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“It’s almost Christmas,” Matilda said happily as Ruthie sat down in the empty chair next to Dallas, at the same time Raleigh thunked down a pitcher of beer in the middle of the table. “I love the holidays.”

She turned and grinned particularly wide at Tennessee, who had his arm stretched out on the back of her chair and a look on his face that was so soft, and so sweet that Ruthie had to look away.

But there was nowhere to look. Every time Kitty came by the table, Finn would pull her in with a hand on her hip, and hold her there a while.

Cat and Wilder were sharing the same chair. Cat was sitting on his lap like he was a recliner while he ran his thumb back and forth on the top of her thigh.

Raleigh, every inch the sort of country song that warned hapless women away from cowboys like him, kicked back in his chair, lounging there like he didn’t have a care in the world. But this wasn’t the first time that Ruthie had seen the way his gaze tracked some of Kitty’s friends, one of them being podcasting Esther Wayne, as they gathered near the counter.

If Ruthie had to guess, she’d say that his attention was centered on that pretty schoolteacher, Juliet Cross. Who, as far as she could tell, never gave him the time of day.

Helena came in last, and not alone. Ruthie watched her exchange words with an extremely grumpy-looking man, who for all of his scowling and seeming disinterest in whatever Helena was saying to him, also had the kind of quiet, commanding intensity that made anyone near him sit up straighter.

She knew who he was, too. Colton Dean of Lost River Ranch out in the mountains, where Raleigh had started working because it was a horse ranch. It was clear that Helena didn’t particularly like that arrangement. And also that Raleigh didn’t care if she liked it—as he made clear by treating Colton like they were best friends, almost certainly for the express purpose of annoying his sister.

Ruthie knew all of these things and she’d only been here since the start of the month, though it felt a whole lot longer. That was the trouble with inhaling all of these stories, she thought as she dragged her chair closer to Dallas’s so that everyone could make room, and so Cat could get off Wilder’s lap before all of her older brothers had coronaries. She just was far too invested in all of these stories.

And maybe in hers, too.

“You doing okay?” Dallas asked her, as Colton and Raleigh stood next to the table and talked about horse things, Helena glared, and Tennessee and Finn were cracking each other up over something having to do with various restaurant concerns here in town.

“I’m good.” Ruthie smiled at him. “It’s really very nice of you to involve me in these things. But I feel like a fraud.”

Dallas looked unimpressed with that. “We’ve discussed this.”

“I wouldn’t call it a discussion.” She wrinkled up her nose when he slanted a gaze at her. “It’s not. I tell you it’s weird, you say you don’t care, and here I am sitting here like an in-law.”

“Legally, you are.”

“As long as it’s legal,” Ruthie said dryly.

He got a strange look on his face then, and she was becoming an expert on this man’s face. On that blue gaze, and the way his cheekbones melted into that strong jaw, and somehow ended up in that mouth of his. That beautiful, clever, remarkably agile mouth of his—

But she wasn’t letting herself go there. Though the heat in his gaze then told her that he knew she wanted to.

“Whether or not you want this to stay legal is up to you.” His voice was low and sure, aimed for her ears only, and like all intimacies she shared with this man, she had to actively not think about it. If she thought about it, she might shiver. Visibly. “I’m never going to divorce you of my own accord, Ruthie. If that’s what you want, you’re going to have to spearhead it.”

It wasn’t the first time he’d said things like that. He liked to slip it in, in seemingly innocuous conversations. But that was Dallas, she’d come to realize. He liked to throw it all out there. What a monster he was, for example. How horrendously he’d behaved, while claiming she had been nothing but an angel caught in his trap.

The divorce was like that too. He liked to set out all of their options and if she called him on it, he would say something extraordinarily boring about how he wanted to make sure that she never felt coerced. As if someone had dragged her to Montana instead of Ruthie driving here of her own accord.

Usually she shrugged it off. Or said something funny, to redirect.

But tonight Ruthie felt full up on all these stories and these little rituals that she’d gotten to be a part of since she’d come here. It felt like everything she’d ever wanted—though she didn’t think she ever would have put it in those terms.

She couldn’t remember him, but she remembered the years she’d spent with her grandmother. And she had been aware that she was lucky to get to care for the woman who’d cared so much for her. She wouldn’t trade that.

But still, late at night while Grandma was sleeping, Ruthie had dreamed about what life would be like if she had… more. More family than just her grandmother. More people in her life. And though she’d longed for it, she couldn’t have imagined a more like this.

Everything here was brighter. Even when the Lisles and the Patricks were arguing about things, it never had the dark undertones that her cousins and aunts had brought with them.

Here, it was stories and teasing instead of spite and resentment. Here, it was love.

So this time, when Dallas dutifully informed her that she could be responsible for their divorce, she was maybe too weak to respond the way she had this whole long year of a month that wasn’t even over yet.

“And what if I don’t want to divorce you?” she asked.

She wasn’t prepared for the way he turned his whole body to look at her then. He leaned closer, though she could feel how careful he was not to touch her. Yet she could still feel the heat of him, like it was emanating off him. Like he was some kind of stovetop and there she was, desperate for the opportunity to burn her own hands.