“He would,” I managed.
“Donna drove Starlight down from Wyoming herself. Wouldn’t let anyone else do it. She told Hank she’d cried for three days after I called, but they were happy tears, because she said she always knew Starlight wasn’t really hers.”
Graham paused. His expression shifted into something heavier.
“The Brennans were the hardest. Ricky and Hally.” He stopped. Swallowed. “Hally’s mother cried. Her father said he understood. And Hally—” Another pause, longer this time. “Hally wrote Ricky a letter. Said she put it in the trailer with him. Mrs. Brennan said they left it in the tack room for you.”
I couldn’t speak. I pressed my face into his shoulder and shook.
“The ranch,” I finally managed. “This ranch. How?—”
“It’s in your name,” Graham said. “The property, the land, the house, the barn. All of it. Fully paid. No mortgage. No strings.”
“Graham, you can’t?—”
“It’s done.” His hands framed my face, lifting it to look at him. His jaw tight, his expression holding steady through sheer force of will. “This isn’t a gift, Rose. It’s not a rescue. It’s a restoration. I didn’t buy you a ranch. I gave you back what was taken from you.”
“I can’t accept?—”
“You can. Because it’s yours. Because you earned it, not the money, but the life. The horses, the work, the land. You built something real out of nothing, and someone stole it, and the world let them. So I’m putting it back.” His thumb brushed a tear from my cheek. “What you do with it is up to you. If you want to run a ranch, run a ranch. If you want to start a therapy program, start one. If you want to sit in this barn every morning and talk to Cassiopeia about your feelings, that’s fine too. It’s yours.”
“And if I hadn’t come back to you?” My voice was barely a whisper. “If I’d told you to leave me alone?”
“Then you’d still be sitting in this barn right now.” His gaze didn’t waver. “I’d have found a way to get you here. Through Kaya, through Hank, through your cousins. I’d have put the deed in a FedEx envelope if I had to.” His voice roughened. “Because this was never about us, Rose. It was about you. It was always about you.”
I stared at him. This ridiculous, incredible man who’d made me fall in love with him against my will and then let his career burn to protect me and then, while his world was falling apart, quietly called four families across three states and hired back the two people who mattered most to me and found a ranch in a valley I’d never seen and put my name on everything.
And would have done it all even if I’d never let him touch me again.
“I don’t deserve this,” I said.
“You deserve everything.” He held my gaze. “And while we’re in a barn and I’m already on my knees?—”
My heart stopped.
“Rose Gracen.” His hands were trembling. His voice was steady. “You are the most stubborn, infuriating, extraordinary woman I have ever met. You fired me from your life twice and I still couldn’t stay away.”
“Graham—”
“I’m not done.” He almost smiled. Almost. “You’re the first person who ever saw me as Graham. Not Fraser Kincaid. Not the subscriber count or the channel or the brand. Me.” His voice roughened. “You made me want to be real. And I have never in my life wanted anything the way I want to build something with you. Something permanent. Something that’s ours.”
He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a ring.
It wasn’t flashy. A simple stone, deep blue, the color of a Colorado sky at dusk, set in a band that looked old. Worn. Like it had a history.
“This was my grandmother’s,” he said. “She wore it for forty-seven years. My grandfather proposed to her on a farm in Inverness where I first learned to ride a horse.”
I looked at the ring. At his hands. At his face, open, honest, terrified in the way that brave people are when they’re offeringthe most vulnerable part of themselves and don’t know if it will be accepted.
“Will you marry me?” he asked. “Not Fraser Kincaid. Graham Fraser. The real one. The one you made possible.”
I looked at him. Kneeling in shavings in a barn in Colorado, with hay in his hair and tears on his face and Ricky’s nose investigating his jacket pocket for peppermints.
“Yes,” I said.
He exhaled like he’d been holding his breath for weeks. Months. His whole life.
“Yes,” I said again, because once wasn’t enough. “Yes, yes, yes!”
