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He inhaled then rushed. “I realized I didn’t need revenge. I needed my family.”
Emotion tightened my chest, and I traced my fingers over his face. His brow and his cheeks and his lips.
Overwhelmed.
Overcome.
Complete.
A riot of knocking suddenly echoed from downstairs. Dakota’s voice carried on the air. “Hello, we’re here.”
“Upstairs,” Caleb shouted back. He pushed to standing, though he didn’t move from my side.
A thunder of footsteps clattered on the wood, banging up the stairs and down the hall until Evelyn was standing in the doorway.
All messy brown hair and wide brown eyes and adorable dimpled chin.
Wearing shorts and a pink tee and her bedazzled boots.
The beat of my heart and the story of my soul.
She raced in, and she threw her arms around my waist and buried her face in my stomach. “It’s my very favorite day in the whole world because you got home, and I love you to the moon and all the way back again.”
I smoothed my hand down the back of her head, and I turned my gaze up to the man who was staring down at us.
Yeah, it was my very favorite day, too. Every single one I got to spend with them.
FIFTY-ONE
CALEB
The next morning, I stepped out the front door with Evelyn’s hand in mine. The sun was a white orb where it blazed in the endless blue of the Colorado sky, and the child trotted along at my side as we headed down the path in the direction of the barn.
Paisley was resting.
Recuperating.
And I wasn’t sure I’d ever been so grateful for anything in my life.
That and the little girl who kept beaming up at me as she skipped along, radiating excitement.
But it was the scars beneath that had me clinging tightly to her as I led her down the path. What had everything locked tight as I thought of what I would say to her.
I hadn’t gotten the chance to talk to her much during the time Paisley had been in the hospital. Our hopes and worries wrapped up in her care.
But now—now I prayed it was a time to move on.
That it was a time for peace.
A time for healing.
“I think it’s really good that you want to go to the barn with me to see Mazzy. She’s going to be so excited to see me because I haven’t seen her in so many days, and she definitely missed me a whole lot, as much as I missed her, because I love her so much and she loves me right back.” The ramble of words fell from her as she kept grinning up at me.
Each glance tightened my chest in a way that I’d once been terrified to contemplate.
“I know she is definitely going to be excited to see you.”
We rounded through the double doors that stood open. Mert gave me a nod as we passed. There was a reticence to the vibe of the crew. No doubt, what had happened here had affected them. Left them unsettled and questioning everything since they’d considered Nate one of their own.
No one had guessed or known.
A man named Cowan who had changed his name when he’d last been released from the correctional facility where he’d been kept in the psychiatric ward. When he’d found where we were living, he’d learned everything he could about ranching, a fraud who’d pretended to be someone he was not.
A chameleon who’d slipped in unnoticed.
It still made me sick, but I’d also come to understand I couldn’t continue to live in the past.
In the mistakes.
In the fears and regrets and shame.
Mazzy whinnied when we came near, and Evelyn let go of my hand, bouncing on her boots and clapping her hands as she squealed, “See! I told you she missed me. Do you hear her telling me how happy she is to see me?”
She raced for the stall gate, hiking up on her toes, singing, “I love you, too, Mazzy! I came back, and now I’m home, and I get to stay with you forever!”
Forever.
It sounded about right.
I held her back so I could unlatch the gate, and I stepped inside, running my hand up the horse’s neck, somehow knowing she would never hurt Evelyn.
That she and I were now kindred spirits.
A team that got lucky enough to be a part of Evelyn’s life.
Evelyn came forward, using the skills Paisley had taught her, still cautious as she approached. Mazzy pressed her muzzle into Evelyn’s face.
Giggling, Evelyn threw her arms around the horse’s neck. “You are the best horse in the whole world.”
I leaned back against the stall and just watched her for a bit, as she took the brush out of her small tack box and began to brush Mazzy, her sweet voice filling the air as she rambled to her horse, telling her about how much fun she had with her cousins and Kayden while she’d been at her long sleepover.
