I kissed her back. My hands found her waist, then her jaw, cradling her face the way you hold something you've been waiting for without knowing you were waiting. She tasted like sun and tea and the terrifying bravery of a woman choosing something she'd told herself she couldn't have.
I felt her lean into it for two seconds, three, four — felt the wall come down a single brick — and then felt the exact moment she rebuilt it.
She pulled back.
Not far. An inch. Her hand still on my neck, my hand still on her jaw. Our foreheads close enough that I could feel her breath.
I was completely, irreversibly fucked.
"Well," she said. Her voice was unsteady. Her fingers were trembling where they gripped the back of my neck. "That wasn't in the spreadsheet."
I smiled. "Your spreadsheet definitely needs work. Because that was some kind of amendment."
She laughed — short, surprised, almost against her will. Then she pressed her lips together like she was trying to take it back.
"Okay," I said. Just that.
She blinked. Whatever she'd expected me to say, that wasn't it. "Okay?"
"Okay."
She searched my face. Her eyes moved between mine — left, right, left — the way people do when they're looking for something specific and can't find it. I let her look. Kept my hands open at my sides. Kept my breathing even.
She nodded once. Stepped back. Brushed the grass from her jeans.
"We should head back." She said it again, like the first time hadn't stuck. "For real this time."
We rode down in silence. The easy kind. The sun dropped lower. The shadows stretched long across the trail. Callie rode ahead on the switchbacks, and I watched the line of her back and memorized the shape of a woman deciding whether to run or stay.
The ranch was golden when we came through the gate. Momma was on the porch with Maisie asleep in the rocking chair beside her, curled up with flour on her cheek and a cookie still clutched in one fist. Momma looked at us. Looked at me. Said nothing, which was how Louisa Blackwood communicated her most important observations.
Callie went straight to the porch. She crouched in front of the rocking chair and brushed the flour from Maisie's cheek with her thumb — gentle, automatic, the gesture of a woman who'd done this a thousand times. Maisie stirred. Mumbled something about frosting.
"Time to go, baby."
"Five more minutes."
"You're asleep. You don't get five more minutes when you're asleep."
"I'm not asleep. I'm resting my eyes." This from a child who hadn't opened them.
Callie looked at Momma. Momma pressed her lips together — the Louisa Blackwood version of barely contained laughter."She's been saying that since four o'clock. I think she picked it up from Owen."
Callie gathered Maisie up — the kid went boneless against her shoulder the way only sleeping children can, one arm dangling, the cookie finally surrendered to gravity. I watched Callie shift the weight, hitch Maisie higher on her hip with the practiced efficiency of a single mother who carried everything herself and made it look easy.
I walked them to the car. Callie buckled Maisie into the car seat one-handed while holding her upright with the other — a move that required the coordination of a surgeon and the patience of a saint. Maisie's head lolled. Her horse was already in the car seat, waiting. Of course it was. Callie would have put it there before they went inside. She thought of everything.
I closed the car door. Callie stood in front of me, keys in her hand, the last of the daylight catching her hair.
She looked at me. One second. Her lips parted like she was about to say something, and her hand came up — halfway to my face, the same trajectory as the hilltop — before she caught it and turned the motion into tucking hair behind her ear.
Then her chin lifted. The professional smile clicked into place like a light switching on. "Thank you for the ride," she said. "Louisa's sandwiches were exceptional."
"I'll tell her."
She opened her car door. Paused with one hand on the frame, keys dangling from the other, her weight shifted like she was caught between getting in and turning around. "Clay?"
"Yeah?"
