I nod. “Henry’s good at that.”
“Maggie says Dad actually smiled last week,” Gabriel says. “She’s considering having it framed.”
All three of us grin. We ride in silence for a stretch. Hoofbeats and birdsong and saddle leather.
“Beckett’s got nothing on Voss yet,” Daniel says. “Vance isn’t talking.”
The name hangs in the air. Alexander Voss. A man none of us have met, whose shadow stretches over everything we’re building.
Gabriel shifts in the saddle. “Like Maggie always says, one storm at a time.”
“She's not wrong,” I reply. “Vance is in custody, the evidence is filed, and the ranch is standing. We’ll deal with the rest when it comes.”
Daniel nods.
“Your wife built a spreadsheet that predicts my calving dates,” he says after a minute.
“She built mine first.”
“It’s accurate.”
I smile. “I know.”
Gabriel grunts. “She color-coded the cattle rotation. Showed it to me yesterday. It’s terrifying and beautiful. Even Delaney was jealous.”
“She’s my force of nature.”
“Disgusting,” Gabriel says without heat.
“Deeply,” Daniel agrees.
The teasing dies back as we turn at the north boundary marker and the ranch spreads below us. I take in the house, the barns, the pastures, the porch where I proposed with a wire ring and my woman said yes.
Gabriel rides slightly ahead, not pulling away, just his natural position. The man who stands a half-step outside the circle because he positioned himself there so long ago that he’s forgotten it’s a choice.
I watch my youngest brother. The set of his shoulders, those mismatched eyes—Mom’s green in one, Sutton blue in the other. Our mother’s legacy written across his face every day, and it cost him in ways none of us have been able to fix.
He didn’t serve. Daniel was a decorated Army Ranger, and he still carries the discipline in his bones. I had the steady hands and quiet focus necessary for ordnance. Gabriel grew up in a house that was too quiet, a space where a mother should have been and a father who didn't know how to talk about why. Thank God for Maggie, who’s the closest thing to a mother he has.
My youngest brother is twenty-nine. He’s the bravest person I know, and he has no idea.
“Gabe.”
He glances back and tips his hat up. He looks like a man who’s bracing for a question or a concern.
“Good ride.”
That’s all I say. It’s not a fix or a speech. I can’t absorb the weight of whatever he’s carrying. I can’t hand him what Jenna handed me because that’s not mine to give. Someone else will. Someone is going to walk into this man’s life and rearrange his heart. But now that I have Jenna, I know what he's missing—and that’s a hard thing to carry for a brother.
His expression shifts, the guardedness easing into something that isn’t quite peace. But it’s a start.
“Yeah.” He turns back to the trail. “Good ride.”
The ranch comes into view around the last bend.
Jenna is on the porch, sitting in the wooden rocker with a mug in her hands and the laptop closed beside her. Pixel is nestled in her lap. Her hair is loose, and she’s looking out at the land as if she’s memorizing it.
I pull Scout to a stop and take it in. My whole world in one frame. The ranch behind her, the pastures rolling out. My wife, with coffee and a cat and a smile that starts when she sees me. Not the careful one, calibrated to take up as little space as possible. This smile doesn't calculate. It breaks across her face like she means it.
