Epilogue
Maeve
Six months later
The Texan sun starts to set behind the Wildbrook Hollow mountains, transforming the sky with shades of gold and deep rose that blanket the fields, making everything feel soft and calm.
I'm standing by the kitchen window, not long after dinner, in that quiet that settles over the house once everyone's gone their separate ways for the evening.
I catch myself doing this often, standing here to take everything in. Often needing the reminder that is real, that this place is my home now, because even now, some part of me still expects to blink and wake up to return to that bloody awfulcoffee shop back in London.
This time of year might be my favourite so far.
After the pour-down of April showers, the landscape seems to transform into something brighter and warmer.
The temperature climbs, the bluebonnets start to disappear—though there are still a good few clinging on along the fence line like they don't want to leave, something I can relate to on a spiritual level.
I find myself being able to recall the names of the thousands of types of flowers that this part of the world has to offer, something I'veunintentionally learnt through the persistent questioning of a driving curiosity during long horse rides with Wade.
I've still not been able to tame it, even after everything that has happened.
Like the black-eyed Susans—who comes up with these names?
—scattered across the hillsides. The coreopsis catching the last of the evening light, each one looking like a tiny sun.
And then, the Indian blanket, dominating everything around them with that fiery colour that pulls your eyes straight to it whether you mean to look or not.
Where April feels dramatic, May feels settled.
I never thought I'd relate to a month, but here I am. Because I feel it too—settled. In a way I began to think was never in the cards for me.
It wasn’t that long ago when I was sat in the same tree house that is still tucked safely away in the branches of the tall oak tree at the far end of the back garden, the wildflowers spilling around it, thinking I needed to leave this place.
Just me and Colt next to each other, in the dark before everything unravelled, crying because I had already planned the exit I never wanted but thought had to happen.
I still sit up there sometimes. On the evenings when I need a minute to myself, which is a rarity these days.
Not that I am complaining. It's just that having people around who love me and show up is still something my nervous system is quietly learning to trust. It can be overwhelming, in the best and most disorienting way. Something I’m still working on.
Things are good. Not perfect, but good. We are human after all, glorious and messy humans, and after everything we've been through this past year, I've learnt that love and belonging are not tidy things.
Sometimes they come apart before they come together.
Sometimes mistakes are made, and secrets are kept, and people get hurt, and you have to decide, together, whether what you have is worth rebuilding.
It was. It is.
Every day I see that it was worth it. The struggles, the heartbreak, all of it.
I watch Colt and Wade together, working side by side, actually talking, having a real relationship.
Not circling each other carefully anymore.
They've worked hard to get here. Wade going to therapy with Colt, showing up for him in the obvious ways instead of in all those quiet, secret ways he used to.
You can see it in everything now, even the small moments between them.
Even the equestrian school they built together, just the two of them.
Well, with a sprinkling of my contribution, because as I've found out, business management is apparently my thing.
Give me an accounts spreadsheet, a booking system, and an embarrassing number of Post-it notes to keep my chaotic brain organised, and I am good to go.
But despite that, the school is theirs. Their stamp on this ranch, on their family's legacy.
A moment added to the various memories filling that room at the end of the hall, which is no longer kept locked.
Anyone who enters will see a photograph of Wade and Colt, side by side, squinting into the afternoon light, cutting an obnoxiously large red ribbon on opening day.
Sat right next to it is that old black and white photograph of Wade's parents doing the same for the ranch, all those years before either of them existed.
Two moments in Carter history, on the same wall, in the same frame of light.
Father and son, despite everything.
Things are not perfect between them, and that's ok. Some wounds take longer to heal, and Colt was broken down to the bare bones that night. His whole life as he thought he knew it came crashing down on him, all at once. And there is not a version of that memory that doesn't still sit heavy with me.
But over the past six months, I've noticed how far he has come.
How, after receiving his official diagnosis, which he tells me has been the best thing to happen to him, he has begun to make sense of his own mind, not fighting himself as much anymore.
The panic attacks have lessened, the days of him disappearing into himself are few and far between and learning to communicate how he feels before it gets too much. We listen, we help, and we support him.
Even told me that he’s sworn off relationships for now.
He thinks the best thing for him and whoever he ends up with in the future, is to get back to liking who he is in his own head and his own company first. The Colt Rebirth, he called it—which is the most Colt thing he has ever said.
But something that made me so proud of my friend and the journey he is going through.
Deep down though, he is still the kind, sweet golden boy I first met; that part of him was never going anywhere.
Footsteps coming toward me pull me out of my trance, but I don't look away from the view.
I know it's Wade without turning. He steps up close behind me, slow, until I can feel the heat of him at my back.
His chin settles against the top of my head.
Neither of us speaks. We just stand there, still, wrapped in it.
It feels so natural to be in his arms — like this is exactly where I'm meant to be
“Ready?” Wade's voice is quiet, his breath warm against the side of my cheek.
I smile at the window before nodding.
He presses a kiss to the side of my head and moves to grab the glasses from the cabinet. I turn to watch him move around the kitchen, still catching myself basking in the reality of all this.
Us being us, we love a routine, and it hasn’t stopped with our morning one. Now we sit in the same place, on the same porch, every evening—drinking whiskey together. I only manage a fraction of the glass Wade has, not quite used to the taste yet, but it's growing on me as the days go by.
Watching him collect the glasses, a smile across his face, he is so far from the man I met at that airport.
So much lighter. So much happier. All those secrets that were keeping this version of him locked away are now out in the open, letting him just be himself.
An openly loving happy family man with the driest sense of humour—one I can never quite confirm until I catch the corner of his mouth make that small, telltale rise.
He is a man who pays attention, always knowing what you need before you know it yourself.
And that's not just with me, but with everyone around him too.
Because that's how Wade loves. Quietly and consistently.
And until you stop to look back, you don't realise how many small things he's been doing all along.
Wade tilts his head toward the front door, and I follow him out into the warm May evening. I only make it one step over the threshold before I come to a complete stop.
There, tethered to the fence post just in front of the porch, is a horse.
She's brown and beautiful, with a white uneven stripe running clean down the centre of her nose, patchy markings scattered across her body like someone had dabbed her repeatedly with a paintbrush and thought better of finishing.
She turns her head toward us, noting our presence for just a moment, before returning to munching on the grass.
“Wade.” His name comes out as a breath. He says nothing. Just sets down the things down with that infuriatingly calm expression, not taking his eyes off me.
“Wade,” I say it again, turning to look at him. “Is that—”
“Yours,” he simply says. And then—because knows I'd make him say more— the corner of his mouth lifts. “It's official now. You're a country girl. You need your own horse.”
I have no words. My feet carry me to her before my brain has caught up with any of it, slow and steady, so she knows I'm not a threat.
She doesn't shy away. If anything, she moves toward me, dropping her nose into my outstretched hand like the invitation it is, her breath warm against my palm.
I fight the tears back with everything I've got but fail miserably.
They run slow and quiet down my cheek, and I don't bother wiping them away.
My own horse. Like the last piece of something clicking quietly into place, rooting me fully here.
She nudges my hand, and I stroke the white stripe down her nose, trying to find the words for what is happening in my chest right now.
“She needs a name,” Wade says from behind me, and I can hear the smile in it without turning around.
I look at her, and something in me instantly knows.
“Indie,” I say quietly. “Her name is Indie.”
Wild and free—that's what it will feel like when I'm on her; I already know it. Like the Indian blanket spreading vividly and unapologetically across the fields of Wildbrook Hollow right now.
Wade makes a sound of approval, his hand finding the small of my back.
I turn to face him then, really look at him, tears still drying on my cheeks.
“Thank you,” I say quietly.
He reaches up and brushes the last of the tears from my cheek with his thumb, unhurried. “I love you, angel.”
“I love you too,” I sniffle, gesturing vaguely at my face. “Look what you've done to me.”
Wade laughs, giving me a small nudge.
I turn back to give Indie one last stroke before we head back to settle into the porch swing together, whiskey in hand. His arm finds its way around my shoulders, pulling me in close. The everyday intimacy of it is something I had convinced myself only existed in fiction. And now it's just my life.
I take a sip of whiskey and think about everything that has led to this moment.
The journey all of us have been on. How love and life can be so messy and so worth it all at once.
I think about the girl lying in the dark in her best friend's flat, not knowing what to do with her life, pressing submit on an application that, I'm now fairly certain, was sent by the universe at exactly the right time.
The tired girl who was lost and panicked and stubbornly, quietly hoping that something would eventually click into place.
Wade pulls me a little closer, and I lean into him, watching Indie graze below the porch steps in the last of the evening light, already looking like she's always been here.
I lift my eyes to the stars appearing one by one over the Wildbrook Hollow mountains.
I'd tell that girl to hold on. Tell her it's coming.
And when it does—it's everything she was searching for and more.