Chapter 5 #2
"I know you are. But you don't have to be. Not with me."
She stared at me. The sidewalk was empty. The sun was warm on the truck and Callie Monroe was standing three feet from me with her hands in her pockets and her guard down for the first time since I'd met her, and I wanted to pull her into my arms so badly it ached.
I didn't. I stayed where I was and gave her the only thing she'd let me give her — presence and space to be not fine.
"Have you tried Dottie's pecan pie yet?" I asked. She blinked. The shift caught her off guard — I watched the tension in her face stutter, recalibrate.
"Twice. I'm developing a problem." He’d gotten Maisie hooked on it and when she got some, I always found myself having a bite and then getting a slice for myself.
I grinned. ”Wait until you try the cherry. It'll ruin you for all other pie."
"I can't afford to be ruined by pie, Clay. I have an ass to maintain.”
My smile deepened into a smirk. ”For what it's worth, the ass is doing fine."
She huffed a laugh — a real one, surprised out of her before she could stop it. And I watched something in her face ease, just a fraction. Like she'd been holding herself so tight she'd forgotten she could let go, and a dumb joke about pie and her ass had been the thing to remind her.
Perfectly deadpan. And there she was — underneath the exhaustion, underneath the hurt, Callie.
The dry, sharp, funny woman who could cut you at the knees and make you thank her for it.
She didn't ask me to leave. She moved to stand beside me at the truck — not close, but closer than she'd ever voluntarily stood — and we watched the nothing happening on Main Street for a few minutes while something in her slowly, slowly unclenched.
"If you tell Clara Mae I was out here looking fragile, I'll have you killed," she said.
"Wouldn't dream of it."
"I wasn't fragile. I was... airing out."
"In February."
"Texas air is year-round. Ask anyone." I smiled. She almost smiled. And the almost was enough.
Sunday evening. I called Callie.
I'd been thinking about her all weekend — the way she'd stood beside my truck and let me see what it cost her. I wanted to know Maisie was home safe.
"Hey. She back?"
Silence. The kind that tells you everything.
"Callie?"
"She's back." Her voice was doing that thing — the bright, steady, everything's-fine thing that I was learning meant nothing was fine. "Preston was his usual charming self. Called my life 'your little setup out here.' Like Copper Creek is a hobby I picked up."
She paused. I didn't fill it.
"He handed her back like she was a library book he'd finished with.
Didn't tell me about her weekend. Didn't say if she'd eaten.
Just... here. I'm done." Her voice cracked.
One fracture, quick, sealed before it could spread.
"And she's been sitting on the couch for an hour holding her horse, and she won't talk.
She won't even — Clay, she's just sitting there.
She once argued with a mailbox, and right now she's staring at nothing and I can't —"
She stopped herself. I heard the breath — sharp, controlled, a woman pulling herself back from the edge by her fingernails.
"I'm sorry. This isn't your problem. We're fine."
Something in my chest went tight. Not the dull ache of bruised ribs or the grinding of damaged joints. Something deeper. Something that had nothing to do with my body and everything to do with the sound of a strong woman trying not to break on the phone.
"I'll see you in twenty," I said.
"What?"
I was already grabbing my keys. "Twenty minutes."
"Clay, you don't have to —"
"Eighteen if I hit the lights right."
"That's not — you can't just —"
"Callie. I'm coming. You can yell at me about it when I get there."
Then, so small I almost missed it: "Okay."
I drove to her cottage in eighteen minutes. Parked out front, walked to the porch, and knocked.
She opened the door. Eyes red, chin lifted, arms crossed.
She'd changed into a sweatshirt that was too big for her, and her hair was pulled back.
She looked exhausted and furious and relieved in equal measure.
Behind her, the cottage was dim — one lamp on, the couch visible through the hallway, and on that couch, a small shape curled tight, not moving.
"You drove here in eighteen minutes."
The corners of my mouth lifted. "I said I would."
"The speed limit is forty-five."
My smile grew a little more. "I'm aware."
"You broke the law. For a welfare check."
I leaned against the doorframe, crossing my arms, and fully smiling now. The charming one. The one that had women throwing themselves at me for years. The one that only sometimes worked on the one standing in front of me. “What can I say? I’m a rebel, Callie, It's part of my charm."
She stared at me. Something fought behind her eyes — the instinct to shut the door versus the need to not be alone versus the fear of what it meant to let a man into her house at eight p.m. on a Sunday when her defenses were down, and her daughter was broken on the couch.
I watched her calculate it. I watched her decide.
The need won. She stepped back and let me in.
I was barely through the door when it hit.
Not a sound building — an explosion. Maisie went from silent to screaming in the space between one breath and the next.
Her horse flew across the room. She kicked the couch cushion.
She screamed — not words, just sound, the raw, wordless howl of a child who's been holding it together for forty-eight hours and can't hold it anymore.
Callie moved instantly. Calm. Steady. Practiced.
She was on her knees in front of Maisie, voice low and even — "I'm here, baby.
I'm right here. You're safe." — and I could see in the practiced steadiness of her hands that she'd done this before.
Many times. This was the Sunday ritual — the meltdown, the reassembly, the careful work of putting a child back together after a weekend in a house where she wasn't seen.
But I could see the cost. The micro-tremor in Callie's jaw. The way her hands shook when Maisie wasn't looking.
I crouched where Callie could see me. Caught her eye over Maisie's head.
"Can I try something?" Quiet. Asking permission, the way I always would with her.
She hesitated. Her eyes went to Maisie — still screaming, still thrashing. Then back to me. She nodded.
I scooped Maisie up. Didn't say a word — just lifted her, one arm under her legs and one behind her back, and carried her out the back door to the porch.
She fought for a second — small fists against my chest, the scream going higher — and then something shifted.
The night air hit her face. The sky opened up above us, dark and enormous.
The arms that were holding her weren't asking her to stop. They were just there.
I sat on the back step and settled her beside me.
She was hiccuping now, the screams downgrading to sobs, her body shaking with the aftershock.
I could feel the tremors running through her — tiny seismic waves, the kind that come after the earthquake when the ground is still deciding if it's finished.
I waited.
That was it. I just waited. Didn't talk.
Didn't fix. Didn't tell her to calm down or breathe or use her words.
I sat on a porch step in the dark with a kid who was falling apart, and I let her fall.
Because sometimes that's what you needed — not someone who fixed it, just someone who stayed while it breaks.
I'd learned that from horses. A spooked horse doesn't need you to explain why the thunder isn't dangerous. It needs you to stand in the stall and breathe and not leave. That's the whole job. Don't leave.
When the crying slowed — the ragged, exhausted kind that comes when the body has run out of fuel — I pulled out my phone. Didn't say anything. Just opened the video I'd taken during her lesson and held it where she could see.
Maisie on Rosie. The sun on her hair. Her voice, tiny and huge at the same time: "Clay, am I doing it? Am I a real cowgirl?"
Maisie went still. Her eyes locked on the screen, swollen and wet, and I watched her breathing change — the ragged hiccups spacing out, evening, her body remembering something other than the weekend.
I played it again. She leaned into me, her small body pressing against my arm, warm and trembling. By the third replay, she was whispering along with her own voice on the screen — am I a real cowgirl — and something in her face had shifted from broken to remembering.
"Clay?"
"Yeah, sweetheart."
"Daddy doesn't have any horses."
"No?"
"He has a car that talks to you. But it's not the same." She wiped her nose on my sleeve. I let her. "Rosie doesn't talk, but she listens better."
"Horses are good at that."
"Is Rosie asleep right now?"
"Probably. Horses sleep standing up, you know."
"That's silly." A pause. Small fingers pulling at a loose thread on my shirt. "Clay?"
"Yeah."
"Do you think Rosie remembers me?"
"I think Rosie's been waiting for you to come back since the second you left.” I knew I was.
She was quiet for a moment. Then: "Me too."
I wasn't sure if she meant Rosie or something else entirely. I didn't ask.
"Horses can feel what you're feeling," I said, low and steady. "If you're sad, they know. If you're scared, they know. And they don't try to fix it. They just stand next to you until it passes."
"Like you're doing right now?"
I looked down at this five-year-old — tear-streaked, snot-nosed, wise in a way no kid should have to be — and my throat closed.
"Yeah, cowgirl. Like I'm doing right now."
She nodded, like that settled something important. Then she tucked herself tighter against my side and was asleep within a minute. Completely, totally, boneless-kid asleep, her head heavy on my bicep, one fist still curled around my shirt.
I sat there for a while. Not moving. Barely breathing.
The weight of her against my arm was the heaviest thing I'd ever held — heavier than buckles, heavier than trophies, heavier than every eight-second ride I'd ever made.
Because those things were mine. This was someone else's trust, small and warm and given without conditions, and the responsibility of it settled into my bones like something permanent.
Then I carried her inside. One arm under her knees, the other across her back, her head tucked against my shoulder.
I held my breath on the screen door so it wouldn't slam.
Laid her on the couch and tucked the stuffed horse under her arm, adjusting it until it was exactly right, because Maisie held her horse a specific way and I'd noticed.
I'd noticed.
When I came back to the porch, Callie was sitting on the step where I'd been. Arms wrapped around her knees. Head down. She wasn't crying, but she was close — the kind of close that lives in the tightness around the eyes and the way a person breathes too carefully.
I sat beside her. Not too close. Left the choice with her.
"Why are you doing this?" she asked. Quiet. Raw. No armor, no deflection.
I didn't give her the charming answer. I gave her the real one. "Because she's a great kid. And because you shouldn't have to do this alone. Because we’re friends.”
Silence. The night sounds filled it — frogs in the distance, a dog barking once down the street.
Then Callie, staring straight ahead at the dark yard: "If you tell anyone I cried, I'll deny it, and then I'll have you killed."
"Noted."
"I didn't cry. For the record. My eyes were... leaking. Stress response."
"Very scientific."
"I'm a very scientific person."
I smiled. She didn't look at me, but I think she felt it, because her shoulders dropped a fraction — the first time all night they'd been anywhere near relaxed.
She didn't thank me. She didn't need to. The fact that she was sitting beside me on this porch instead of inside behind a locked door said everything.
I drove home with the ghost of Maisie's weight on my arm — the phantom warmth of a small body that had trusted me enough to fall asleep. The road was dark. The ranch was still when I pulled in.
I sat on the porch for a while, looking at the sky. The stars were out — all of them, the way they only are in the country, away from city light, like someone had thrown a handful of silver across black velvet.
Callie on the porch step. The way she hadn't moved when I sat down beside her. The way her shoulders had dropped an inch when I'd said I've got her and she'd realized she could stop holding everything for five minutes.
Maisie's fist curled around my shirt.
Eighteen minutes in the dark because her voice cracked on the phone, and I hadn't thought about it, hadn't weighed it, hadn't decided. I'd just picked up my keys.
I was just where I was supposed to be.