Chapter 24 #2
She turned her head just enough that I could see her profile against the fire. Her eyes were bright.
"And then you walked into it. And it was like someone turned the color on.
" Her fingers moved to my chest, pressed flat against my heartbeat.
"You. This ridiculous, beautiful, stubborn man with your green eyes and your quiet confidence and your body that should be illegal and your loyalty that doesn't have a single condition attached to it.
You walked into my grey little life and loved me like it was the easiest thing you'd ever done.
" Her voice caught. She pressed her lips together and breathed through it.
"The ranch, the hills, Sunday dinners, Maisie laughing so hard she can't breathe, your mother's pot roast, your dad on one knee on a kitchen floor — all of that is beautiful.
But it started with you. You're the color, Clay. Everything else is the bonus."
She turned in my arms. Faced me. Put her hands on my jaw and looked at me, and her eyes were full and shining in the firelight.
"You color my world, Clay Blackwood."
My throat closed. I couldn't speak. I pressed my forehead against hers and held her face and breathed her in and let the words land somewhere deep where I'd keep them forever.
"You're my best friend," she said. Softer now.
"I didn't even know I was looking for that.
Not someone who just loves me — someone who knows all of it.
The mess, the fear, the ugly parts. And stays anyway.
Someone I can call at two in the morning or sit with in silence or laugh with until my stomach hurt.
" She pressed her lips against my wrist. "That's you. Every single time. That's you."
My arms tightened around her. My throat was doing something inconvenient.
"I never dreamed there'd be someone like you," I said.
Low. Into the curve of her neck, where her pulse was beating.
"Not once. Not in the arena, not after. I couldn't have imagined a woman this beautiful, this brave, this — " I stopped.
Started again. "You chose me, Callie. Out of everyone.
Out of every life you could have built. You chose this ranch and this family and this broken-down cowboy who doesn't have a single thing to offer you except showing up. Every day. For the rest of my life."
She turned in my arms. Faced me. The firelight was in her eyes, and her hands came up to my jaw, and she held my face and looked at me with an expression that took my breath and didn't give it back.
"You are the furthest thing from broken down," she said. "And you offer me everything."
"I will spend the rest of my life protecting you. You and Maisie. Loving you. Being there. I need you to know that's not a promise I'm making — it's just what I am now. It's who you made me."
"I love you," she whispered. "I love you so much it scares me sometimes. How much room you take up in my chest."
"I love you." I pressed my forehead to hers. "I have loved you since the night of the party when you told your daughter the stars were nightlights and I thought — that's her. That's the one."
She kissed me. Soft. Her hands still on my face. Then she pulled back, and she was smiling — no walls, no performance, just Callie.
"I want more of this," she said.
"More camping?"
"More everything. More mornings. More Sunday dinners. More Maisie on Starlight." She paused. The smile changed — softer, shyer, a version I hadn't seen before. "More babies."
My heart stopped. Restarted. Stopped again.
"Yeah?" My voice came out rough.
"Yeah." She bit her lip. "Little Blackwood babies. Running around the ranch. Driving Grammy Lou insane."
"She'd lose her mind."
"She's already insufferable. This just gives her more ammunition."
I was grinning. Couldn't stop. The image was blooming in my chest — Maisie as a big sister, bossing some poor baby around with the same authority she used on Starlight and Sully and every adult in her orbit.
A baby with Callie's eyes. A baby on this ranch, in this family, in this life we were building post by post and morning by morning.
"I want that," I said. "I want all of it. The babies. The mornings. The ranch. You. For the rest of my life, Callie. Every single day of it."
She pressed her face into my neck, and I felt her breath catch and her body shake — not with sadness, with the specific overwhelm of a woman hearing the future described out loud and recognizing it as hers.
The fire had burned down to embers, and the lanterns swayed in a breeze that smelled like pine and cedar. She was in my lap, straddling me, her hands in my hair, and we were kissing like we had all the time in the world because we did.
She pulled back and laughed because the blanket had slid off my shoulders for the third time and I pulled it back up and she laughed harder. I kissed her while she was still laughing and tasted the wine on her tongue and the joy underneath it.
"I love you," she whispered against my mouth.
"I love you," I said into her neck.
"Say it again."
"I love you."
"Again."
"I love you, Callie Monroe. I love you. I love you."
She made a sound that was half laugh, half sob, and pulled me closer. The stars were above us, the fire was embers, and there was nothing between us and the sky.
I woke with her back pressed against my chest, the swag warm around us, the sky above us going from black to grey to the palest blue.
My arm was draped over her waist, and her fingers were laced through mine across her stomach, and I could feel her breathing — slow, deep, the rhythm of a woman sleeping soundly under the open sky.
I didn't move. I held her and watched the stars fade, and the ridge line sharpen against the dawn, and thought about the man who'd stood in an arena six months ago with a championship buckle and a body that was done and a question he couldn't answer — who am I if I'm not a bull rider?
The man on the mountain with the woman in his arms and the child at the ranch and the program in the paddock and the family in the kitchen. The man who showed up. Who stayed. Who built things from the ground up, post by post, fence by fence, morning by morning.
She stirred against me. Rolled over. Pressed her face into my chest and made a sound that was mostly protest at the cold air on her skin.
"Coffee," she mumbled.
"You don't drink coffee."
"I do today. We forgot the kettle."
I laughed and kissed the top of her head and extracted myself from the swag and built the fire back up and made coffee while she sat wrapped in the blanket with her hair everywhere and my flannel shirt hanging off one shoulder.
She took the mug with both hands and drank and wrinkled her nose and drank again and pretended to hate it and didn't fool me even slightly.
The morning light was in her hair. She'd tucked a bluebonnet behind her ear at some point, already wilting.
She was mid-sentence, talking about Maisie's chess campaign against Dad, her eyes bright, her smile the real one, the Silver Spur one, the mountains behind her catching the first gold of the morning.
I took a photo. She didn't pose.
I'd keep that photo forever.
We packed up and drove down the mountain with her hand in mine and the radio playing something with steel guitar and the windows cracked and the valley opening up below us as the road curved toward home.
The ranch. The Lodge. The kitchen where Maisie was probably destroying Dad at chess through sheer force of personality. The paddock where Starlight was waiting. The porch where the light was always on.
"Clay," she said.
"Yeah."
"Thank you."
"For what?"
"For waiting."
I squeezed her hand. The road straightened and the ranch gate appeared and beyond it the land — our land, Blackwood land, the ground I'd been born on and built on and would build on for the rest of my life — spread out green and gold under the February sun.
We pulled up to the Lodge. Maisie was on the porch. She was wearing Dad's hat — it covered her entire head and most of her shoulders — and she was shouting something about checkmate.
Callie laughed. I parked. We got out.
The porch light was on.
It would stay on.