My chest cracked open.
"Would you like me to be your daddy?"
Her chin trembled. Her eyes filled — fast, spilling before she could blink — and she nodded. Hard. The kind of nod that shakes your whole body when you're six years old and the thing you've been wanting is suddenly right in front of you and you're terrified it might not be real.
"You're the best daddy I ever had," she whispered. Her voice was thick and small, and it wrecked me. "I want you to be my daddy, Clay. I want it so bad."
I pulled her into me. Held her tight. Her arms wrapped around my neck and her face pressed into my shoulder. I could feel her tears soaking through my shirt and my own eyes were burning and my throat was so tight I could barely speak.
"You and your mommy," I said into her hair. My voice broke, and I let it. Let her know how much this meant to me. "You're my best girls. Both of you. And being your daddy would make me the happiest man on earth."
She held on. I held on. Starlight stood beside us, patient and quiet, and the barn was warm and the afternoon light came through the slats, and I held my daughter for the first time, knowing she was mine.
She pulled back. Wiped her face with both hands. Sniffed once. Squared her shoulders. And just like that — the Maisie switch, grief to business in three seconds flat — her eyes went bright and focused.
"Okay, Daddy," she said. Testing it. Tasting it. The word lit up her whole face. "I'll help you propose to Mommy. I'll make a sign."
"What kind of sign?"
"A sign that says,Marry us. Because I want her to know I'm asking too. I want to be part of it. I want to be a Blackwood."
My throat closed. I pulled her tighter.
"You already are, baby."
The morning of the proposal,Callie didn't know a thing.
She came out of the bedroom with her textbooks stacked against her hip and her hair pulled back and her jaw set in that way I'd fallen in love with — the way that saidI have somewhere to be and something to prove and God help anyone who gets in my way.Second semester of law school. Part-time program, commuting twice a week, studying at the kitchen table after Maisie's bedtime while I quizzed her on case law and got half of it deliberately wrong to make her laugh.
She was thriving. Bev and Theo ran the Copper Creek office like a machine when Callie was in class. Savannah called her their secret weapon in training. Every time she came home with a grade or a professor's comment or a case study she'd nailed, her eyes did the thing — the bright, fierce, disbelieving thing, like she still couldn't quite accept that this life was hers. Like she was still waiting for someone to tell her she wasn't allowed.
Nobody was going to tell her that. Not while I was breathing.
"I'm picking Maisie up from school," I said. Casual. Coffee mug in hand. "Bringing her to the ranch for riding."
"Okay." She kissed me. Quick, distracted, already halfway to the door. Then she stopped. Came back. Kissed me again — slower this time, her hand on my jaw, her thumb brushing mycheekbone. She pulled back and looked at me, and her eyes softened.
"What?" I said.
"Nothing. You just look really good this morning."
"I look good every morning."
"And so humble." She grabbed her keys. "Tell Maisie I love her. I'll be home by six."
I watched her walk to her car with her textbooks and her coffee and her spine straight, and I thought:She got the dream back. Not because of me. I just held the door open. She walked through it on her own.
I picked Maisie up from school at three fifteen. She was standing at the gate with her backpack and her pink cowboy boots — the third pair, she kept outgrowing them — and the look on her face when she saw my truck was the look of a woman about to execute a plan she'd been refining for weeks.
She climbed in. Buckled herself. Turned to me.
"Did you get the ring?" Whispering. Even though no one could hear.
"Got it."
"Is the spot ready?"
"Ready."
