“You going to ask her?” Dad’s voice is gruff. He looks at me as if he already knows the answer.
“It’s not that simple.”
“Nothing worth having ever is.” He removes his glasses and sets them on the desk with the careful precision of a man choosing his words. “Your mother and I got married three weeks after we met. Everyone said we were crazy.” A pause. “I had forty-two years with the best woman I ever knew. I’d do it again in a heartbeat.”
My chest tightens as memories play like a movie reel in my head. Mom in the kitchen, flour on her cheek, dancing with me standing on her feet while some old country song played. Before everything broke. Before Mom died bringing Gabriel into the world.
“She’d like Delaney,” Dad adds quietly. “Your mother always had a soft spot for fighters.”
“Delaney works for me. Lives under my roof.” The words come out rough.
Dad’s gaze sharpens. “Then you don’t ask her unless she can walk away,” he says, his voice like iron. “Unless she knows that no is an option and nothing changes if she uses it.”
The words hang there, immovable.
“She deserves the truth,” he continues. “Not pressure. Not gratitude. Not a damn thing hanging over her head.”
My jaw tightens. “And if I wait too long?—”
“Then we lose the land,” Dad says evenly, but I hear the pain behind his words. “But we don’t lose ourselves. And we don’t take her choice away.”
I blow out a heavy breath. “She’s been fighting her whole life. I won’t make her fight me too.”
Dad nods as he stands and gathers the papers. “Figure out how to make it real for her. Not just a solution to our problem.”
He leaves. Gabriel follows without another word, disappearing like smoke.
Ethan lingers, closing his laptop. “For what it’s worth? She looks at you the same way you look at her.”
“Yeah?”
“Like everything else just got quieter.” He heads for the door. “Don’t screw it up.”
“Helpful.”
“Anytime.”
The barn smells like hay and horse and the particular dusty sweetness of a Montana evening. I find her outside Captain Winky’s stall, talking to him in that low voice she uses—the one that makes his ears flick forward, curious and calm.
She’s gotten better with him. Two weeks ago, she could barely stand in the same space without her hands shaking. Now she’s reaching out, letting him snuffle her palm, her shoulders relaxed in a way I’ve never seen.
She doesn’t hear me approach.
“You’re good with him.”
She startles, hand flying to her chest. “Jesus! Do you practice sneaking up on people, or is it a military thing?”
“Both.”
I lean against the stall door, watching her. Hay in her hair. Dust on her jeans. She’s never looked more beautiful.
I should ease into this. Build up to it. Make it sound rational.
“Marry me.”
The words come out flat. Graceless. Nothing like I planned.
She goes completely still. Even Captain Winky holds his breath.
