He’s standing at the head with his hand still on the halter and his eyes are on mine and the look on his face is the one Grace described—not convenient, not grateful, not simple.
The look of a man watching a woman do the thing she was built to do and being undone by it.
Our eyes hold. Under the horse. Across the warm space between his hands and mine.
The bay stands between us like a bridge—a living, breathing connection between the man who saved him and the woman who is fixing him, and for the first time, working together doesn’t feel like a compromise or a truce.
It feels like a beginning.
“Two more,” I say. My voice is not as steady as I’d like.
“Take your time.” His voice isn’t either.
I finish the hinds and set each one down gently.
The bay stands square on four trimmed hooves and shakes his head like a dog coming out of water—a full-body reset, the physical equivalent of a sigh.
Lee unclips the cross-ties and the horse walks off, sound, balanced, his stride even and free.
Lee puts his hand on the back of my neck. Brief. Warm. His thumb sweeps once across the skin below my braid.
“Thank you.”
I don’t trust myself to speak.
I nod.
He walks the bay back to his stall and I stand in the aisle with my rasp in one hand and my heart trying to beat its way out of my chest.
I blink, and it’s Sunday and I’ve been at Grace’s having some girl-time.
Never in my life did I think I’d say that again.
Lee finds me in their house. He’s been at Earl’s all afternoon, fixing the east fence line like he promised.
The fact that he went back—that he said he would and then did—is a sentence I keep reading over and over, looking for the catch.
Shadow and Grace excuse themselves, which I think is planned, and walk out onto their back deck.
Something’s been eating at me the last day and I can’t hold it in anymore.
“I need to know this is real, Lee.” The words come out before I can shape them into something less raw, less exposed. But I’m done being careful. Careful is for people who have something left to protect.
I’ve already given this man everything—my body in a tack room, my grief on a barn floor, five years of voicemails I doubt he ever listened to. There’s nothing left to hold back. “Because I can’t survive you leaving again. I need you to understand that. One more disappearance and I’m done. Not angry-done. Broken-done. I won’t come back from it.”
He’s quiet.
“I listened to your voicemails.”
The floor shifts under me. “What?”
“All of them. Sixty-three. The night after Earl’s chemo.” He’s looking at me with an expression I’ve never seen on his face—open, ashamed, certain. All three at once. “I heard every single one, Bex. Every angry message and every sad one and every holiday and the dog named Hank and the date with the guy who talked about his truck and the last one where you said you were done waiting. Even when Hank died and you left me that message too.”
I can’t breathe.
“You called sixty-three times.” His voice cracks on the number. “And I never picked up. Not once. That’s not something I can fix. I can’t give you back five years. But I can tell you that I’m here now and I’m not leaving. Not Earl’s ranch. Not the club. Not you.”
He takes my hand.
