Chapter 16
Ivy
Morning crept into my cabin soft as forgiveness.
Light filtered through thin curtains I’d forgotten to close, turning the air gold, dust motes swirling like ghosts set free.
My whole body ached—not from ranch work, but from everything that had come undone yesterday.
The diner. My father’s hands. Wyatt’s fists.
The truth, laid bare for the whole damn town to see.
For the first time in fourteen years, the secret wasn’t mine alone. It should have felt like freedom. It didn’t. It just felt raw.
The ranch woke around me, alive with the sounds of morning—roosters shouting their glory, the metallic clang of tools in Hunter’s shop, cattle lowing somewhere beyond the house. The world kept moving even when I didn’t quite know how to.
I dressed without thinking: worn jeans, soft blue shirt, boots that had molded to me after weeks of use. No lipstick. No armor. Just me.
The walk to the main house was bathed in early light, the grass jeweled with dew, the air smelling of clover and sun-warmed earth. My boots left dark imprints behind me—a quiet trail of where I’d been, where I was trying to go.
Inside, Louisa was already at the stove, humming something low and old. The kitchen smelled like butter and biscuits, safe and steady.
“Coffee’s fresh,” she said without turning, like she always knew when someone was standing behind her, heartbroken. “Biscuits’ll be ready in five.”
I poured a cup, letting the heat of the mug settle the tremor in my hands. “Where is everyone?”
“Workin’. It’s what Blackwoods do when they’re hurtin’. Beats punchin’ walls.” She turned, soft eyes assessing me the way only she could—seeing the truth without needing it spoken. “How you holdin’ up, honey?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted, sinking into a chair. “I feel like I’ve been scraped raw. Like everyone can see what’s left underneath.”
“Truth’ll do that,” Louisa said, setting a biscuit in front of me. Steam curled up in the morning air. “Especially when it’s been bottled up for too damn long. But you did the right thing.”
I blinked back tears. “I don’t know how to fix any of this. Wyatt, me... It’s just such a mess.”
Louisa’s smile was sad but knowing. “You know what saved me and Owen when I came back from school after four years apart?”
I shook my head, throat too tight to speak.
“We stopped talkin’ around the truth and started talkin’ through it. Got loud. Got ugly. But we didn’t stop.” She reached across the table and squeezed my hand, her skin warm and work-rough. “Don’t be afraid of the mess, Ivy. That’s where the good stuff grows.”
Her words stuck to my ribs long after I’d finished breakfast.
When I finally left the house, the day had already begun to heat, the sky so blue it almost hurt to look at. My boots carried me toward the barn without me really deciding to go—like my heart knew before my head caught up.
Inside, it was dim and cool, the scent of hay and dust thick in the air. Light slanted through the high windows, catching on motes that drifted like slow-moving stars. I moved to the far stall, where one of the heifers was close to calving, and let the work quiet my thoughts.
Measure feed. Check water. Breathe.
I didn’t notice the sound of boots behind me right away—the low creak of the barn door, the soft thud of steps across packed dirt.
When I finally looked up, he was there.
Wyatt.
And just like that, every sound in the barn seemed to stop.
We just stood there and looked at each other.
The barn held its breath around us—dust motes drifting slowly in the shafts of late light, the faint sweet-sour of hay, and the tinny echo of a distant gate clanking.
No theatrics. No raised voices. The storm that’d been building between us had finally spent itself, leaving something raw and honest in its wake.
“Wyatt…” My voice broke on his name.
“We need to talk,” he said, the words coming out hesitant. “Really talk. No more secrets. No more running. No more trying to protect each other from the truth.”
For a heartbeat, neither of us spoke. The only sound was the telltale groans of the old barn and hay crunching under the restless shifting of the heifer beside me.
Heat pricked behind my eyes, and I nodded. A fresh tear rolled down my cheek as I whispered, “Okay.”
And then I gave him what he wanted.
“I’m sorry.” The words cracked out of me, ragged as the sigh of wind through the rafters. “For leaving. For not trusting you. For making a choice that should have been ours to make together.”
He blinked like the sound of my apology had landed in a place he’d been keeping closed off.
When he answered, his voice was low and rough, like he’d been swallowing glass.
“I’m sorry too. For yesterday. For what I did to your father.
For proving—” He stopped, the next words choking out of him.
“For proving you right about what I’m capable of. ”
I watched his hands. Bandages wrapped his knuckles the way armor wraps a wound—useful but not whole.
He ran a palm through his hair, and it stuck up in disobedient angles, and for a stupid, unfair second, he looked like the boy I’d once loved.
The sight hit me like something tender and dangerous all at once.
“You were protecting me,” I said, the obviousness of it sounding more like a question than a fact.
He laughed once, hollow. “I was out of control. There’s a difference.
” The admission came hard and bright, a thing he forced out of himself like a confession.
He sucked in a breath, eyes closing for a heartbeat.
“When I saw him grab you—” His hands closed into fists; the gauze strained beneath the pressure.
“I didn’t want to just stop him, Ivy, I wanted to end him.
I wanted to make sure he never had the chance again. ”
The brutality of it landed like a physical thing between us. My stomach folded inward, not from fear this time but from the nakedness of what he’d almost done—the line he’d almost crossed for me.
“But you didn’t,” I said. My fingers found his, half instinct, half plea. His hand was warm and rough and trembling. “You stopped.”
“Only because Liam was there.” He swallowed. The words were immediate and true and small. “Only because someone who knows me better than anyone pulled me back.”
The honesty of it, the raw admission, made something in my chest crack. We stood in the barn's filtered light, all the words we'd never said finally taking form.
"We were kids," I said finally, my voice barely above a whisper. "Kids trying to survive grown-up demons with tools we didn't have."
"We were." He moved closer, slow and careful like approaching a spooked horse. Each step deliberate, telegraphed, giving me time to run if I needed to. "But we're not kids anymore."
"No. We're not."
He was close enough now that I could see the flecks of gold in his green eyes, the way his pulse jumped in his throat. Close enough to smell him—hay and sweat and that indefinable scent that was just Wyatt, that had haunted my dreams for fourteen years.
"So what do we do now? We can't pretend the last two weeks haven't happened. Can't pretend yesterday didn't happen. Can't go back to before you came home."
Home. He'd called it home. Not to the ranch, not to Copper Creek. Home.
"I don't want to pretend," I said, and I was surprised to find I meant it. "I'm tired of pretending. Tired of running. Tired of being scared of shadows and possibilities."
"Me too." His voice was rough, broken. "I'm tired of being angry. Tired of living in that cabin alone, walking through rooms I built for a family that never happened. Tired of missing you so much it feels like something's been carved out of my chest."
The admission hung between us, simple and devastating.
"Then let's stop surviving," he said, and his eyes were so earnest, so hopeful, it made my heart squeeze. "Let's stop running from the past or fighting it. Let's just... start living."
"As what?" I asked, and I hated how small my voice sounded. "What are we to each other now?"
"Friends?" he offered, but it came out like a question. "Two people who matter too much to lose again?"
Friends didn’t feel right to explain what we were to each other, but it was a good start. ”I’d like that."
"Me too."
He opened his arms then, a question and an invitation. I could see the vulnerability in his face, the fear I might reject him, and it made my decision for me. I stepped into his embrace without hesitation, and he pulled me close with a sound that might have been relief or homecoming or both.
There was no heat in it, no desperate passion like in the barn during the storm.
This was something else. Something deeper.
His arms came around me like they were built for this purpose, and I fit against his chest like I'd never left.
It felt like coming home after a long, cold journey. Like safety. Like peace.
I pressed my face into his chest, breathed in the familiar scent of him, and felt something in my chest finally unclench. A knot I'd carried for so long I'd forgotten it wasn't supposed to be there. His heart beat steady under my ear, a rhythm I'd once known better than my own.
"I missed this," I whispered into his shirt, the words muffled but clear. "Just this. Being held by you. Feeling safe."
His arms tightened, and I felt him press his face into my hair. "I missed it too. Missed you. Even when I hated you, I missed you."
"You never hated me."
"No," he agreed. "I never did. Wanted to. Tried to. But never could quite manage it."
We stayed like that for a long time, just holding each other in the barn while the ranch lived and breathed around us. He pressed a kiss to the top of my head, and when we finally pulled apart, both our eyes were wet.
"Friends," he said firmly, like making a promise, like speaking it into existence.
"Friends," I agreed, though the word felt too small for what we were, what we'd been, what we might be again.