Chapter 1 #2
"I made it! Mommy said we were coming to a party and I said is Clay going to be there and she said maybe and I said he better be because he owes me a riding lesson."
I held out my pinky. "A deal's a deal. Riding lessons. Soon as your mom says it's okay."
Maisie hooked her tiny pinky around mine with the solemnity of a Supreme Court justice. Her hand was impossibly small and warm…and a little sticky. She gripped my finger with everything she had.
Then she leaned in and whispered, loudly enough for half the party to hear: "I told all my friends you're my cowboy."
Something cracked in my chest. The real kind — the kind that happens when a five-year-old claims you and you realize you'd fight God for her.
I straightened up and made my approach. Full confidence. The grin. The lean.
"We meet again," I said, and tipped my hat because I was Clay Blackwood, and I tipped my hat. It was a whole thing.
Callie Monroe looked at me, and the corner of her mouth twitched. "Mr. Blackwood."
"Clay. Nobody calls me Mr. Blackwood except the IRS and my mom when I'm in trouble."
Her brows raised a fraction. “And are you in trouble?"
I shrugged once, noncommittal. “Depends on who you ask."
She laughed — short, easy, not the careful kind. "Thank you again for helping Maisie at the arena. She hasn't stopped talking about you. I believe she's already drafted a contract for those riding lessons. Terms and conditions. She's very thorough."
"Smart kid. She gets that from you, I'm guessing."
"She gets the audacity from her mother, yes."
I laughed. The delivery was so dry and so fast that it hit me before I had my charm shield up. She was funny . And she wasn't guarded like I'd expected — she was composed. Settled. A woman who knew exactly where her feet were and didn't need anyone to help her find the ground.
"Cornhole!" Weston appeared with Savannah in tow, two fresh beers in his hands, grinning the grin of a man about to start trouble. "Teams. Me and Clay versus Callie and Sav. Let's go, ladies. Prepare to be humiliated."
Savannah rolled her eyes. "You say that every time, and you lose every time."
"Tonight's different. I've got a world champion on my team.” Sometimes I was convinced he had forgotten he was a world champion in his own right.
Callie looked at Savannah. Savannah looked at Callie. Something passed between them — a silent, female communication that should have terrified us.
"You're on," Callie said. And smiled.
That smile. I needed a minute.
We set up near the barn. The boards were beat-up plywood Hunter had painted with the Blackwood brand, and the bags were filled with dried corn from last season. Weston and I had played a thousand games on this setup — on porches, in parking lots, at every rodeo afterparty from here to Montana.
Callie picked up a bag, tested the weight, and tossed a warm-up shot that arced clean through the air and landed dead center on the board with a satisfying thwack.
"Beginner's luck," Weston said.
"That wasn't luck, sweetheart," Savannah said. "That was a warning."
It was. Over the next twenty minutes, Callie and Savannah systematically dismantled us.
Callie threw with her whole body — a smooth step, a fluid release, her hips turning into the follow-through in a way that made my brain go somewhere unhelpful.
The jeans she was wearing shouldn't have been legal.
Every time she stepped into a throw, every time she planted her front foot and let her body follow through, I got a full, unobstructed view of curves that made my mouth go dry, and my blood go south.
I had to take a breath. A deliberate, controlled, get-yourself-together breath, because my body was reacting like I was nineteen and not thirty-one, and this was a family party.
Not to mention, I was standing next to one of my closest friends.
She trash-talked with a grin that should've come with a warning label. "That was your best shot?" she called after Weston's bag slid off the board. "I've seen better aim from Maisie. She's five."
"She's lying," Weston muttered to me. "She's a ringer. Savannah brought a ringer."
"Focus," I told him, but I was one to talk. Callie laughed at something Savannah said with her head tipped back and her throat exposed and the string lights catching the line of her jaw. Holy shit. I missed my next throw by a foot because I was watching her instead of the board.
"Oh, that was tragic," Callie said, hand on her hip, shaking her head at me with mock sympathy. "The Pbr World Champion, taken down by a bag of corn."
"I'm going easy on you."
"Sure you are, cowboy." She sank another shot — dead center, nothing but hole. Savannah whooped. Callie dusted her hands off and gave me a look so smug it should've been illegal. "Remind me what the score is?"
She bumped my shoulder with hers as she passed to retrieve the bags, and the contact lasted maybe half a second, and I felt it for ten minutes. She smelled like something clean and warm — vanilla, maybe, or just soap, something simple that hit harder than any perfume.
"You're staring," she said on the next pass.
There was something in her eyes that told me she didn’t mind all that much, so I went with honesty. “Can’t help it."
"Try harder. It's affecting your game." She nodded at the board. "Which was already pretty sad."
Weston threw his hands up when the final score came in. "Rematch. Immediate rematch."
"You want to get your asses kicked twice in one night?" Savannah asked sweetly.
"There's no coming back from this," I told him. "Accept it with dignity."
Callie shook Weston's hand with mock formality. "Good game. Really. You both tried real hard."
Then she turned to me, flushed and grinning, and for a second she was just a woman at a party having fun, and I forgot to be charming and just stood there like an idiot.
She caught it. Her grin softened into something knowing. "Easy, cowboy."
So I pushed my luck. It was basically my job description. "Have dinner with me."
The grin didn't die. It shifted into something warm and sure. "Clay." She said my name the way you'd set something fragile on a table. "You seem like a genuinely good guy. And Maisie clearly thinks you hung the moon. So I'm going to be straight with you."
"Uh oh."
She gestured at the party — at the cluster of women near the drink table who'd been watching me all night, at the blonde who'd twice found a reason to walk past us, at the general gravitational pull I pretended not to notice.
"You see that? Every single one of them would love to have dinner with the Pbr's most eligible bachelor.
I'm sure you're wonderful company." She turned back to me.
"But here’s the thing. My shop is closed.
Permanently. Locked up, lights off, key thrown in the creek.
" She said it lightly, almost cheerfully.
"It's Maisie and me. Our new home. My new job.
That's the whole list. There's no room on it for a cowboy, however devastating the smile. "
"You think I have a devastating smile?"
She tilted her head, a gentle smile playing at her lips. "I think you know exactly what your smile does, which is part of the problem."
I deserved that. I respected it, too. She wasn't shutting me down — she was drawing a line with a steady hand and a sense of humor about it.
"Fair enough," I said. And meant it.
"Go enjoy your party, Clay." She nodded toward the crowd. "You just won a world championship. There are about fifteen women over there who'd like to help you celebrate. I'll be right here, content with not being one of them."
She clinked her beer against mine — the one she still wasn't drinking — and gave me a smile so genuinely kind it almost hurt worse than a flat rejection.
Weston found me at the drink table five minutes later. “That was hard to watch," he said.
I laughed once, but there was no humor in it. “Try experiencing it.” I squeezed the bottle cap in my hand. “She turned me down.”
"Good." He leveled a look at me — the look of a man who'd been exactly where I was standing and came out the other side married.
"She's Savannah's friend. She's got a kid and she's coming off a bad divorce.
She's rebuilding from the ground up. She's not a buckle bunny at a hotel bar, Clay.
She's the real thing. And the real thing takes time. "
"I asked her to dinner, not to elope."
"Same thing, coming from you." He clapped my shoulder — the bad one, the bastard. "Just be her friend. That's what she needs. Show up as the guy, not the show."
I watched Callie across the yard. She'd found the fence line at the edge of the party, her eyes tracking Maisie through the pack of kids. She looked easy out there. Content. A mother watching her daughter play in a safe place and letting herself breathe.
She'd destroyed me at cornhole. She'd called me out with a timing that could've gone on stage. And then she'd told me no with a smile and a joke and pointed me toward the women who wanted what she didn't.
I'd been turned down before. Wait — no, I hadn't. This was new territory. And the real kicker was, I think I liked it.
I walked over. Not with the grin this time. Not with the lean or the tip of the hat or any of my normal moves. I just stood at the fence beside her — not too close, enough space for a whole other person between us — and watched the kids run.
"You again," she said. But there was no edge in it. Just the easy tone of a woman who'd had a good time at a party and wasn't braced for anything.
"Me again. Last time, I promise." I looked at the sky, not at her. "You were straight with me. I'm going to be straight back. I heard you. No dinner. No dating. Shop's closed."
"Glad we're clear." She smiled.
"Crystal. But here's the thing — I just moved back too.
Been on the road twelve years, and I don't know how to be still yet.
And you're new in town with a kid and no backup.
" I turned to look at her. "So what I'm offering isn't a date.
I'm offering a friend. Someone who makes a decent grilled cheese and can carry heavy things and keeps a pinky promise.
That's it. No angle." I paused. "And I can happily present a reference from Savannah, if that helps.
She's known me forever. She'll vouch for me. Probably."
That got a smile out of her — a small one, but real.
Like she couldn't quite help it. She looked at me, those sharp eyes moving across my face like she was reading a contract, searching for the clause that would cost her.
Slow. Careful. Taking her time because she'd learned the hard way that kindness sometimes came with conditions.
I held still. Didn't smile, didn't charm. Just stood at a fence in the dark and meant what I said.
"Friends," Callie repeated. Testing the word.
"Friends."
She studied me for another long moment. Then something shifted — not a wall coming down, but a door being considered.
She nodded once, decided. "Okay, Clay. Friends."
Then Maisie came sprinting back — ringlets flying, pink boots kicking up dust — and grabbed mine and Callie's hand and announced to every human being within a thirty-foot radius:
"Clay is going to teach me to ride and we're going to be best friends and he's coming to our house for dinner, right, Clay?"
I looked at Callie over Maisie's head.
She closed her eyes. The look on her face said, This child will be the death of me.
I grinned. Couldn't help it.
"Right, sweetheart," I said.
And Callie Monroe — the woman who'd just told me with a laugh and a steady hand and the kindest rejection of my life that her shop was permanently closed — looked at her daughter and then at me and shook her head.
Then she tipped her head back and laughed.
Not a guarded laugh. Not a polite one. A free, full, helpless laugh that came from somewhere real — the sound of a woman standing in the middle of a good night and letting herself feel it.
A mother watching her daughter be fearless.
A woman lit up from the inside in a way that made me want to stand exactly this close to her for as long as she'd let me.
It was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen.
That was the moment I knew I was done.
I just didn't know yet how completely.