Page 88 of Unforgettable
“I want you to have it,” she said.
Blythe blinked, clearly surprised.
“Oh no, I couldn’t—”
“I want you to,” Randi said gently, a softness in her voice that hadn’t been there before. “For welcoming me here. For… everything.”
Blythe looked at her for a long moment, seeing far more than the gesture itself.
Then she accepted it.
Carefully.
With meaning.
“It will stay here on the ranch,” she said quietly. “Where it belongs.”
As the light began to fade across the pasture, the women walked arm-in-arm back to the house. The horses moved in quiet harmony beyond them, their presence no longer something distant or untouchable.
And for the first time in a long while, Randi felt like she might be, too.
CHAPTER 20
They entered the house together just as the last light of day began to soften across the land.
Blythe carried the canvas carefully, as if it were something far more delicate than stretched linen and paint. Randi followed beside her, a quiet anticipation settling in her chest, unsure how the others would receive what she had seen… what she had tried to capture.
The door opened into warmth—voices, movement, the familiar rhythm of the Clay household returning after a long day’s work. Brett was the first to notice them, his conversation cutting off mid-sentence as his gaze landed on the canvas.
“Well now,” he said, straightening slightly. “What’ve you got there?”
Branson turned next, slower, more deliberate, his attention sharpening as Blythe angled the painting toward them. Braden remained seated at the table, but his eyes lifted, steady and observant, missing nothing.
Blythe didn’t speak at first. She simply turned the canvas outward.
The room quieted.
It wasn’t the same wildness Randi had painted before. This was something else.
The pasture stretched open beneath a wide Montana sky, the light caught in that fleeting moment between afternoon and dusk. Sorrels, bays, and painted mustangs moved across the meadow in a quiet rhythm, their manes lifted gently by the breeze. They were no longer untamed in the way she had first seen them, but they were neither diminished. There was strength in their stillness, agrace shaped by understanding, not control.
They belonged.
And the land held them.
For a moment, no one spoke.
Then—
“That’s…” Brett let out a low breath. “That’s something.”
Branson stepped closer, studying it with a quiet intensity. “You got it right,” he said simply. “The way they move when they’re settled. Not fighting. Not running. Just… being.”
Braden rose slowly from his chair and approached, his gaze moving over the canvas with careful attention. When he finally looked at Randi, there was something deeper there—recognition.
“You see more than what is in front of you,” he said.
The words settled into her, steady and certain.
