Chapter 21
Molly
The text comes at seven in the morning while I'm offering Clem her morning bottle, and no, the ceiling fan is not actually more interesting than breakfast.
Can you come to the ranch today? There's something I need to show you.
I stare at the message the way I'd stare at a rattlesnake on the porch. Taz has been careful since the gate incident: present but not pushing, helpful but not hovering. He texts updates about the restraining order. He asks if we need anything from town. He doesn't ask me to come to Topa Ridge.
Until now.
"What do you think?" I ask Clem, who responds by finally latching onto her bottle as if she's been starving for days instead of mildly distracted for ten minutes. "Yeah, I don't know either."
I should say no. I should absolutely say no.
Whatever he wants to show me is clearly some kind of gesture, and I don't need gestures right now.
I need space to think, space to feel, space to figure out what I actually want instead of what my stupid heart keeps insisting it wants despite all evidence that wanting it nearly destroyed me.
My fingers type anyway: What time?
Whenever you're ready. No rush.
Three hours later, I'm buckling Clem into her car seat and telling myself this is just a visit. Just checking in on the ranch. Maggie probably wants to see the baby. It's fine. It's normal. Ex-wives, almost-ex-wives, still-technically-wives visit their estranged husband's ranches all the time.
The drive to Topa Ridge takes twenty minutes, and I spend every one of them composing arguments in my head. Whatever this is, I'm not going to be manipulated by it. I'm not going to let some romantic gesture undo months of hurt. I'm stronger than that now. There's Clem to think about, and myself.
Taz is waiting by the main barn when I pull up, and the sight of him still tightens my chest. He's in his work clothes: dusty jeans, faded henley pushed up to his elbows, hat pulled low against the morning sun.
He looks like the man who handed me a sandwich when I was twenty-two, before the money and the LA house and everything that came after.
"Hey," he says, coming to help with Clem's carrier. "Thanks for coming."
"Your text was very mysterious," I say, keeping my voice light. "I figured you'd either found buried treasure or you're about to tell me the ranch is haunted."
He laughs, low and warm. "Neither. But close."
We walk past the barn, past the paddocks where the horses are already seeking shade, past Maggie's garden, where she plucks Clem's carrier out of Taz's hand from beneath an enormous sun hat with a brisk "Mine for an hour, go on," and carries her off toward the house before I can argue.
The path curves toward the eastern edge of the property, toward—
I stop walking.
"Taz," I say.
"Just keep going," he says quietly. "Please."
The honey house sits in its clearing like it's been waiting for me.
Except it's not the honey house I remember, the one I abandoned when we moved to LA, the one I figured had probably collapsed by now from neglect and California weather.
This one has a new roof, fresh shingles glinting in the sun.
The windows are clean, actually clean, with new screens.
And on the door, painted in careful letters that I recognize as Rudy's handiwork, Rudy, foreman at Topa Ridge since Taz was in diapers, who still hand-paints every sign on the property:
Sagebloom Honey.
"What is this?" My voice comes out thick.
"Rudy and I have been working on it for a few weeks," Taz says. "New extractor inside, the good kind you always wanted. Rewired the whole thing so it meets code. There's a little cooling unit in the corner for the summer harvests."
I can't move. I'm standing on the path with the sun beating down on my shoulders and I can't make my feet work.
"The hives can come home whenever you want," he continues.
"Or never. Miguel said they're doing good where they are; he's been taking great care of them.
But if you ever wanted to bring them back here, there's space.
I talked to Rudy about setting up a proper apiary area, keeping it separate from the cattle paths so nobody gets stung.
He drew up some plans if you want to see them. "
"You should have asked me," I tell him.
He takes a step back from the door. "About the equipment. About all of it. I wanted to give you somewhere ready to work, and I went ahead."
"Do you understand why that's frightening now?" I ask. "Walking into another decision you've made about my life?"
"Tell me what you want changed," he says. "Or removed. Nothing here obligates you to use it."
"I don't want to stand here rejecting things I actually want just to prove I still get a choice," I tell him.
His face tightens. "You shouldn't have to."
"Who's got keys?" I demand. "Who's been told I'm coming back? Has someone decided when I'll reopen?"
"Rudy has the work key," he says. "I have mine. I'll give you both. Nobody has a reopening date. I haven't made announcements or taken orders."
"And if I want the hives at my grandmother's farm instead?" I ask.
"Then that's where they go," he says. "Miguel says they're doing well wherever they land. This can just be the honey house, if you want to use it that way."
I look at the new roof, then at the painted sign. My own name for my own work. I have missed seeing it so much that the anger has nowhere clean to go.
"I wanted you to care before I left," I say.
"You gave me chances to," he says. "I missed them."
"I want to be angry, Taz," I tell him, and my voice gives out halfway through. "I don't want a beautiful new extractor distracting me from a perfectly serviceable grudge."
"It can wait while you finish," he says. "I'm not going anywhere."
The silence stretches between us, filled with birdsong and the distant sound of ranch hands working.
Somewhere up at the house, Clem lets out one indignant wail and goes quiet again, Maggie's department for the next hour, and it hits me that I've been standing out here in the sun arguing like a neglected houseplant.
"I need shade," I say. "Before I say what I mean."
"The honey house has AC now," he says.
Of course it does. There's probably a backup unit in case this one fails to make me emotional enough. I want to scream at him, kiss him, and inspect the extractor, which is an unreasonable number of impulses to manage at once.
I push past him toward the honey house, yanking open the door, and inside it's exactly what he said.
New extractor, gleaming and industrial. Fresh shelving along the walls.
A small cooling unit humming in the corner.
And on the workbench, a stack of Sagebloom labels that someone printed on actual quality paper this time, not the cheap stuff I used to buy at the office supply store.
"I'm keeping the labels," I say. "I'm not promising anything else."
"They're yours," he says.
I cross my arms. "And tomorrow I want to go through the equipment myself. No surprise improvements. No one explaining what they've decided I need."
"I'll leave the manuals here," he says. "You can ask me if you want help."
I turn toward him. "I'm still furious about the hospital. That doesn't switch off because you remembered the right extractor."
"I don't expect it to," he says.
I drop my bag on the floor beside the door, check my phone, nothing from Maggie, which means Clem is being spoiled rotten, and then I turn to face him.
He's silhouetted against the bright sun outside, and I can't read his expression, but I can read his posture.
Waiting. Patient. Ready for whatever I decide.
My six-week checkup was last week. My doctor cleared me for all activities, a conversation I absolutely did not share with anyone because it's none of anyone's business.
But I've thought about it more than I should, late at night when I can't sleep, wondering what it would feel like to touch him again.
Whether my body would still fit against his the way it used to.
Whether the anger would survive the wanting.
"I want to kiss you," I say. "And I'm not moving back in. Both things are true."
He goes still. He stays in the doorway. "You can change your mind halfway across this room."
"Don't be so reasonable," I tell him. "It's making this significantly more difficult."
I reach him and fist my hand in his shirt. He doesn't grab. He waits until I tilt my face up, his hands resting at my waist like he's been told to keep them visible.
He kisses me. I kiss him back harder than I planned, furious at my own mouth for wanting his, and for one second I let myself lean into the heat of him like the hospital never happened.
Then I break away long enough to think straight.
Ranch hands' voices drift through the side vent, somebody laughing about a fence post, somebody else cursing a sticky latch. The new AC hums. The side door is still propped open on a brick, and that won't work for what my body has decided to do with all this anger.
I cross the room and kick the brick loose, and the door swings shut on the heat and the gravel and the whole nosy ranch. The latch clicks. The vent stays open, which feels like a dare. Then I walk back to him and grab his shirt again, rougher this time.
"Rules," I say against his mouth.
His breath stutters. "Name them."
"This doesn't mean I forgive you," I tell him.
"I know," he says.
"It doesn't mean I'm coming home," I say.
"Yes, ma'am," he breathes.
"And if you get loud enough for the crew to hear," I add, "I will end you with a hive tool and tell Maggie it was an industrial accident."
Gratitude and hunger crash across his grumpy face at the same time, and then I'm shoving him backward until his ass hits the new extractor. Cold steel meets the backs of his thighs through the denim. Hay from the packing crates clings to my sleeve. I go for his belt.