I breathed out. Could it really be that easy? I waited for panic to set in at the thought of finally putting down roots. Instead of my chest seizing, a sense of peacefulness filled my heart.
"Okay," I said.
He smiled then. Not a big smile. The corner of his mouth did the thing it had been doing since the morning of the trailer gate. I’d come to recognize the small involuntary tell that meant something in him had loosened.
"I'll talk to Rory about it, but I want to move your stuff into my room. You don't have to live above the horses anymore. I don’t ever want to leave you in the middle of the night again. "
"I like living above the horses."
"Then I’ll sleep up here. Either way, you’re with me now, Bella Robbins. I love you.”
“I love you too.”
He kissed me then. Not one of the blistering kisses we’d shared the night before. This one was slow, tender, and grounding. I’d been around the world looking for someplace that felt like home and I’d finally found it.
The three of us headed to the Father’s Day Rodeo together. Dana didn’t make it.
The text came through just before the first junior event, breezy and apologetic and full of promises for another time. Rory read it once, handed the phone to Jace, and stood very still for a second. He didn’t tell her not to be disappointed. He didn’t try to fill the silence. He just put an arm around her shoulders and stayed there until she leaned into him.
Then she wiped under one eye, picked up her new camera, and went to work.
Later that night, after the rodeo ended, I called Edward from the porch. I told him the Mustang Mountain piece was done. What I had was what I had, and I wasn't going deeper. I told him I'd take the next assignment from my own base, on my own terms, or I'd take it from somebody else. He was quiet long enough that I thought he might be thinking about firing me. Then he told me to send him what I had and that we’d talk on Monday. That was Edward. He'd push until I didn't push back, and then he'd respect the line he hadn't been able to cross.
When I hung up, the evening light had gone soft around the barn. Across the field, Hades lifted his head then stepped back between the trees. The low murmur of Jace’s voice followed by Rory’s laugh came from inside the house.
I stood there for a minute with my phone in my hand and my camera sitting untouched on the table next to me.
For the first time in my life, I didn’t have to chase the story. I was already in it.
EPILOGUE
DALLAS
The heat came off the arena dirt in waves I could see but not escape.
By ten in the morning, my shirt was stuck to my back, the reins were slick in my hand, and the horses in the far pen had quit pretending they wanted to move. I’d been working the stock pens since six, sweat drying salt-white along my forearms.
Even the animals knew better than to waste energy in this heat.
I was running the chute checks for the team roping practice session including gear, latches, ground condition, and footing around the boxes, when I noticed the steer.
He was a brindle, one of six I'd helped load into the holding pen the day before. There hadn’t been anything unusual about him then. I'd watched all of them come off the trailer and he'd moved fine, a little ornery the way brindles sometimes are, but weight-bearing and even.
Now he was standing at the rear of the pen with his left front dropped just enough that it wasn't how he usually stood. He wasn't non-weight-bearing. He wasn't down. Anyone walking past and checking a clipboard wouldn't have stopped.
But I did.
I watched him for three full minutes, which felt longer than it was with the sun beating down on my shoulders. He shifted once and tried to follow the other steers toward the water trough. The hitch in his step was small but it was there. Something in the left knee or just below it. He made it to the water and stood still, which was the other tell. Healthy cattle don't stand that still in a pen with five others unless something hurts.
“Get Sadie Hollister on the phone,” I said.
One of the hands was sorting tack on the fence rail behind me. He was nineteen and efficient and hadn't been doing this long enough to argue with me yet, which I appreciated.
“Which one?”
“The vet.”
He pulled his phone out and I went into the pen slow, keeping my body low and loose, not making myself big. The brindle flicked an ear at me but didn't move off. That told me something too. An animal that's only a little bothered will still move away from a human walking toward it. An animal carrying real discomfort starts conserving.
