"Which Sunday?"
"Any Sunday. Every Sunday. All the Sundays for the rest of your life."
My throat went tight. "Wyatt Blackwood, are you asking me to Sunday dinner or something else?"
"I'm asking you to come home. The rest we'll figure out as we go."
"Twelve days," I promised. "Maybe less."
"Definitely less," he said. "I'm too impatient to wait twelve days."
"Some things are worth waiting for."
"You are," he agreed. "But I've done my waiting. Time for the having."
After we hung up, I drove through the darkness with the windows down, letting the Texas night air wash over me. The city lights faded behind me, replaced by stars that multiplied with every mile. By the time I stopped for gas in Weatherford, I could just make out the Milky Way.
The horseshoe pendant was warm against my skin, like it was alive, like it was pulling me back to where it had come from. Back to the boy who'd become a man who'd never stopped loving me. Back to the ranch that had raised me. Back to the family that had welcomed me home without question.
Back to the life I'd almost missed by being too afraid to believe I deserved it.
But not anymore. No more fear. No more running. No more pretending to be someone I wasn't.
Just Ivy Garrison, going home to Copper Creek, to Wyatt Blackwood, to the future we'd written in the stars and were finally brave enough to claim.
Chapter 22
Wyatt
Six days. It had been six days since Ivy left for Dallas, and every one of them had crawled by like a wounded animal. I'd tried to be patient, to trust, to remember that she'd promised to come back. But old fears died hard, and every morning I woke up reaching for someone who wasn't there.
I was out on the fence line by dawn, needing the physical work to quiet my restless mind. The posts I was replacing didn't really need it—Hunter and I had fixed this section just last month—but my hands needed something to do besides reaching for my phone every five minutes.
The morning was already heating up, promising another scorcher. Sweat soaked through my shirt as I worked, muscles burning with the familiar rhythm of ranch labor. This was what I knew—wood and wire, soil and sky, the eternal maintenance of boundaries that kept things where they belonged.
Six days she'd been gone, but she'd texted constantly. Photos of boxes. Updates on lease negotiations. A selfie from a gas station halfway between Dallas and forever. Each message a breadcrumbtrail proving she was coming back, but still my chest stayed tight with waiting.
How much longer?I’d asked
Soon.
Soon. Such a vague word when what I wanted was exact coordinates, an ETA, proof that this wasn't another dream I'd wake from alone.
I went back to the fence, driving posts with perhaps more force than necessary. The sun climbed higher, and I stripped off my shirt, using it to wipe sweat from my face. The ranch spread around me in every direction—land that had been in my family for four generations, land I'd nearly lost during the drought, land I'd saved through stubbornness and the kind of hope that borders on delusion.
The same kind of hope that had made me build a cabin for a ghost.
Movement caught my eye—dust rising on the main road, the kind that meant someone was coming. My heart jumped, but I forced it down. Could be anyone. Delivery truck. One of the hands coming back from town. Anyone.
But as the vehicle crested the hill, I knew.
That was Ivy's car, loaded down with boxes, looking like everything I'd ever wanted coming home.
The hammer slipped from my numb fingers, landing in the dirt with a dull thud. My heart slammed against my ribs so hard I thought they might crack. Six days of trying to breathe normally, of pretending I wasn't terrified she'd change her mind, of acting like I wasn't counting minutes—all of it collapsed as her car turned down the ranch road.
I couldn't move. Could barely breathe. Just stood there shirtless and sweating, probably looking like a fool, as she pulled up to where I'd been working. The engine died, and for a moment neither of us moved. Through the windshield, I could see her smiling, tears streaming down her face.
Then she was out of the car, and I was moving without conscious thought, meeting her halfway. She was wearing jeans and an old Copper Creek High t-shirt I recognized as one of mine, the horseshoe pendant glinting at her throat.
