"So what do we do now? We can't pretend the last two weeks haven't happened. Can't pretend yesterday didn't happen. Can't go back to before you came home."
Home. He'd called it home. Not to the ranch, not to Copper Creek. Home.
"I don't want to pretend," I said, and I was surprised to find I meant it. "I'm tired of pretending. Tired of running. Tired of being scared of shadows and possibilities."
"Me too." His voice was rough, broken. "I'm tired of being angry. Tired of living in that cabin alone, walking through rooms I built for a family that never happened. Tired of missing you so much it feels like something's been carved out of my chest."
The admission hung between us, simple and devastating.
"Then let's stop surviving," he said, and his eyes were so earnest, so hopeful, it made my heart squeeze. "Let's stop running from the past or fighting it. Let's just... start living."
"As what?" I asked, and I hated how small my voice sounded. "What are we to each other now?"
"Friends?" he offered, but it came out like a question. "Two people who matter too much to lose again?"
Friends didn’t feel right to explain what we were to each other, but it was a good start. ”I’d like that."
"Me too."
He opened his arms then, a question and an invitation. I could see the vulnerability in his face, the fear I might reject him, and it made my decision for me. I stepped into his embrace without hesitation, and he pulled me close with a sound that might have been relief or homecoming or both.
There was no heat in it, no desperate passion like in the barn during the storm. This was something else. Something deeper. His arms came around me like they were built for this purpose, and I fit against his chest like I'd never left. It felt like coming home after a long, cold journey. Like safety. Like peace.
I pressed my face into his chest, breathed in the familiar scent of him, and felt something in my chest finally unclench. A knot I'd carried for so long I'd forgotten it wasn't supposed to be there. His heart beat steady under my ear, a rhythm I'd once known better than my own.
"I missed this," I whispered into his shirt, the words muffled but clear. "Just this. Being held by you. Feeling safe."
His arms tightened, and I felt him press his face into my hair. "I missed it too. Missed you. Even when I hated you, I missed you."
"You never hated me."
"No," he agreed. "I never did. Wanted to. Tried to. But never could quite manage it."
We stayed like that for a long time, just holding each other in the barn while the ranch lived and breathed around us. He pressed a kiss to the top of my head, and when we finally pulled apart, both our eyes were wet.
"Friends," he said firmly, like making a promise, like speaking it into existence.
"Friends," I agreed, though the word felt too small for what we were, what we'd been, what we might be again.
The days that followed slipped into something gentle—a rhythm I hadn’t known I’d been missing.
We worked side by side in easy silence, our movements syncing without thought. Him lifting, me steadying. Me holding a gate, him herding cattle through. The tension that had once crackled between us was still there, but softer now—not a storm, just a hum, steady and alive.
Mornings started with coffee on the porch, the air cool and gold with sunrise, the world quiet except for the lowing of cattle and the wind turning the windmill. Sometimes we talked—about nothing and everything. Sometimes we just sat, listening to the land wake up.
In the evenings, we rode. Not to work, not to check fences—just to ride. The hills rolled out before us in green and gold, the sky wide and endless. Some rides we talked. Others, we didn’t say a word. We didn’t need to. The sound of hooves and the creak of leather said enough.
Once, when the sun was dropping low and painting everything in firelight, he glanced over and smiled—that slow, unguarded grin I’d thought I’d never see again.
“Feels like old times,” he said.
“Better,” I answered, surprising both of us.
He nodded, eyes warm under the brim of his hat. “Yeah. Better.”
Louisa noticed, of course. She always did. She didn’t say anything, just smiled a little wider at dinner, the corners of her eyes soft with knowing.
It wasn’t forgiveness in words. It was forgiveness in motion—in shared chores and quiet rides, in the space where anger used to live, being filled with something steadier. Something that might, if we were brave enough, grow back into love.
