Page 74 of Branded

He takes the news without looking at me.

That matters more than anything he said. If he looked at me now, half the room would call his confession a romantic sacrifice I owe him for. Instead he asks his controller whether the care reserve cleared and tells Nora she keeps movement authority until the count is done.

I take the sealed ring sleeve out of my case. I brought it from the apartment safe this morning. Counsel records the end of the cover. Nora witnesses the seal.

Garrett doesn’t touch the ring while I sign it back to the estate.

I sign nothing else.

The apartment is still mine when I get there. My card opens the door. My wedge braces it. No McCall truck idles at the curb. I shower the remote-pen dirt out of my hair and eat half a sandwich over the counter and lie down for fifty-three minutes with both phones beside me and don’t sleep at all.

I keep seeing him on the auction block. I keep seeing the bar coming around at his head.

At 7:12, my personal phone buzzes.

I’ll be on the north porch until eight. No staff. No work. Come only if you want the question. If you don’t, every term stays in force, and I’ll wait until you pick another time. Or forever. Either way.

No route request. His security doesn’t call when I pull out of the lot.

I drive to Barbed Crown because I decide to.

The north porch faces away from the barn and the road. Evening comes down over thornscrub and dry grass and a fence line that disappears into the brush. Garrett waits in a straight-backed chair with his boots planted and his arm supported. A sealed ring sleeve sits on the little table beside him.

He stays in the chair until I reach the top step. “You came.”

“At considerable fuel expense.”

“I can reimburse mileage.”

“That would be an unwise way to start a personal conversation.”

His mouth moves once. “Noted.”

There’s no speech about destiny. He hands me one page with his signature and counsel’s receipt stamp. It says he will never track, copy, access, hold, direct, or request my professional work without my specific permission, which I can take back. It says marriage, housing, family, and ranch ownership would give him no access to my work by implication.

“This doesn’t replace the breach agreement,” he says. “It doesn’t reduce what I owe you. It’s a promise about every day after.”

“And if I say no?”

“You drive home. I don’t follow. Everything you have stays exactly where it is.”

“What happens to Barbed Crown?”

“The interim authority runs. The controls stay outside the family vote. I might lose the succession.” He looks at the fence line, then back at me. “I’ll fight for this ranch without using you as proof I deserve it.”

He tells me the ring in the sleeve still belongs to Calvin’s estate, and he won’t hand me property he can’t legally give. If I want it, counsel clears the title first. If I want a different one, I pick it. If I want no ring, the question is the same.

Then he says it.

“Marry me, Tessa. Not for the ranch. Not for the audit. Not because I kept you safe, or because I didn’t. Marry me when you’re ready, because I want a life built around the choices we both have the right to make.”

He’s made waiting practical. That’s the most persuasive thing he could possibly have done.

I set the page down on the table carefully.

“You told me to keep it as long as I wanted,” I say.

He goes still.