Page 73 of Forbidden Rancher's Return
"I hate you."
"No you don't."
"No," I agree. "I don't."
He reaches into his jacket pocket again.
Something small. Something that catches the last of the light.
My breath stops.
It's a ring.
Simple. A thin gold band with a single dark stone. Deep green, like the ridge in summer. Not flashy. Not loud. The kind of thing chosen by a man who has been paying attention for a very long time.
Rowan holds it between his fingers.
He doesn't kneel. That's not who he is. He stands in front of me at the oak tree where he carved our initials at sixteen and looks at me with those eyes and says what he means the way he always has.
"I left because I was told to," he says. "I stayed away because I thought it was the right thing. I came back because I couldn't stay gone." A pause. "But I'm asking you now. Not the ranch, not the ridge, you."
His hand opens.
The ring sits in his palm. "Stay with me. Let me stay with you. Let me fix the water heater and stack the firewood and be here every morning when the list starts. Let this be the thing we build next."
The mountain holds its breath.
I look at the ring. At his hand. At the face of the man who carved my initial into a living tree at sixteen and meant it and has been meaning it every day since.
"You're impossible," I say.
"Yes."
"You're stubborn and you waited too long and you subscribed to Patty Kincaid's newsletter."
"I did not subscribe."
"Rowan."
"Yes."
I close his fingers around the ring. Then I open them again and take it from his palm and slide it onto my own finger.
It fits.
Of course it fits.
He looks at my hand. Relief and joy move through his face. And the undoing of a man who has been held together by discipline for so long that being allowed to let go takes a moment to register.
I step into him.
His arms come around me. Immediate, the hold of a man who has decided he is never doing this from a distance again.
"Yes," I say onto his shoulder. "Obviously yes. It was always going to be yes."
He exhales. Long and slow. Like he's been holding that breath since he walked back into my barn.
His mouth presses to my hair. My temple. The corner of my jaw.
