Chapter 65

The sun sets in front of us. Sunsets over the mountains have a different kind of beauty to them, as if we’re witnessing something absolutely alien. Soon, the air will carry a chill and the cattle will start coming back, but for now, we enjoy the sunset after a long day of work.

Levi sits on my left, Wiley on my right. Dakota is nestled against my back, tucked in tightly around me. Each of them touches me in some way, each of them holding me.

This is what happiness feels like.

Like the mountains during a sunset.

Like the men you love holding you as if you’re something to be cherished.

“What happens if they come back?” I whisper, afraid to disrupt the feeling around us.

“We’ll face it if it comes,” Dakota murmurs into my hair. “After all, this ain’t your first rodeo anymore.”

I snort. “I didn’t realize I was supposed to know how to do everything on my second rodeo,” I say, making the three of them laugh. “Seems like a very low amount of rodeos to me.”

Levi chuckles before he leans in and presses a kiss to my forehead. “You won’t be alone, sunflower. One day, I’ll burn up in the hot summer sun, like a field in the middle of a draught, and up until the very last ember of my heart extinguishes, I’ll be loving you.”

“Fuck, how am I supposed to follow that?” Wiley laughs. “You romantic asshole, you.” But he meets my eyes as he kisses me on the other side of my forehead. “I’ll love you until my lungs give out, city girl. Until someone buries me deep in the ground, and then after that still.”

I smile and touch my nose to his. “I love the both of you, too. So much. You’re my home.”

Both of them look at Dakota where he wraps around me.

“What?” Dakota grumbles.

“Tell her how you feel, big guy,” Wiley teases. “Come on. This is a sweet moment. Don’t let us down.”

His arms tighten around me. “She knows how I feel.”

“It’s still nice to hear,” I point out, grinning.

“Fine,” he grumbles. He leans his forehead against the back of mine, thinking clearly. “Kate, Calamity Kate, I’m not much of a religious man, but even if I were, I don’t think a preacher will ever marry the four of us on account of it being illegal and all. None of our mamas will ever know your name as much as we wish they could, but we can kiss you over a flask of whiskey,” he says, holding up the flask we’d been passing around. “And we can dance with you under the stars of a clear Wyoming sky, and if that isn’t marriage, I’m not sure what else God is looking for.” He holds me close to him and he presses a kiss to the top of my head. “And I. . . I’ll love you until the cows come home. Until the very last time they come home, until we’re old and grey and still trying to claim we’re young while tripping over the dogs on the front porch and breaking our hips.”

I laugh, tears spilling over my lashes without knowing I’d even started crying. “Yeah?”

He nods. “Until we’re all buried out beneath the willow tree, together, and then into whatever afterlife there may be. Until the very end.”

Wiley wipes his face. “Goddamn, Dakota. Where the fuck did that come from?”

“The heart,” Dakota teases before pulling him in for a group hug. Levi leans in on the other side. “Seriously though. You three are. . . you’re my everything.”

“I love you, too, man,” Wiley says, sniffing. “Big ole sappy assholes.”

Levi’s arms wrap around us all and hold on, and though we don’t say anything else after that, though we just watch the sunset until the stars begin to pepper the sky and the fireflies come out, until we run out of whiskey and we’re a little drunk on liquor and love, I know this is where I’m meant to be. It’s a Tuesday, and our backs are flat in the fields, and the stars twinkle just right, and it’s perfect.

I close my eyes and wrap myself in their barbed wire.

These barbed wire hearts.

In the end, if there’s something I’ve learned along the way, it’s that the barbed wire isn’t a warning to everyone outside. It’s to keep the hurt in. It’s to tame the wild horses of our hearts, but we’re all wild like the west deep in our souls. And this world? It needs more cowboys. They know how to get the barbed wire just right, and where to cut it so it falls away.

In the silence of the night, with the frogs croaking out in the pond and the crickets playing their tiny violins, I open my mouth wide and say it for everyone to hear, until it echoes in the mountains for the coyotes to sing back.

“Yee haw!” I shout, again and again and again, until the others join in, until the barbed wire falls away completely and leaves only the scars behind.

Until everything goes quiet, and I know that I am home . . .