Page 205

“You took the job. That was luck. Wyatt could’ve hired somebody else. You could’ve looked at one photograph of the bunkhouse and decided Montana had lost its damn mind. You could’ve driven up that road in June, met me, and turned around.”

“I considered it.”

“I know.”

“You leaned on my car.”

“It was charming.”

“You asked if my boots were decorative.”

“They were.”

She waited.

I breathed out.

“You came anyway. Then you stayed. Then you left because you thought leaving was the thing that saved us, and you came back because—” I stopped. “Because of Brenda, apparently, which means I owe a cow with four legs of different lengths everything I have.”

“She has excellent instincts.”

“The point is, you came back.”

“The point,” she repeated softly.

“Yeah. The point.”

I looked out over the ranch.

From up here, I could see the whole day reduced to light and shadow. The arena we’d built. The vendor row where the shade had fallen exactly when she said it would. The flatbed. The banner on the north rail, Dad’s name too far away to read now but there.

The whole distance from June to August sat below us.

“I thought luck was winning,” I said. “A good draw. A judge looking the right direction. Making eight when you should’ve hit dirt at six. Then I thought it was this ranch holding together after Dad died. I thought if we worked hard enough, we could force luck to stay.”

She watched me.

“But luck was you driving up that road. You telling me no. You seeing through every stupid thing I did to make people like me and liking me after I put it down.”

“I liked some of the stupid things.”

“Thank God.”

“And I didn’t always like you.”

“I know. Hot.”

She rolled her eyes, but they were shining now.

I stepped closer.

“We came a long way to stand in this hayloft.”

“We climbed one unsafe ladder.”

“You know what I mean.”

“I do.”