Page 121 of Wildflowers & Whiskey

Despite everything, I almost laugh. “Iris—.”

“I mean it.” She puts her hands on my shoulders. “You don’t have to try to fix it. You don’t have to make it ok. Just say what you need to say to both of them. Say your goodbyes. So you don’t leave this place with regrets.”

Too late, I think, but I don’t dare say it out loud to her.

“Fine,” I fold, and she pulls me into a tight squeeze before releasing me, turning me around and slapping my butt to move me forward.

I find Colt around the back of the barn where the lessons take place, gathering saddles, walking back and forth from the tack room with that focused quiet he gets when he's using work to keep his head down. He clocks me the second he comes back out. His shoulders tighten slightly before I even reach him. He folds his arms, leaning them on the top railing, eyes fixed on the dirt.

I come to stand next to him. The midday sky is clear, sun beaming down on us with a vengeance. From here, I can see the cattle moving around the far pastures, hear the horses within the barn softly neigh, and hear the distant rumble of trucks moving. Everything seems so normal, like it’s any other day out here, but I have to remind myself it isn’t.

“I’m leaving today,” I say softly. “Just wanted to say bye.”

Nothing.

“I know I am the last person you want to speak to right now.” I keep my voice as gentle as I can, shoving down the overwhelming emotions I am currently feeling. “And I'm not asking you to say anything back. I just couldn't leave without—”

“What do you want, Maeve?”

Flat. Quiet. The voice of someone who has already been through enough and doesn't have anything left for another round.

“I just want to say I'm sorry,” I say. “For everything. I never wanted any of this to hurt you.”

“But it did.”

The silence that settles between us is thick and uncomfortable and entirely deserved. I look at the side of his face. At the hurt sitting in the set of his jaw, the tension around his eyes. Hurt I put there, and I try to find the words to reach him.

“He loves you, Colt,” I say eventually. “He's been protecting you your whole life,” I say quietly. “In ways you probably still don't fully—.”

“Did you know?”

I stop.

“Did you know I wasn’t his?”

The question comes out with such heavy weight on it that I know I have to tread really carefully here. Just tell the truth; that's all I need to do.

“I—I worked it out,” my thumb now circling my wrist. “I confronted Wade about it, and he confirmed it.”

“You knew.” He turns to look at me for the first time. His eyes are dark and completely still in a way that is worse than anger. “You knew, and you didn't tell me.”

“It wasn't my story to tell—”

“You knew.” He says it again, quieter this time, like he's still making it real for himself. “You knew something that fundamental about my life and you just, what? Decided that was fine? Decided I didn't deserve to know?”

“Colt, I—.”

He cuts me off. “Go.” His voice is angry, not in the raised kind of way. Just one that says “I am absolutely done with you.” Someone who has hit their limit. “Just go, Maeve. Go back to London and leave us alone.”

I stand there for a second, my heart breaking into pieces. I deserve this. Deserve his coldness. I’m the one in the wrong. But as I turn to walk back toward the house, my eyes fill and spill over.

I find the porch swing by instinct more than decision, dropping onto it and pressing my hand against my mouth in attempts to muffle my sobs. I will not fall apart loudly, not when the ranch is peaceful and quiet. I grip the end of the chair, digging my fingers into the wood as tight as I can. Angry at myself for ruining something good here. For losing everything that could have been.

I am going to miss it. Miss this chair in the morning. Miss getting up early and completing a hard day's work. Miss all the banter with the ranch hands. Miss my new friends. Miss the town. Miss Colt. Miss Wade. Everything.

I think about the work I've done here. The hours spent pulling the riding school together—the procurement strategy, the budget restructuring, the local supplier contacts I spent weeks building from nothing. The moment Wade looked at it and said this is good in the way that said he actually meant it.

I was good at it. I am good at it, better than I've let myself believe for a long time. Better than the mind-numbing London jobs ever asked me to be, with their mundane little routines and their ceiling of modest expectations. Somewhere in the years of making myself useful without making myself visible, I forgot that I am genuinely capable of building something. Not just maintaining what already exists. Actually building. And here, I built something real.