Down the hall, Maisie breathed. Steady. Slow. The kid who corrected my Wilbur voice and told Oliver that gluing Sophie's hair was "premedicated." The kid who climbed into my lap at the Silver Spur and fell asleep against my chest like I was built for it.
Four crescent marks in Callie's palm. She'd done that to herself to stay in the chair. And she'd stood up afterward, thrown the roses in the bin, and called her lawyer.
This woman.
I held her tighter and thought:I have been the easy Blackwood my whole life. The one who charmed his waythrough everything because the world was good to me, and I never had to dig.
Not anymore. This wasn't eight seconds on a bull with a buzzer and a score and a crowd. This lasted months and happened in silence, and the only people scoring it were a child who didn't understand and a woman who'd already survived one man who failed her.
I pressed my lips to Callie's hair. Breathed her in.
I wasn't going to fail her.
Dawn. I slid out of bed without waking Callie. Made her tea, made my coffee, and stood on the porch while the sun came up over Copper Creek with my phone to my ear.
Weston picked up on the second ring. "Sav told me." No preamble. No six a.m. complaints. "How's Callie?"
"Holding it together."
"And you?"
I looked at my hands on the porch rail. Steady now. They hadn't been steady last night. "I want to drive to Dallas and take him apart."
"I know you do."
"I'm not going to."
"I know that too." A pause. "Listen to me. This is going to get worse before it gets better. You know that, right?"
"Yeah."
"And you're going to want to punch him. You can't."
"Yeah."
"Good. Let Sav fight the legal war. You fight the other one."
"What other one?"
"The one where you love that woman and her kid so hard that there's no room for Preston Ashford in their world. That's the war you win."
Through the screen door, I heard Callie's alarm go off. A shuffle. The tap running.
"I'm not going anywhere, Weston."
"I know. That's why you'll win."
I hung up. Drank my coffee. Watched the sun finish rising.
Inside, the kettle clicked on out of habit before she saw the mug I'd already poured. A pause. Then her voice, soft, through the screen door:
"Clay?"
"Out here."
She appeared in the doorway. My shirt. Bare legs. Hair everywhere. She looked at the tea on the counter, then at me on the porch, then at the tea again.
"You made tea," she said.
