I move faster. His thumb works steadily, and I am not quiet about any of it. The whole Hill Country can hear me, and I do not care. Not a managed piece of me left to care. The creek and the canopy and the warmth of the sun and his hands on me and the look on his face and him, this patient impossible man who hasleft the door open and stood back and waited while I found my way through it.
"Carson!"
"I've got you," he says. "Come on."
When I come, I drop forward onto his chest, both hands grabbing his shoulders, my face in his neck, and he catches me and rolls us in one smooth motion. I am on my back, he is over me, and his mouth finds my ear.
"My turn," he says.
He is not careful about it.
He moves, thrusting as he comes, and I stop thinking and stop managing and let it happen. All of it. The creek and the sun and the weight of him and his voice low at my ear saying there she is when I gasp, and that's it when my nails find his back, and stay with me when I lose my breath entirely. I wrap my legs around him and hold on and the knowledge settles somewhere permanent and certain: I am not the same person who white-knuckles her way down this highway four days ago. That woman is gone. This one doesn't brace for impact.
He says my name one more time, and I feel him go.
For a while neither of us moves, just breathes, his forehead against my shoulder and my hands doing slow lazy circuits up and down his back because I can and there is nowhere I need to be.
"I'm not going back to who I was before this," I say eventually, to the canopy, to him, to the general Texas afternoon.
I turn my head to look at him. He is watching the canopy, jaw set. A man bracing for disappointment. I recognize it because I've been doing it for thirty years: pre-managing the fall so it can't surprise you.
I reach over and put my hand flat on his chest, over his heart.
He looks down at my hand. Then at me.
My phone buzzes in the saddlebag. Then again. Then three times fast. My boss. Work email. Some kind of crisis, there is always a crisis, the architecture of my old life reassembling itself at exactly the wrong moment.
I watch the saddlebag.
I put my hand back on his chest.
"I need to make a call," I say. "When we get back."
Something shutters in his face. I watch him build the wall, brick by brick, the way a person does when they've been left enough times to get good at the construction.
"Okay," he says. Flat. Controlled.
"Carson."
"Ready?" He is already up, moving to the horses with that economic efficiency that can look like nothing is wrong.
I want to tell him right there. But I need to do it right.
seven
Carson
Pastten.Theranchis quiet.
I am re-oiling a bridle that doesn't need re-oiling. Hands are busy. Head is not cooperating.
I have a story ready. I’ve been building it since her phone goes off. She'll call whoever needs calling, she'll be practical about it because that is who she is, and she'll leave on Sunday like she's always been going to. And I'll let her, because that is the right thing. Because she doesn't belong to Saddlehorn or to Wild Vista or to me. She's come here to face something and she's faced it, and going home isn't betrayal. It is just the arc of things.
I've made peace with it.
Mostly.
The ride back is quiet in a way that is different from our other silences. Before, the quiet between us was companionable. Two people who don't need to fill the air. This is two people keeping something down. I've watched her from the corner of my eyethe whole way down from the ridge and can't get a read on her, which isn't something I'm used to.
