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“I was just so angry back then. At myself, at the choices I was making . . .” I keep my gaze steady ahead, not sure what I’m trying to say. “I never really appreciated how you kept coming around. Never said thank you.”

“You been beating yourself up over that?”

“A little more the past few months than before,” I say.

“What changed?”

I shrug. “I got everything I ever wanted.”

He laughs softly. “And?”

“Still felt empty.”

He nods, pulling the reins slightly to his left to change direction.

“Not many men have accomplished what you did out there,” he says. “It’s quite a feat.”

I sit with that. He says it like I should be proud. I think my anger and shame have kept me from being proud of anything I’ve done. “I’m not proud of how I’ve acted,” I say. “I made a lot of bad choices for a lot of years. You could’ve washed your hands of me a long time ago.”

“Not my style,” he says. “You might find it hard to believe, but a long time ago I made some pretty stupid choices too.”

I stay quiet, hoping his tactic works both ways.

“Almost lost Mindy,” he says, and it takes me a second to remember that to me, she’s “Melinda.” But to Briggs? She’s always been “Mindy.” “I had all this—” he waves his hand at the space around us “— waiting here for me, but I swore I didn’t want it. All I wanted to do was ride.”

“Ride?” I glance at him. “Like, the rodeo?”

He doesn’t look at me, just nods.

“I didn’t know you⁠—”

“Oh, I wasn’t any good at it,” he says, chuckling at himself. “But I got it in my stubborn head that’s what I was supposed to do. Mindy didn’t want me to, but I was convinced I needed to at least try. Told myself this town was too small, and I needed to get out. So, I left.”

“You left?” I say it with the surprise I feel. In my mind, Copper Ridge is synonymous with Briggs Holbrook.

“Yep,” he says.

“What happened?”

He takes a breath. “Well, let’s just say that you and I have more in common than you think.”

I take a moment to try and process that. I know what I’ve done, where, and who with. I can’t imagine someone like Briggs even sniffing half of the trouble I’d found myself in.

“What made you come back?”

He pulls Honey to a stop and steers her around so we’re facing each other. He holds the reins but leans over, forearm on his thigh.

“Mindy.”

I smile and nod. “She’s special.”

He lifts his chin. “You don’t know the half of it.”

No, but I have a clue. Raising eight kids—nine if you count me, ten if you count Briggs—is nothing short of miraculous.

“She tracked me down and found me drunk in a bar one night,” he says. “She’d been at the rodeo and she saw me fall on my face. Took one look at me and said—” he points a finger in the air— “‘Briggs Holbrook, you’re a terrible bull rider. You either come home to Silverwood and marry me, or you’re never gonna see me again.’”

I laugh out loud. “I can see it,” I say. “Plain as day.”