Taking stock.
I slide one mug across the island toward her and she takes it without a word, wrapping both hands around it the way she does when she needs something to hold onto. We stand there on opposite sides of the island in the quiet of the house with everything that happened tonight still sitting between us.
"She's out," Riley says.
"Good," I answer.
Silence settles again, not uncomfortable, just full, the kind that happens when two people have run out of practical things to say. Neither one of us have decided what to do about everything underneath.
I look at her across the island, this woman who drove back into my life carrying a secret and a daughter and enough composure to make a lesser man feel inadequate. I feel the thing I've been holding at arm's length since the moment she pulled up to the ranch with Hadley and turned my entire understanding of my own life inside out.
I'm done holding it at arm's length.
"I need to say something," I tell her. My voice comes out steadier than I expect it to, quieter, like the words have been waiting long enough.
She looks up from the glass. Waits.
"I'm not doing this halfway," I say. "I know that's not what we agreed to and I know it's not what you planned for. I'm not asking you to meet me somewhere you're not ready to be." I pause, making sure she's hearing me and not just the words. "But I need you to know where I'm standing so you're not guessing at it anymore."
Something shifts in her expression, careful and open at the same time.
"I'm in this, Riley, all of it, you and Hadley and whatever comes next, and I have been for longer than I've let myself admit out loud until right now."
The kitchen is very quiet after that.
She doesn't look away.
She sets the glass down slowly, the soft click of it against the island the only sound in the room. I watch her work through whatever she's working through, not pushing into it, not filling the silence with anything that would make it easier on either of us. This moment doesn't need easier, it needs real.
"I know," she says finally.
Two words that land with the weight of everything she hasn't said yet.
"I've known for a while," she continues, her voice quieter now, stripped of the careful control she usually keeps between herself and anything that could matter too much.
"That's the part that scared me. Not you specifically, not the rodeo or the danger or any of the practical reasons I kept lining up. Just the knowing. The way it felt inevitable even when I was working the hardest to make sure it wasn't."
I come around the island slowly, not rushing it, giving her every opportunity to step back if that's what she needs, but she doesn'tmove, she just watches me close the distance with those steady eyes that have been taking me apart piece by piece since the moment she came back.
I stop close enough that I can see the exact moment her breath changes.
"I'm not asking you to have it all figured out," I tell her, low and even. "I'm not asking you to trust me with everything all at once. I'm not asking you to stop being careful or to pretend the last five years didn't happen the way they did."
"Then what are you asking?" she says, and her voice is barely above a whisper now, not from uncertainty but from the kind of honesty that doesn't need volume behind it.
"Just this," I answer, and I reach up and tuck a strand of hair back from her face, slow and deliberate. My hand settling against her jaw the way it's been wanting to all night. "Just right here, just us, just whatever this actually is without either one of us running from it."
She exhales, something releasing in her that she's been holding for a long time.
Her hand comes up and covers mine where it rests against her face, not pulling it away, just holding it there. The warmth of that small intentional gesture does something to me that no words have managed to do yet.
It feels like an answer.
It feels like the only one that matters.
She kisses me first.
Not tentative, not testing, but certain in the way Riley does everything once she's made up her mind. Her hand sliding from mine to my jaw, and the contact hits like something that has been building pressure for weeks finally finding the release it was always moving toward.
