Chapter 19
SAWYER
I usually hate the holidays.
Well— hate doesn’t really cover it. It’s more that they feel like a joke now.
Like some weird annual reminder that time keeps moving, even when it shouldn’t.
The decorations go up, the traditions roll out, and everyone acts like the world’s still intact.
As if mine didn’t fall apart four years ago and forget to put itself back together.
The last four years, Thanksgiving’s been the worst of them. Not because of the food or the noise or the way my mom still insists we all go around the table and say what we’re grateful for, but because the math gets harder.
Four years since.
Four years without.
Every year, it’s one more marker between the life I had and the life I’ve been pretending to live since it all went to hell.
Holidays remind people of what they have. Family. Warmth. Joy. But for me, it’s just a louder reminder of what’s missing. What’s gone.
Julia should be here. Violet should be four.
She’d be helping my mom in the kitchen. Or standing on a chair next to Emily with her hands deep in pie crust. She’d be in braids and socks that don’t match and probably sticky with something sweet, asking a million questions no one’s ready to answer.
And Julia—God, Julia—she’d be sitting next to me at that too-long table, legs tucked up, hand on my knee, whispering something sarcastic about Riley’s latest girlfriend.
But they’re not here. And no matter how many plates my mom sets or how many names get added to the family group text, that doesn’t change. The two people who mattered most to me are never coming back.
And somehow, I keep showing up anyway.
I bring the pie. I clear the dishes. I smile when I’m supposed to. I play along like I’m still the version of myself who made plans for a future that doesn’t exist anymore.
And most of the time, I manage to fool them.
But not always.
Tonight, I leave early. Say I’ve got something to do. My mom doesn’t press—just kisses my cheek and tells me to drive safe. I think she knows.
I don’t really plan on going anywhere, not at first. But then I think about the text, about Wren saying she wished I was there.
And I know it wasn’t a big thing. Just a few words. Casual. Still, it stuck.
So I drove. Through the snow. Past the turnoff to my place, out to the Wilding ranch with a cheesecake in the passenger seat and no real idea what the hell I’m doing.
But when she opens the door—barefoot and confused—I’m more than glad I came.
Even if it doesn’t fix anything. Even if it never can.
Ridge’s voice cuts through the room, loud and already half-laughing. “All right. Time for two truths and a lie, assholes.”
The small, petite woman next to him—Miller, I think—lets out a long, slow sigh and tips her wineglass toward her mouth. “Oh God.”
Boone, planted in the corner with Lark curled into his side, doesn’t even look up from his drink. “This won’t end well.”
Across the table, who I assume to be Wren’s teenage nephew grins. “Wait, what’s that game? How do you play?”
Ridge leans back in his chair. “Easy. You say three things—two are true, one’s a lie. Everyone guesses which one is the lie. Winner gets nothing except bragging rights since we’re not betting any money.”
“I hate this already,” Miller says.
“I’m starting,” Ridge says, ignoring her completely. “Let’s see…one, I once made out with a rodeo queen in a Dairy Queen parking lot. Two, I can recite all fifty states in alphabetical order. Three, I have a small, tasteful tattoo of a goat on my left ass cheek.”
A beat of silence, and then Hudson bursts out laughing.
“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” Boone mutters.
“You would make out in a Dairy Queen parking lot. No class. Sounds like you,” Sage says, wrinkling her nose.
Wren, sitting next to me, leans in slightly. “This is gonna go sideways real fast.”
I laugh under my breath. “Can’t be that bad.”
She looks at me. One of those dry, pointed looks like she’s already clocked how naive that was.
“Okay,” I say, grinning now. “Maybe it can.”
She turns back toward the table, the corner of her mouth tugging up. Her lashes flick downward, brushing against freckled cheeks as she hides the start of a smile.
Her hair is pulled into a loose red ponytail, a few loose strands escaping that skim her cheeks and the curve of her neck.
She’s wearing a cropped shirt beneath an over-sized cream cardigan that’s sliding slightly off one shoulder, and black leggings that hug her like they were made for her.
Too well. My eyes drift and catch on the way one leg crosses over the other, the slow, absent rhythm of her foot bouncing beneath the table.
There’s a sliver of skin showing just above the waistband—bronzed, smooth, one of those details that lodges itself in my brain and refuses to leave quietly.
I clear my throat, forcing my gaze upward like it costs me something.
Maybe it does. I take a long sip of water, the glass colder than I expect, hoping it’s enough to ground me. To shake whatever the hell this is.
I’m supposed to be focusing.
But it’s her, and she’s here, and now my thoughts are all tangled up in places they shouldn’t be.
I should be focused on the game, but instead, I find myself watching her—too long, too closely—when she isn’t paying attention.
When she’s tired, and relaxed in a way that makes everything about her softer, unguarded, quietly beautiful in a way that feels entirely unintentional and all the more impossible to ignore.
God help me.
“Okay,” Miller says, setting her wineglass down with purpose. “What if we play a different game?”
Ridge side-eyes her, suspicious. “Like what?”
Her lips curve into something that looks like a dare. “Like we take a drink every time you mention hooking up with someone.”
A few people laugh. Ridge groans.
Boone snorts from the other side of the room. “Some of us have places to be, Mills.”
Ridge flips him off without looking. “Don’t be jealous just ’cause your peak make-out location was probably a high school janitor’s closet.”
“Actually,” Lark chimes in, “it was the back of Lucille. And it was very romantic.”
Boone grins like he’s proud. “Had a blanket and everything.”
Hudson, still new to the pace of this whole group, raises his hand. “Wait—I wanna know which one was the lie.”
Ridge leans forward, elbows on the table. “Guess.”
Sage squints at him. “The states. There’s no way you know all fifty states in alphabetical order. I don’t even think you know all the states not in alphabetical order.”
“Alabama, Alaska, Arizona…” Ridge starts, rattling them off like he’s got them filed somewhere under party tricks in his brain.
Sage’s jaw drops somewhere around Florida. “What the hell , Ridge?”
He just shrugs, smug. “Miss Young’s third-grade class. Locked in forever.”
Boone groans. “Unfortunately, I can confirm the goat tattoo on his ass is real.”
Miller turns slowly toward Ridge, eyes narrowed, nose scrunched, like she’s trying to decide whether or not to hit him with her wineglass. “Why?”
“I lost a dare.”
“That’s not a good enough reason.”
“It was a reason,” Ridge says, totally unbothered.
Lark squints at him. “Wait—so the lie was the rodeo queen?”
“Yep,” Ridge says, popping the p . “I made out with her in the Bluebell parking lot, not Dairy Queen’s.”
Lark’s whole body jerks upright. “In my parking lot? Ew, Ridge!”
Ridge laughs, leaning back in his chair. “Relax. It was forever ago.”
Everyone breaks into some version of laughter—Boone shaking his head, Hudson full-on cackling, Sage muttering something under her breath.
Everyone’s laughing—except Miller, who’s watching Ridge with the kind of expression that could level a grown man. Calm, unreadable, and just sharp enough to draw blood if you get too close.
Ridge must feel it too, because he glances her way and clears his throat. “Sawyer’s up.”
Wren scoffs beside me. “Wow. Way to put the new guy on the spot. He just got here!”
“He’s about to be my fake brother-in-law,” Ridge says, raising a brow. “I can do whatever I want.”
I shake my head, smiling, and take another sip of water. “It’s okay, I don’t mind.”
Wren furrows her brow, trying to figure out if I’m serious or not, but then she shrugs and leans back in her chair. “All right, mystery man. Let’s hear it.”
I glance around the table, taking in the half-empty glasses, the slow rhythm of forks scraping against dessert plates, the easy kind of laughter that only comes when the wine’s kicked in and everyone’s just full enough to let their guards down.
There’s a hum to the room, warm and unhurried, like we’ve all silently agreed not to rush the night.
And somehow, in the middle of it, I’m here—folded into the noise, not quite an outsider.
It’s strange, that feeling. Of being welcome somewhere you don’t technically belong.
But tonight, no one seems to notice. Or maybe they do—and they’re choosing to let me in anyway.
And that feels like something worth holding onto.
“Okay,” I say, resting my elbows on the edge of the table.
“One—I once accidentally joined a yoga class because I thought it was a self-defense workshop. Two—I’ve never seen The Notebook.
Three—I got stuck in an elevator with a bachelorette party on the Vegas strip for an hour and they made me wear a pink sash that said ‘Bride’s Bitch. ’”
Hudson snorts into his water. “Okay, no way that last one’s real.”
Boone raises a brow. “Honestly, the yoga one sounds too normal.”
Sage points at me. “There’s no chance you’ve never seen The Notebook. You’re a liar if you say you haven’t.”
Ridge leans forward, grinning. “I’m gonna say the elevator one’s true. It’s way too specific to be a lie.”
Wren crosses her arms and gives me a look. “The yoga class is the lie.”
I glance at her. “You sure?”