Chapter 25
Clay
I stood at the south paddock fence and watched the yearlings move through the morning light and thought about the man I used to be.
Eighteen months ago, I'd been standing in an arena with a championship buckle and a body that was done and a question I couldn't answer.
Now the buckle was in a drawer, and the body still ached — it always would — but the aches were fence-post aches, not bull-riding aches.
Different muscles for a different life. A better life.
A life I'd built with my own hands on Blackwood land, post by post, morning by morning.
The breeding program was real. Blackwood-bred quarter horses were gaining a reputation that stretched past the county line.
Our first auction brought buyers from three states.
Dale Whitfield had come back twice and brought friends.
The filly Maisie had named — Starlight, of course — was showing cutting horse potential that had Jack grinning every time he worked her.
Maggie's laminated breeding plan had turned into a laminated five-year strategy, which had turned into a laminated ten-year vision, because Maggie didn't do anything by halves, and neither did this family.
My phone buzzed in my pocket.
A text from Momma's phone. But not from Momma.
Grammy Lou had done the school drop-off this morning — volunteered, she'd said, because she wanted to take Maisie for pancakes first. In reality, it was part of the plan.
Keep the spy close. Keep her away from Callie so she wouldn't accidentally blow the operation before lunchtime.
Maisie had clearly gotten hold of the phone before being dropped off at the school gate.
Opperashun propozal is a go.
I grinned. Leaned against the fence. Read it again. The spelling was devastating. The intent was clear.
We'd been planning this for a month.
It started with Maisie. Because Maisie came first. Before the kiss, before the dates, before any of it — there was a little girl in pink cowboy boots who'd climbed into my lap at a party and told me I was her cowboy, and everything that came after grew from that.
I'd found her in the barn on a Tuesday afternoon. She was sitting on an upturned bucket, brushing Starlight's mane and telling her about a boy named Oliver who'd been sent to the thinking bench again for putting a beetle in the art supplies.
I crouched down to her level. The way I had the first night. The way I always did.
"Maisie, I need to talk to you about something important."
She put the brush down. Gave me her full attention. Six years old and she already had the Callie look — the one that said I'm listening and I'm assessing and you'd better be serious because I don't have time for nonsense.
"I want to ask your mommy to marry me," I said. "But I need your help. You in?"
Her face went still. Not the bouncing, chattering, seven-expressions-in-two-seconds Maisie. Still. She looked at me with an expression I'd never seen on her — careful, serious, the face of a child who'd learned to check before she hoped.
"Does that mean," she said, very quietly, "that you can be my daddy?"
My chest cracked open.
"Would you like me to be your daddy?"
Her chin trembled. Her eyes filled — fast, spilling before she could blink — and she nodded. Hard. The kind of nod that shakes your whole body when you're six years old and the thing you've been wanting is suddenly right in front of you and you're terrified it might not be real.
"You're the best daddy I ever had," she whispered. Her voice was thick and small, and it wrecked me. "I want you to be my daddy, Clay. I want it so bad."
I pulled her into me. Held her tight. Her arms wrapped around my neck and her face pressed into my shoulder. I could feel her tears soaking through my shirt and my own eyes were burning and my throat was so tight I could barely speak.
"You and your mommy," I said into her hair. My voice broke, and I let it. Let her know how much this meant to me. "You're my best girls. Both of you. And being your daddy would make me the happiest man on earth."
She held on. I held on. Starlight stood beside us, patient and quiet, and the barn was warm and the afternoon light came through the slats, and I held my daughter for the first time, knowing she was mine.
She pulled back. Wiped her face with both hands. Sniffed once. Squared her shoulders. And just like that — the Maisie switch, grief to business in three seconds flat — her eyes went bright and focused.
"Okay, Daddy," she said. Testing it. Tasting it. The word lit up her whole face. "I'll help you propose to Mommy. I'll make a sign."
"What kind of sign?"
"A sign that says, Marry us . Because I want her to know I'm asking too. I want to be part of it. I want to be a Blackwood."
My throat closed. I pulled her tighter.
"You already are, baby."
The morning of the proposal, Callie didn't know a thing.
She came out of the bedroom with her textbooks stacked against her hip and her hair pulled back and her jaw set in that way I'd fallen in love with — the way that said I have somewhere to be and something to prove and God help anyone who gets in my way.
Second semester of law school. Part-time program, commuting twice a week, studying at the kitchen table after Maisie's bedtime while I quizzed her on case law and got half of it deliberately wrong to make her laugh.
She was thriving. Bev and Theo ran the Copper Creek office like a machine when Callie was in class.
Savannah called her their secret weapon in training.
Every time she came home with a grade or a professor's comment or a case study she'd nailed, her eyes did the thing — the bright, fierce, disbelieving thing, like she still couldn't quite accept that this life was hers.
Like she was still waiting for someone to tell her she wasn't allowed.
Nobody was going to tell her that. Not while I was breathing.
"I'm picking Maisie up from school," I said. Casual. Coffee mug in hand. "Bringing her to the ranch for riding."
"Okay." She kissed me. Quick, distracted, already halfway to the door. Then she stopped. Came back. Kissed me again — slower this time, her hand on my jaw, her thumb brushing my cheekbone. She pulled back and looked at me, and her eyes softened.
"What?" I said.
"Nothing. You just look really good this morning."
"I look good every morning."
"And so humble." She grabbed her keys. "Tell Maisie I love her. I'll be home by six."
I watched her walk to her car with her textbooks and her coffee and her spine straight, and I thought: She got the dream back. Not because of me. I just held the door open. She walked through it on her own.
I picked Maisie up from school at three fifteen. She was standing at the gate with her backpack and her pink cowboy boots — the third pair, she kept outgrowing them — and the look on her face when she saw my truck was the look of a woman about to execute a plan she'd been refining for weeks.
She climbed in. Buckled herself. Turned to me.
"Did you get the ring?" Whispering. Even though no one could hear.
"Got it."
"Is the spot ready?"
"Ready."
"I made a sign."
She unzipped her backpack and pulled it out. Cardboard. Glitter glue and crayon. Two words in Maisie's handwriting, the letters uneven and fierce:
MARRY US
I looked at it. My vision blurred. I blinked hard and swallowed and gripped the steering wheel.
"It's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen," I said. And meant it.
"The Y was hard," she said. "But I did it three times and picked the best one."
We drove to the ranch. I'd set everything up at the flat rock overlooking the valley — the spot I'd shown Callie on their first real day together.
Lanterns strung between the trees, because that was our thing now.
Wildflowers in a jar, because that was our thing too.
The view that made your chest hurt spread out below, green and gold in the afternoon light.
Maisie arranged the sign on the rock with the concentration of a bomb disposal expert. She adjusted it. Stepped back. Adjusted it again. Tilted her head. Moved it half an inch to the left.
"Okay." She turned to me. Her face was serious. "I'm ready. Are you ready?"
I was terrified. I'd ridden two-thousand-pound bulls at full spin, and this five-pound ring box in my pocket had my hands shaking.
"Yeah, baby. I'm ready."
"You don't look ready. You look like you're going to throw up."
"That's what ready looks like when you're a grown-up."
"That's weird."
"Yeah. It is."
She reached up and took my hand. Her small fingers wrapped around mine and squeezed. Fierce. Certain. The same grip she'd used on the pinky promise, the same grip that said I've got you and you've got me and this is how it works.
"She's going to say yes," Maisie said. "I already know."
"How do you know?"
"Because she smiles different when she talks about you. Like her whole face changes. Like the lights come on."
I crouched down. Looked at her. This kid. This extraordinary, fearless, negotiating, peninsula-knowing, chess-playing, boot-wearing kid who'd climbed into my lap at a party and changed the entire trajectory of my life.
"I love you," I said. "You know that, right?"
"I know." She patted my cheek. "I love you too. Now stand up. She's coming."
Maggie's truck appeared on the ridge road.
Callie was in the passenger seat. Maggie had told her I needed help with something at the south paddock — the misdirection was paper-thin, but Callie had been distracted, talking about a case study, and hadn't clocked it until Maggie parked at the wrong paddock and said, "Walk up the ridge. Trust me."
I heard her before I saw her. Boots on the trail. The sound of her breathing as the path climbed. Then she crested the ridge and stopped.