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One knee on the worn concrete aisle where a hundred years of horses had passed.

Josie’s hand in his.

The horses breathing in the stalls.

I stopped before my boot crossed the threshold.

Boone said something. Too low for me to catch.

Josie made a broken, happy sound.

I backed away.

One step. Then another.

I pulled the door toward me—not closed, only enough to give them the aisle back. The hinges didn’t make a sound. Boone never turned. Josie never saw me.

I walked into the dark beside the barn.

For a second, I leaned against the outer wall and looked at the lights over the arena.

I’d expected excitement.

My brother was on one knee. Josie had her hand over her mouth. If anybody had told me six months ago that Big Boone Calloway would kneel in a horse barn at a ranch dance, I would’ve charged admission.

But excitement wasn’t what came.

Certainty did.

Quiet. Heavy. Simple.

Boone hadn’t waited for the right setting. He’d chosen the place where they’d begun. He hadn’t needed a crowd or a speech I could hear. He hadn’t needed to make the moment worthy of Josie.

He’d knelt because he was certain.

That was the worth.

I’d spent my whole life moving like everything was half a dance, keeping every door open, never standing still long enough for anybody to ask whether I meant to stay. I’d called it lightness. Freedom. Charm. Sometimes it had been kindness.

Sometimes it had been fear with dimples.

Priya had driven eleven hours because I’d put a drawing in her bag.

She’d walked into the Bluebird while I was cancelling the thing she’d built to save her name.

She’d come back.

I reached into my pocket and closed my hand around the tissue-wrapped chain.

Then I stopped waiting.

Priya was where I’d left her, except she’d acquired two cups of lemonade.

“Is Josie all right?”

“Yes.”

“Boone?”