Dylan’s jaw ticked.
I patted his chest. “Stay.”
His eyes narrowed slightly, but he stayed.
Growth.
Outside, the cold hit my cheeks sharp and clean. The ranch stretched beneath moonlight and snow, fences dark against white, horses shifting in the distance. Edge walked beside me toward the porch steps, quiet for so long I started to wonder if this was one of those conversations where men thought standing near each other counted as emotional honesty.
Finally, he said, “You happy?”
I looked out over the ranch.
The answer came easier than I expected.
“Yes.”
Edge nodded.
One hard dip of his chin.
“Good.”
I glanced at him. “That’s it?”
His mouth moved slightly. Not a smile exactly. Edge adjacent.
“No.”
Of course.
He leaned against the porch rail, looking out at the land instead of me. “I’ve spent a lot of years thinking keeping you safe meant keeping things from you. Men. Truth. Stories. Pain.”
I went still.
“The older you got, the harder it got,” he said. “Because you had her face sometimes.”
Mandy.
He did not say her name.
He did not have to.
My fingers moved to the turquoise ring on my hand.
“But you were never her,” he said.
The words went through me so deeply I almost sat down.
Edge looked at me then.
“You’re mine,” he said. “And you’re yours. Took me too damn long to understand both can be true.”
My eyes burned.
“Dad.”
His jaw tightened at the word like it still hit him somewhere soft.
