Page 13 of Coming for Her Brother’s Best Friend (Coming For Christmas #4)
HAYES
By early April, the snow on Iron Spur Ranch had started to slide off the barns and melt from the pastures, revealing patches of brown grass underneath.
Winter was loosening its grip, and every time I walked the ridge trail with Sidney at my side, I felt steadier than I ever had.
Like I’d finally found ground that wouldn’t cave under me.
I’d finished my contract in Alaska last month, exactly like I told her I would, and I’d come back here instead of chasing the next job. Stetson had deployed again, but he checked in occasionally and hadn’t made a fuss. That counted as progress.
The first week back, I kept expecting to wake up feeling that undertow I’d lived with for years—the one that said move or you’ll drown.
It didn’t come. I still ran at dawn, still slept light, still clocked exits by habit, but the restlessness had moved on.
Maybe it was the work, the honest kind that ends with tired muscles and clean lines.
Maybe it was the way the Kincaid kitchen could go from quiet to loud in the time it took Slade to find a second mug.
Maybe it was the woman who drifted in with frost on her hair and leaned on the counter while she researched the perfect song for a bride and groom to use for their first dance.
Maybe it was all of it.
Sidney had thrown herself into Bluebird Events with the same fire she’d used to turn a snowed-in wedding into magic.
Word of mouth spread fast, and she was booking events over a year out.
The first event she did after Christmas was a Valentine’s vow renewal for a couple in their seventies who’d raised three kids and built a furniture business together and wanted candlelight without the drama.
I drove to Whitefish in a half-blizzard for extra tapers when a shipping delay threatened to make the night feel dark, and when the wife cried at the first soft notes of the quartet—because it turned out the husband had kept their original sheet music in a box in the garage for fifty years—I stood in the back with my arms crossed and pretended I had a piece of grit in my eye.
Usually, I spent half my days hauling tables or stringing lights for her, the other half getting my boots dirty helping Slade with the ranch.
I’d never imagined myself living this kind of rhythm, but then again, I’d never imagined I’d get a second chance with the one person I’d tried hardest to stay away from.
I called Mama Mae every Sunday. She always answered on the second ring, like she knew it would be me and wanted to make me think she hadn’t been waiting by the phone.
She asked about the mountain, and the weather, and the way the lodge’s cinnamon rolls stacked dough like a miracle.
She asked about “that girl with the fire.” I told her the truth: that Sidney was like a stove you warm your hands at and a fuse you respect.
Mama Mae hummed like she approved and then told me to send pictures of my face so she could make sure I was sleeping and eating like a person and not a coyote.
Tonight was one of those nights that my muscles ached after a full day of honest work.
I sat on the front porch of the big house and sipped on a cup of coffee while I watched the sun dip behind the mountain.
Sidney was inside, probably arguing with her tablet over color palettes.
Then the front door creaked open, and there she was, her hair loose from the braid she’d worn all day, her curves wrapped in one of my old flannels she’d claimed without asking.
“Are you hiding out here, Ranger?” she teased, dropping down into my lap.
“Not hiding.” I slid an arm around her and tugged her closer. “Just taking inventory.”
She tilted her head, her green eyes catching the last of the light. “Of what?”
“Of how the hell I got this lucky.”
Her smile was soft, but it hit me hard. “It took you long enough. Are you happy?”
“Yeah,” I said. “More than I knew how to be.”
She didn’t answer. She just slid her hand into mine and squeezed once, a small punctuation at the end of a sentence we’d been writing since Christmas Eve.
We went walking after that, the two of us on the ridge path, the night smelling like damp earth and pine, frogs starting up down by the creek like somebody had flipped a switch.
The stars came out. The porch light behind us threw one soft circle onto the yard and made the rest of the dark look honest instead of empty.
I used to think a life was something you went out and fought into existence like it owed you.
Turns out, sometimes it’s something you build when you stop running long enough to pick up a hammer.
Sometimes it’s a ranch that doesn’t belong to you but lets you belong, anyway.
Sometimes it’s a company with a name that makes sense when a woman like Sidney says it.
Sometimes it’s a Sunday night, a porch, a sky full of icy fire, and the warm weight of someone who knows your worst stories and chooses you, anyway.
Back in December, with the storm clawing at the lodge windows and candlelight turning strangers into believers, I told myself I was done pretending I could live without her. I kept that promise. So did she.
I’m not na?ve; storms don’t stop because you learned how to light pretty candles. We’ll have our share. Schedules will go sideways. Calves will get out. Brothers will glower. Contracts will call. But when the mountain throws weather, I know what we are under it.
We’re the warm room.
We’re the steady hands.
We’re the choice we make again.
I paused at a break in the trees and kissed her.
Slow and sure, it was the kind of kiss that didn’t need to rush because it already knew where it was going.
The night air was cold, but she was warm against me, and for once in my life I enjoyed being still.
Being exactly where I was meant to be, with the one woman who was made for me.
I’d spent a decade serving my country, crossing deserts and jungles and mountains with a ruck that never seemed to get lighter.
Now the only weight I wanted to carry was this woman leaning against me, this family that was slowly letting me in, this life I hadn’t dared to imagine but finally had the guts to claim.
I wasn’t running anymore.
And as the stars came out one by one over Mustang Mountain, I knew I never would again.