need to say something," I announced.
The chatter died down. Daddy raised an eyebrow. Momma’s smile softened into something expectant.
I took a breath. This was it. The moment I'd been avoiding my whole life—standing in front of people who mattered and claiming something that could be taken away.
"A few days ago, someone asked me who Jack was.
And I said—" My voice caught. I pushed through.
"I said he was our new ranch hand. Like he was nobody.
Like what we had was nothing." I looked at Jack, then back at my family.
"I was wrong. I was scared, and I was wrong, and I almost lost him because I was too much of a coward to tell the truth. "
Jack squeezed my hand. I squeezed back.
"So here's the truth. Jack isn't just a ranch hand. He isn't just someone who works here. He's—" I felt the tears coming and didn't fight them. "He's the man I love. The man I'm choosing. Today and tomorrow and every day after that, for as long as he'll have me."
"Forever sounds about right," Jack said quietly, and I laugh-cried at the interruption.
"He saved my life," I continued, my voice steadier now.
"Not just in the pasture with the hogs—though yes, that too.
He saved my life by seeing me. Really seeing me.
The scared parts and the stubborn parts and all the walls I built to keep people out.
He saw all of it and he stayed anyway. He waited for me to be brave enough to choose him back. "
I turned to face Jack fully, taking both his hands, letting my family witness this.
"I choose you," I said. "Out loud. In front of everyone who matters to me. I choose you, Jack Remington. And I'm going to keep choosing you every single day until you get tired of hearing it."
"Never going to happen." His eyes were bright, his voice rough with emotion. "I'll never get tired of hearing it."
He kissed me then—right there in front of my whole family, in front of God and the stars and the land that had been Blackwood territory for four generations.
It wasn't a polite kiss. It wasn't a careful kiss.
It was the kind of kiss that claimed and promised and declared, and when we finally broke apart, I was dimly aware of cheering and whooping from the porch.
Clay wolf-whistled. Stephanie was actually crying. Owen had his arm around Louisa, both of them smiling like they'd been waiting for this moment for years.
"Well," Wyatt said dryly, "I guess that's settled."
"About damn time!” Clay shouted with a grin as everyone came to congratulate us. “We’ve been watching you two tiptoe around each other for weeks. I was getting sick of it.”
"Welcome to the family, son," Daddy said, and his voice was suspiciously thick.
But I barely heard any of it. I was too busy holding onto Jack, letting the reality sink in.
I was choosing love without a safety net, and for the first time in my life, it didn't feel like falling.
It felt like flying.
Later—after the congratulations and the dinner and the champagne toast that Daddy insisted on—I slipped away to the wedding tree.
It stood where it had always stood, ancient and patient, its branches spreading wide against the night sky. Blackwoods had been married under this tree. My parents. Wyatt and Ivy. Soon, Liam and Stephanie.
And maybe one day, me.
Jack found me there, because of course he did.
"Hey," he said softly, coming to stand beside me.
"Hey."
We looked at the tree together. The trunk was scarred with initials and dates, the bark worn smooth in places where hands had touched it over the decades.
"My parents got married under this tree. So did Liam’s parents. And Wyatt and Ivy just last year.” I said. “Momma said it would grow with the family—that every wedding under its branches would make the roots go deeper."
Jack wrapped an arm around my shoulders, pulling me close. "That's a hell of a legacy."
"Yeah." I leaned into him. "I always thought—when I was a kid, I used to imagine getting married here. Having my dad walk me down the aisle, my mom crying in the front row."
"And now?"
I turned to look at him. "Now I want you to be at the end of that aisle. I want it, Jack. All of it.”
His arms tightened around me. “I think we can make that work.”
"I want everything," I whispered. "The ranch. The horses. The life we're going to build. I want Sunday dinners with my family and late nights in the barn with you. I want to wake up every morning knowing you're beside me."
"Then that's what we'll do." Jack tilted my chin up and made me meet his eyes. "One day at a time, one choice at a time, until we've got roots so deep nothing can pull them up."
I looked at the man beside me. At the tree that had watched over my family for a hundred years.
"I love you," I said.
His eyes softened. "I love you too."
"I'm going to marry you under this tree,” I declared without an ounce of fear. It just might’ve been the most certain I’d ever been about anything in my life.
Jack’s smile widened. "I'm counting on it."
I laughed—bright and joyful, the sound carrying across the quiet ranch. Then I took his hand and led him back toward the house, where the lights were still on and my family was still celebrating and the future was waiting to be built.
Behind us, the wedding tree stood patient and eternal, its roots reaching deep into Blackwood soil.
Ready for one more love story to make them grow.