“This,” Boone says, gesturing at all of us sitting together. “The town knowing. No more hiding.”
“We weren’t exactly hiding before,” Callie points out.
“We weren’t exactly public either,” I counter.
She takes another bite of pie, considering. “So what now? Now that everyone knows?”
“Now we figure it out,” Wyatt says.
“Figure what out?”
“Everything. How this works. How we work.”
“Do we work?” she asks, and there’s something vulnerable in her voice.
“We’re here, aren’t we?” Boone says. “All of us. Together.”
“That doesn’t mean it works. That just means we’re stubborn. And optimistic.”
“Same thing sometimes,” I tell her.
We eat in comfortable silence for a while, the sun setting over the hills and turning everything gold. Rita’s tied to a tree nearby, occasionally bleating her anger at being left out of the pie eating.
“You know what would really piss everyone off?” Boone says suddenly.
“What?” Callie asks warily.
“If we combined the ranches.”
The words hang in the air for a moment.
“That’s...” Wyatt starts.
“Never gonna work,” Callie says.
“Think about it though,” Boone continues, warming to his theme. “Thompson-McCoy Ranch. Or McCoy-Thompson. Whatever.”
“We could brand the cattle with something really obnoxious,” I suggest. “Like a heart.”
“Or Callie’s initials,” Boone adds.
“CT?” Callie laughs. “That’s terrible.”
“CMT,” I correct. “Callie Marie Thompson.”
“How do you know my middle name?”
“Small town. Everyone knows everything.”
“Then we could do CMTJWB,” Boone suggests. “All our initials.”
“That’s not a brand, that’s an eye chart,” Wyatt says, but he’s almost smiling.
“We could just do a goat,” Callie suggests. “Really lean into the whole thing.”
“Rita would be so proud,” I agree.
“She’d probably eat the branding iron,” Wyatt points out.
