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I’m not crying, you’re crying. (Okay, I’m crying)

Luke:

I love you, darlin’

With my heart beating wildly, I decide to take a gamble. There’s some risk involved, and if it doesn’t go the way I’m hoping, I’ll have to do some repair work with Scout, but I'm willing to take the chance.

I’m putting all my eggs in the love basket and hoping they won’t fall out.

CHAPTER 34

Luke

I need to do something to distract myself so I don’t spend every waking minute wondering when Callie will have more to say about my text. I don’t regret making those videos, but what if they’re not enough?

It’s pointless to worry about it when there’s more than a day’s worth of work to do at the ranch, and I only have a few hours before it’s time to pick up Scout from school.

Ryan and I tie our horses to a post and look after the new calf, who is gaining weight nicely and looks like she has good bones. Her mother is one of my best milking cows, so chances are good I’ll get another solid worker from her lineage.

And for once, we find no broken fences, no leaking pipes, no unexpected sick cattle or other problems. “Been a long time since things looked this good out here,” I tell Ryan. “You’re good at what you do.”

“Learned from the best,” he says, untying his horse and swinging a leg over the saddle. I start to do the same, but he stops me. “You should head back. I have this, the grazing. Easy.”

I check the time, and I still have a half hour before I need to make the mad dash to school pickup. “I’m good. Want to ride the perimeter once more?”

He points me in the opposite direction as I mount my horse. “Nah. Go. Surprise your kid or whatever. Really.”

Shrugging, I do as he’s suggesting, not really sure if Scout will think it’s a welcome surprise. Lately, he gives a dramatic groan every time I come to pick him up, acting like I’m the second best option to seeing Callie.

“Again?” he says from the top of the play structure when he sees me round the bend and walk up to the schoolhouse door.

“I know, pal. I know.”

But he barely waits for me to finish talking before darting away, probably whooshing down the slide. I think I hear him shout, “He’s here!” but I don’t pay much attention other than knowing I should apologize to the teachers for coming early and disrupting their afternoon program. Parents do it all the time, but I don’t. Scout loves it here so much that I’d never try to get him to leave early, and I don’t plan on it today either.

I punch in the code to the door and walk through the schoolhouse to the balcony that overlooks the play yard, expecting to see Scout in his usual place in the sandbox with an assortment of trucks. I half expect to see Lola there with him pouring “river” water down a sand hill.

I’m not expecting to see Callie in a white summer dress.

My heart lurches into my throat. I think it actually stops beating for a moment while I stand paralyzed, assimilating information. She’s here. Maybe she came for Scout. Maybe for me. I don’t care about the reason—I’m just so damn glad to see her face that my skin ripples with awareness.

Everyone looks up at me expectantly. They don’t seem surprised to find me there. They’ve…been waiting for me?

Feeling unsteady on my legs, I walk down the wooden steps to the yard. I’m unable to take my eyes off Callie, almost out of fear she’ll vanish if I do. But she stays rooted to her spot near the play structure, where I now notice a garland of hanging flowers, strung on a piece of twine. No doubt a project with the kids.

And I see Scout standing proudly next to Callie, holding a pillow.

But it’s not Scout and Lola who are headlining this preschool wedding ceremony. Apparently, it’s me.

All the kids are in on it, and so are the teachers, who have had them paint a banner that hangs from the play structure. In big block letters, “Luke + Callie = Love” is painted in hot-pink paint. A rainbow of kids’ handprints frames the words, and I feel a knee-jerk urge to take a photo of the banner to prove our relationship to someone who needs to see it.

Maybe I need to prove it to myself.

I wasn’t sure when she’d see the videos I arranged to post on the Loveland website and social media accounts, thanks to Dylan, but I figured I’d hear from her. Nothing. Two days of radio silence, which is unlike a woman who talks from dawn to dusk.

But I’ll take this response over any verbal confirmation that she liked what I had to say in those video clips.

Cyndi points her phone at a speaker, and a song starts playing. It takes me a second to recognize the opening bars, but when Taylor Swift’s Paper Rings comes on, I dismiss any remaining questions about why I’m here.