Chapter 18
Molly
The sun hangs low over the western ridge, painting everything in that golden hour light that makes even the scrub brush look romantic, and I'm standing in front of my closet like an idiot trying to decide what you wear to an outing that is definitely, absolutely, one hundred percent not a date.
"It's not a date," I say out loud to no one, because Maggie took Clem an hour ago and the house is too quiet and I've already changed twice.
I settle on jeans and a flannel over a tank top, practical boots, hair in a braid. An outfit that says I put zero thought into this. Which took forty-five minutes of thought.
Taz's truck pulls up at six on the dot, and when I walk outside, he's leaning against the driver's door with a canvas bag over one shoulder and a rolled blanket under his arm.
He's wearing that soft gray henley I always loved, the one that makes his eyes look like sea glass, and his hair is still damp from a shower.
"Not a date," I remind him before he can say hello.
"Wouldn't dream of it." He opens the passenger door for me. "This is a geological expedition. Very educational, very scientific."
"Uh-huh." I climb in and notice the back seat is loaded with supplies. A cooler. Two thermoses. What looks like a battery-powered lantern. A first aid kit. "Did you pack for the apocalypse?"
He slides into the driver's seat, and I catch the flush creeping up his neck. "I like to be prepared."
"There's prepared, and then there's whatever this is." I twist around to get a better look. "Is that... Taz, is that a laminated card?"
"It's a rain plan," he mutters, pulling onto the main road. "The weather app said twelve percent chance, which is basically nothing, but—"
"You laminated a rain plan," I repeat, delighted.
"I don't want to talk about it," he says to the windshield.
I can't help it. I start laughing, and it's not the polite kind; it's the kind that makes my stomach hurt and my eyes water. Tazio Williams, tattooed rancher, man who has literally birthed calves with his bare hands, made a laminated contingency card for watching a sunset.
"I'm glad my organizational skills amuse you," he says, but he's smiling, that real smile that crinkles the corners of his eyes.
"When did you even have time to laminate anything?" I ask.
"We have a laminator in the ranch office," he mutters.
"Of course you do," I say.
We drive in comfortable silence for a while, the familiar roads of Topa Ridge unfolding outside my window.
I know this land almost as well as I know my grandmother's property; I've spent enough years learning its rhythms, its secret places.
But when Taz takes a turn I don't recognize, bumping onto a dirt track that's barely more than a suggestion, I sit up straighter.
"Where are we going?" I ask.
"Ridge past the north pasture," he says. "Best view of the Pink Moment on the whole property."
I frown. "I don't think I've ever been out here."
He's quiet for a beat too long. "No. You haven't."
"Why not?" I ask.
The truck bounces over a rut, and he keeps his eyes on the track.
"Because I was always working. Always had a meeting that couldn't wait, some emergency, some call I had to take.
" He glances at me, then away. "I found this spot the second year we were married.
Told myself I'd bring you out here for our anniversary. And then I just... didn't."
The honesty sits between us, heavy and real. I don't know what to say, so I don't say anything.
The track gets rougher, winding down toward a creek bed that looks dry from up here but apparently isn't, because about thirty seconds after Taz confidently announces we're almost there, the truck lurches sideways with a sound like mud trying to swallow a tire.
He tries reverse. The tire spins, and the truck settles another inch. I look over his shoulder at the laminated card.
"Do we have a section for sinking," I ask sweetly, "or was the plan strictly concerned with water arriving from above?"
"I'm revising the document." He switches off the engine before he digs us any deeper. "We can walk from here. Half a mile. I'll carry the cooler."
"Please bring the card," I tell him. "If we need rescuing, I'd like evidence that this expedition had administrative support."
He looks at me, then starts laughing. The embarrassment in it is so familiar that I have to look away before I smile too much.
We end up hiking the last half mile, Taz carrying the blanket and cooler while I handle the thermoses and try not to laugh every time he steps in a mud patch and curses under his breath. The ridge, when we finally reach it, is worth every bit of it.
The Topa Topa bluffs stretch across the horizon like sleeping giants, their craggy faces catching the last of the light. I've seen them a thousand times, but never from this angle, never with the whole valley spread out below like a quilt in greens and golds.
"Oh," I breathe.
Taz spreads the blanket on a flat spot, opens the cooler to reveal cheese and crackers and those little chocolate truffles from the fancy place in town that I mentioned exactly once, three years ago. There's wine, the good stuff, and two real glasses wrapped in cloth napkins.
"This is very elaborate for a geological expedition," I say, sitting down.
"I told you," he says. "I like to be prepared."
We eat and drink and watch the bluffs, waiting for the Pink Moment: that ten minutes every evening when the sandstone catches the setting sun and turns the color of cotton candy, of rose petals, of a blush spreading across a cheek.
I remember my grandmother telling me about it when I was a little girl, calling it magic, and I remember not really believing her until I saw it for myself from her porch.
"What did writing the letter teach you?" I ask, surprising myself.
He takes his time answering, swirling the wine in his glass. The light is getting softer, and it catches the silver at his temples that wasn't there two years ago.
"That I stopped telling you things," he finally says. "Somewhere along the way, when the work got hard, when Dad's legacy started feeling more like a weight than a gift, I stopped talking to you about it."
"Why?" I ask.
"Because telling you meant you might leave.
" He says it simply, like it's obvious. "If you knew how much I was struggling, how many nights I lay awake feeling like a failure, how much of myself I was losing to that goddamn company...
I thought you'd realize you made a mistake.
That you'd look at me and see all the ways I wasn't the man you married. "
My throat feels tight. "So you just... shut me out instead?"
"Yeah." He shakes his head at his wine. "Which accomplished exactly what I was afraid of, except worse. Because at least if you'd left knowing the truth, you'd have left knowing me. Instead you left a stranger."
"Can you tell me when you're afraid instead of disappearing into work?" I ask. "Don't wait until it's become a catastrophe. Tell me while it's still just a bad Tuesday."
"I'll have to get used to it," he admits. "I kept thinking if I brought the fear home, you'd see how little I had under control."
"I married a man who faintly resembled a trapped bear when I asked him to dance," I remind him. "I had fairly realistic expectations of your control."
His laugh is brief and sore. "I thought being useful would cover everything else."
"You were useful when you held my hand too," I tell him. "You didn't have to build me a thing every time I needed you. Now pass the crackers. I refuse to do any more emotional work on an empty stomach."
He brings the cooler closer. "I packed enough for a difficult evening."
I laugh, wiping my eyes. "Finally, a contingency plan I can support."
The pink fades toward purple. I reach for another cracker.
"Clem caught my braid this morning," I tell him. "I had to negotiate with every finger separately."
"She got my beard yesterday," he says. "I tried offering a finger instead. Apparently I don't understand the market."
"You'll have to shave," I tell him, reaching over to tug his beard.
"Or become very convincing," he says. "I'm fond of my face as it is."
I glance at him before I can help it. "You'll survive a few losses."
He smiles into his glass. "Miguel asked whether you wanted him to keep the spare frames at your barn or bring them to the ranch. I told him to ask you."
"The barn for now," I say. "I'll call him. I'd like to look at what we've got before anyone moves things."
"All right," he says.
The lack of an argument is startlingly pleasant. I stretch my legs and look at the first star over the ridge.
"We should pack up," I say, "before Maggie teaches our child how to order things on my phone."
"She'll start with shoes," he says. "She believes infants need a formalwear option."
"Your daughter has already outgrown socks she never wore," I tell him. "Tell your mother I'm opening a museum."
The moon is up by the time we get back to the truck. Taz pulls out the floor mats and crouches beside the tires.
"Tell me those aren't the expensive ones Maggie gave us," I say.
"Would you prefer I leave them inside to watch us die here?" he asks.
"No," I say. "But when she asks, you explain why her Christmas present is buried in a creek."
"I'll put it in the thank-you note," he says.
He wedges the mats into place, then looks up at me. Mud reaches halfway to his elbows.
"Could you drive while I watch the tires?" he asks. "Gently. If it starts spinning, stop."
"You trust me with your escape route?" I ask.
"I trust you with considerably more than that," he says.
I climb in before he can see my face. The tires catch, and the truck climbs onto firmer ground. I stop and wait while he retrieves the mats.
"Successful geological expedition," I tell him through the window. "We've brought most of it home."
He laughs and shakes the mud off his hands, well away from me. Apparently experience can teach a man.
At my door, my grandmother's door, the farmhouse door, he walks me up the porch steps like this really is a date. The motion light flickers on, casting us both in yellow.
"Thank you," I say. "For tonight. For the truck getting stuck. For the laminated rain plan we didn't even need."
"Anytime." He's standing close enough that I can smell his soap, can see the tiny scar above his eyebrow from a bull that got too close when he was nineteen. "I'm glad you came."
"I'm glad you asked," I tell him.
We're just looking at each other now, and that old pull is building between us, the one I've been trying to ignore since I came back. He reaches up, slowly, and tucks a strand of hair that's escaped my braid behind my ear. His fingers graze my cheek.
I lean in.
I catch myself.
"Not a date," I whisper, stepping back.
He grins, slow and warm and devastating. "Wouldn't dream of it."