We drove to the ranch. He parked at the main house, and before I could ask questions, Louisa appeared on the porch like she'd been waiting — which, based on her outfit and the fact that she was holding two mugs of tea and a photo album, she absolutely had been.
"Ninety minutes," Clay said, kissing my temple. "Maybe an hour. Momma will keep you company."
"Clay —"
"Trust me."
He disappeared around the side of the barn before I could protest. Louisa handed me a mug, looped her arm through mine,and steered me inside with the quiet efficiency of a woman who had been briefed.
The Louisa Blackwood Experience, as I'd come to think of it, involved the photo album (baby Clay in a cowboy hat, which I was absolutely going to use as leverage later), strong opinions about pie crust, and an interrogation style so gentle you didn't realise you were being interrogated until you'd already told her your life story.
"He's different with you," she said at one point, pouring more tea. "Settled. Like something clicked into place."
I didn't know what to say to that. So I drank and looked at baby Clay in the cowboy hat and something pulled behind my eyes, and I blinked and looked away before she could see.
He came back grinning.
Two horses saddled and waiting. Mine — the bay mare I'd been riding for weeks, patient and sure-footed — and his, the grey.
"Up," he said.
"Up where?"
"Up." He swung into the saddle. "That's the direction."
"That's not an answer, Clay."
"It's a perfectly good answer. Come on."
We rode the back trail — the one that wound through the creek bottom and up through the cedars where the light filtered green and gold.
The clearing opened up and I stopped.
The tent. White canvas, glowing in the afternoon light, strung with fairy lights that caught the sun like tiny stars. Two Adirondack chairs side by side, facing the valley. A table — just a plank on sawhorses, but someone had covered it with a cloth and set out wildflowers in a mason jar and two tin cups and a bottle of wine. And the view — the whole valley spread below in golds and greens, the sky enormous above it.
"Clay." My voice cracked. "You did this?"
"Yesterday. And this morning."
"This is —" I shook my head. Blinked hard. "No one has ever —"
I couldn't finish. I dismounted and walked through the camp touching everything — the lights, the blankets, the wildflowers — the way you touch things to make sure they're real.
"Who helped you?" I asked, running my fingers along the fairy lights. "You didn't string all these yourself."
"Jack brought the tent up on the trailer yesterday. Maggie did the lights — she has strong opinions about fairy light spacing, apparently. Momma packed the blankets and the food. Even Liam drove out with the firewood, though he complained the entire time." He paused. "They wanted to. I didn't have to ask twice."
I stood very still.
Preston's family had tolerated me. I'd been a useful accessory — appropriate background, appropriate manners, appropriate silence at dinner parties. His mother had never once packed me a blanket.
"They did this," I said carefully, "because they care about you."
"They did this because they care aboutus." He said it simply. Like it was obvious. Like an entire family mobilizing to build a campsite for their brother's new girlfriend was just what people did.
I crossed the clearing and kissed him soft and slow and tasting of salt, and he held my face in both hands and kissed me back, and the valley stretched out below us and the afternoon sun turned everything to gold.
He cooked over the fire while the sun went down.
