When he finally broke the kiss, I was dizzy and breathless and completely, irreversibly ruined for anyone else on the planet.
He looked at me, searching my face for a flicker of regret. “You okay?” he asked.
I nodded. “More than okay.”
“Good.” He let the word hang, then added, “Because if you want to make the McKenzie part official, there’s paperwork. Maybe a blood ritual. Definitely pie.”
I snorted, still half in a dream. “Pie, I can do.”
He grinned, slow and wolfish. “Good answer.”
The last shoppers trickled out, the vendors packed up, and the market’s hum returned to normal. But I could feel the difference in the way people glanced at me—some with warmth, some with curiosity, none with the old, reflexive suspicion.
I was part of the story now, not just a footnote.
I looked at Knox, at the way he stood so solid and sure, and couldn’t help myself. “Does this mean I get to pick the towels? Because I’ve got opinions about monograms.”
He laughed, a sound so rare and bright that the nearest chess grandpa startled in his seat. “Only if you teach Harlow to spell his name right this time.”
I beamed. “Deal.”
We walked out of the market hand in hand, sun setting behind the mountains and the last of the honey catching in the light. I didn’t know what tomorrow would bring, or the next week, or the rest of our lives. But I knew, with the kind of certainty that only comes after surviving the worst, that I’d never have to face it alone.
And that, in the end, was all I’d ever wanted.
Chapter Eighteen
~ Newton ~
Some mornings, when the sunrise hit the fields just so, the world didn’t feel like something you had to survive. It felt like something you’d earned.
I stood barefoot on the porch, coffee mug cupped in both hands, and watched the sun muscle its way over the eastern ridge, splashing gold across rows of barley so precise you’d think Harlow had used a ruler to plant each seed.
The air smelled like dew and horse sweat and the ghost of last night’s campfire, and I let it fill my lungs to the bottom.
The old me—last year’s model—would have been counting heartbeats, cataloguing threats in the chicken yard or checking the perimeter for any sign of the Bridger DNA. Today, I just let the chill bite at my ankles and enjoyed the show.
The farm was quiet, but never still. Late June meant every living thing was wound tight and humming, from the bees torpedoing the clover patches to the sheep out back, plotting their daily mutiny.
I leaned against the porch post and watched a crow pick its way along the fence line. It hopped, cackled, then made off with something shiny from the grass—a washer, probably, lost from the equipment shed.
I grinned at the bird’s audacity and took a sip, letting the bitter drag of black coffee remind me I was awake and alive, and not likely to die today.
This was the first time in years I hadn’t woken up already bracing for pain. No night sweats, no icy hand squeezing my chest. Just the mild, persistent ache of a body that had learned how to belong to itself.
Knox had told me once, in his best drill sergeant voice, that “routine builds resilience.” I’d thought he was just being an asshole about morning chores, but he was right.
There was a pattern to the days here—a rhythm that started with the hush of sunrise and ended with the low, warm chorus of family at the table, everyone’s voices blending until you couldn’t separate one from the next.
The fields shimmered, alive with promise and bugs, and I let my gaze drift to the barn. The old beast had been cleaned out two weeks ago, scrubbed top to bottom in a blitz led by Ma and enforced by Harlow’s backhoe-level determination.
It looked a decade younger now—doors hung straight, new hinges, the hayloft no longer a black hole of disaster but a tidy, sunlit space where you could actually find the damn pitchfork.
The tractors, which had once looked like survivors of a mid-western war crime, now gleamed. Quiad had painted the old Massey Ferguson fire truck red. It was so bright you could spot it from the edge of town.
I’d argued for a more traditional color, but the boys had outvoted me, citing “branding” and “fuck you, it’s awesome” as their primary logic. So now the Ferguson glowed like an open wound against the green, and I had to admit, it did look pretty badass.
There were other changes, subtle but everywhere. The ledger books in the kitchen were up to date, not a single page missing. The new irrigation system—planned on my laptop, installed by every able McKenzie plus a rotating cast of in-laws—worked so well you could hear the crops sigh with gratitude.
