I recognize it. The architecture of a man holding something painful at arm’s length. Lee used to look exactly like that.
Now Lee’s hand is in mine under the table, and the tattoo on my arm says I belong here, and the cabin on the north end of the property is waiting for us to fill it with coffee mugs and arguments about bathroom floor tiles and the ordinary, accumulated evidence of a life shared.
I squeeze Lee’s hand and he squeezes back.
And I think: we made it.
Not undamaged. Not unscarred.
There’s a photograph I hung in the Saints’ barn this week—Rose and me, twelve years old, in Earl’s barn.
Two girls with our arms around each other, grinning at the camera with the invincibility of children who haven’t learned yet that the world takes things.
I pass it every morning.
Sometimes I touch the frame.
I see you. I remember. I’m okay.
The girl in that photograph would be stunned by where I am.
The woman I became would tell her: it’s going to hurt. It’s going to hurt in ways you can’t imagine and for longer than you think you can survive. But you’re going to survive it. You’re going to bend iron and shoe horses and drive across Texas and back. You’re going to lose the person you love most in the world and keep going. You’re going to show up for the people who need you even when showing up costs you everything you have. And somewhere on the other side of all that loss and all that work and all that stubborn, stupid refusal to give up, you’re going to find a man who looks at you like you’re the answer to a question he stopped asking. And you’re going to let him. And it’s going to be terrifying and beautiful and worth every single mile.
I’m Bex Dalton. Farrier. Property of Banshee. Daughter of Earl’s heart, sister of Rose’s memory, member of a family I didn’t expect to find in a motorcycle club in the middle of Texas.
And I’m finally home.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Banshee
Bex left an hour ago—a client ranch outside Fredericksburg, a four-horse call that’ll keep her most of the day.
I stood on the porch in my boxers and watched her truck disappear down the road, her hand out the window in a wave she didn’t look back to confirm I saw.
I saw. I always see.
The cabin smells like coffee and sawdust.
We’ve been in it three weeks and it already looks like us—her boots by the door next to mine, a farrier’s calendar on the kitchen wall, a stack of horse magazines on the coffee table that neither of us has time to read.
The porch railing is new.
I replaced it last weekend while Bex sat in the yard sharpening tools and critiquing my carpentry with the constructive honesty of a woman who has no interest in protecting my ego.
The bathroom floor is still plywood.
Day by day, we’re getting to it.
I pour my second cup, stand at the kitchen counter, and look at my hands.
The ring is on the nightstand.
It’s been there since the morning I took it off—sitting in the early light, catching gold, waiting.
I’ve thought about what to do with it every day since.
Giving it to Earl. Putting it in a box. Locking it in a drawer and trying to forget the weight of it.
