Chapter 21
Ivy
The Dallas skyline appeared on the horizon like a mirage I'd once believed was real. Strange how small it looked now, after weeks of Texas sky that stretched forever. The buildings that had once made me feel important, sophisticated, successful, now just looked like boxes blocking the view.
I'd left Copper Creek at dawn, Wyatt kissing me goodbye on the porch of our cabin with the kind of desperation that suggested he still wasn't entirely sure I'd come back.
His hands had tangled in my hair, his mouth hot and demanding against mine, and it had taken everything in me to get in my car and drive away.
"Two weeks," he'd whispered against my lips. "I'll be counting."
Now, pulling into my apartment complex in Uptown, I touched the horseshoe pendant at my throat. Five hours of highway between us, but I could still feel him—taste coffee and promises on my lips, feel the phantom pressure of his hands on my waist.
My apartment was on the fifteenth floor of a gleaming tower that promised "luxury urban living.
" I'd been so proud when I'd signed the lease, proof that the ranch girl from Copper Creek had made it.
Now the lobby's marble and mirrors just felt cold, pretentious.
The doorman nodded in recognition, but I'd never learned his name.
After three years, I'd never learned any of my neighbors' names.
The apartment itself was exactly as I'd left it—minimalist, modern, everything in shades of gray and white because a designer had told me it was sophisticated. No color. No warmth. No life.
I'd lived here for three years, but it had never been home. Just a very expensive place to sleep between office hours.
The boxes I'd ordered online were waiting by my door.
I started in the bedroom, folding clothes I'd forgotten I owned.
Designer suits that cost more than most people's rent.
Shoes that had only touched pavement between the car and office.
A life that had looked perfect from the outside but had been slowly suffocating me from within.
My phone buzzed. Wyatt.
Missing you already. Honey is moping.
I smiled, texting back: Just the horse?
Maybe the rancher too.
Only 13 days left.
Too long. The bed still smells like you though.
Heat flooded through me at the memory of our morning in that bed. I was about to respond when a knock at the door interrupted. I wasn't expecting anyone—had told no one except HR that I was back in town.
Mark stood in my doorway, looking like a catalog ad in pressed khakis and a button-down that probably cost more than a ranch hand made in a week. His smile was the one that had once charmed me—confident, practiced, just the right amount of vulnerable.
"Heard you were back," he said, already moving to enter.
I blocked him. "How?"
"Building management called. Said you'd scheduled a move-out inspection." He tried to peer past me at the boxes. "You're not seriously doing this."
"I seriously am."
"Ivy, come on. You're upset about the ranch visit. I handled it badly, I admit. But throwing away your whole life over a fight?"
"It's not about the fight, Mark."
"Then what? That cowboy? You're giving up everything we built for some rough-handed rancher who'll have you barefoot and pregnant within a year?"
The casual insult to Wyatt made my temper flare, but I breathed through it. Mark didn't deserve my anger anymore. He didn't deserve anything from me.
"We never built anything, Mark," I said calmly. "We had sex. We attended the same events. We looked good on paper. But we never built anything real."
His face flushed. "We dated for eight months."
"And in all that time, did you ever ask about my childhood? My family? Why I never talked about home?"
"I assumed—"
"You assumed a lot. That I'd be grateful for your attention. That I'd follow your plan. That I wanted the same empty life you did." I shook my head, feeling lighter with each word. "We never had anything but convenient sex and compatible calendars. I'm sorry if you thought it was more."
"You're making a mistake," he said, but the confidence was cracking. "Dallas is where you belong. The partnership, the money, the future—"
"The future I want includes dirt roads and cattle and Sunday dinners with too much food. It includes people who know my name and my story and love me anyway. It includes a man who built a house from dreams I shared at seventeen and never gave up hope I'd come home to it."
"You'll be back," he said, but it sounded more like a question. "When the novelty wears off, when you remember what you're giving up—"
"I'm not giving up anything," I said gently, because I finally understood he'd never been cruel, just clueless. "I'm finally choosing what I want instead of what I thought I should want. There's a difference."
I walked him out, closed the door with a soft click that felt like an ending. No dramatic slam. No tears. Just done.
My phone buzzed again. Wyatt.
Everything okay? You went quiet.
Mark was here.
Three dots appeared and disappeared several times before his response: Need me to come down there?
The protective fury in those simple words made me smile. No. It's handled. He's gone. For good.
Good. Because I'd hate to have to explain to the Dallas PD why I had to hit him again.
No hitting. You promised.
I promised to try. Trying real hard from five hours away.
12.5 more days.
But who's counting?
I went back to packing with renewed energy.
Each box filled felt like shedding skin, emerging new.
The kitchen barely took an hour—I'd rarely cooked, living on takeout and restaurant meals.
The living room was just furniture I'd leave for the next tenant.
My whole life fit into a dozen boxes and two suitcases.
Sarah from down the hall stopped by as I was loading my truck. We'd lived ten feet apart for three years, shared maybe fifty words total.
"Moving out?" she asked.
"Going home."
"Where's home?"
"Copper Creek. Little town northwest of here."
She looked at my boots, my jeans, the way I stood, like I had earth under my feet instead of concrete. "You look different. Happier."
"I am."
"Good for you," she said, and meant it. "This city can eat you alive if you're not careful."
It had tried. Had almost succeeded. But I'd survived, and now I was going home.
The last box went into my car as the sun set, painting the glass towers orange and red. Pretty, but nothing compared to sunset over the ranch, the way the light turned the grass to gold and made the cattle look like ancient monuments.
I stood in my empty apartment one last time.
Three years of my life, and it left no mark.
The next tenant would never know I'd been here.
But at the ranch, my presence was already woven into the fabric—in the breeding program, in the plans for the cooperative, in the bed I'd shared with Wyatt, in the family dinners where my place was set without question.
"I'm done running," I said to the empty room, and the words echoed back like agreement.
The drive out of Dallas was a resurrection. With every mile, I felt lighter. I headed northwest, toward home. Toward Wyatt. Toward the life I'd almost been too scared to claim.
My phone rang through the truck's bluetooth. Wyatt.
"Shouldn't you be sleeping?" I said by way of greeting. "Dawn comes early on a ranch."
"Can't sleep. Bed's too empty."
"Twelve more days." I fibbed.
"About that," he said, and I heard the smile in his voice. "Mom wants to know if you'll be back in time for the Sunday dinner. She's making pot roast."
"Which Sunday?"
"Any Sunday. Every Sunday. All the Sundays for the rest of your life."
My throat went tight. "Wyatt Blackwood, are you asking me to Sunday dinner or something else?"
"I'm asking you to come home. The rest we'll figure out as we go."
"Twelve days," I promised. "Maybe less."
"Definitely less," he said. "I'm too impatient to wait twelve days."
"Some things are worth waiting for."
"You are," he agreed. "But I've done my waiting. Time for the having."
After we hung up, I drove through the darkness with the windows down, letting the Texas night air wash over me. The city lights faded behind me, replaced by stars that multiplied with every mile. By the time I stopped for gas in Weatherford, I could just make out the Milky Way.
The horseshoe pendant was warm against my skin, like it was alive, like it was pulling me back to where it had come from. Back to the boy who'd become a man who'd never stopped loving me. Back to the ranch that had raised me. Back to the family that had welcomed me home without question.
Back to the life I'd almost missed by being too afraid to believe I deserved it.
But not anymore. No more fear. No more running. No more pretending to be someone I wasn't.
Just Ivy Garrison, going home to Copper Creek, to Wyatt Blackwood, to the future we'd written in the stars and were finally brave enough to claim.