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"No."

"I didn't ask anything."

"You were going to."

"I was gonna ask if you wanted breakfast."

"Liar."

I take a drink of coffee and look away first, as apparently I'm a coward now.

Clint's thumb taps once against his coffee mug.

"You okay?"

I look up. "Yeah, just thinking."

Thinking about yesterday, and how Briggs took me to the creek and told me he loved me. How I told him I wasn't going anywhere, and that kiss.

Clint’s expression shifts slightly, and whatever he sees on my face must be enough because he nods once and steps back.

"Breakfast in ten." He disappears into the hallway, leaving the door open behind him.

I sit there for another second with the coffee warming my palms, listening to the house move around me. The day feels normal… better than normal. Like everything that’s felt just out of reach, finally is within my grasp.

By the time I make it downstairs, Tripp is at the table eating directly out of a cereal box since apparently he was raised by animals. Clint is stocking Dr. Pepper and water in the fridge, and Briggs is nowhere in sight.

"Morning, Sunshine." Tripp smiles at me.

I eye the cereal box. "Are bowls illegal now?"

"I’m conserving bowls."

"That's not a thing." I shake my head at him.

Clint slides a plate toward me before I can keep arguing. Eggs, toast, and bacon. I sit down and immediately steal the orange juice from Tripp's side of the table.

After I finish eating, I end up in the chicken yard with a bucket of feed and a flock of tiny feathered dinosaurs following me like I'm their chosen leader.

"Don't look at me like that," I tell one hen. "You have food."

She blinks.

"Ungrateful."

A truck crunches over the driveway gravel, and I turn and watch it pull up and stop by the house. At first, I don't think anything of it. I just dump the last of the feed on the ground and wipe my hands on my jeans as a delivery guy climbs out with a medium brown box tucked under one arm.

"You Autumn?" he calls.

I lift a hand. "That's me."

He hands it over, the box is lighter than I expect.

"Have a good one," he says as he climbs back in the truck and drives away.

I turn the package over in my hands while I walk inside. No return address, just my name and the ranch address printed across the label. The tape along the top is slightly crooked, like whoever sealed it did it quickly.

Hopefully it’s one of the outfits I ordered, or the boots. Oh, please let it be the cowgirl boots.