Chapter 13

CHAPTER

THIRTEEN

B ailey McAllister pulled up to the ranch house where she’d grown up, everything in Coral Canyon so green. So fresh. So new.

She felt the same way, and she took in a big breath of the Wyoming air. It felt different going down here than it did in Montana, though Bailey loved it there too. She got out of the car and opened the back to get her garment bag and the rest of her stuff. She’d be staying with her parents for the next week, with Bryce’s marriage to Codi about in the middle of her trip.

“Bailey!”

She reached to close the hatch on her SUV, the sound of OJ’s cheerful voice sending joy and love right into her soul. She felt like he hooked her up to an IV machine filled with only sunshine and light, and she dropped everything she’d just picked up to hug him .

“Hey, my boy,” she said as he folded himself into her arms. “My goodness, you’ve grown so much since Christmas.”

OJ definitely had gained some inches, and she felt a momentary flash of missing. So much missing. She wasn’t this boy’s mother, but she loved him anyway. She’d always loved him.

He stepped back and she held him by his skinny shoulders. “At least four inches.” She beamed at him, and he grinned right back.

“My momma says I need all new jeans and church pants.” He waved his arm. “Come on. Grandpa Graham and Grandma Laney have two new dogs, and you are going to die, they’re so cute.”

“Two new dogs?” Alarm blared through Bailey. “Like rent-a-puppies?” She quickly bent to get her things and follow OJ up the walk. He’d left the door open when he’d come out, of course, and she took the time to close it after she’d entered the house.

“Grandma Laney! She’s here!” OJ ran ahead of her, and according to Bryce, the boy ran everywhere he went. Bailey and Bryce didn’t have regular check-ins about anything. Sometimes he texted her things about his family, about Coral Canyon, or about their son. Most of the time, he didn’t.

A dog barked, and Bailey took a little more care with her wedding clothes this time. She draped them over the back of the loveseat in the formal living room, and she set her travel bag beside it before moving down the hall and into the back of the house.

“Mom?”

The back door stood open, and she found her parents and OJ outside. And sure enough, two dogs Bailey had never seen. But as she filled the doorway and looked out, she found that they weren’t puppies. Grown dogs ran around, chasing each other and a ball that OJ threw clumsily.

He laughed though, like he might be the next catcher who could throw out runners at second. Bailey smiled at him, and then her mother as she turned to face the house. “Hey, baby.”

Her mom folded her into her arms, and Bailey couldn’t believe she’d stayed away for almost ten years. “Hey, Mama.”

“How was the drive?”

“So boring at the end,” she said, though she loved coming down through Yellowstone and around the Teton Mountains. She grinned as she stepped back. “OJ is huge.”

“He’s grown a lot in the past six months.” Her mom beamed at him. “He’s always wanted more dogs.”

“Where’d they come from?”

“Georgia,” Mama said. “She rescues dogs, but only temporarily. I couldn’t stand it when OJ came, just crying his eyes out about losing them. So we took them.”

“You’re insane,” Bailey said.

“They’re grown,” Mama said, her voice a bit defensive now. “They live outside, and they’ll be good friends on the ranch.” She folded her arms. “Jed loves them. We love them. OJ loves them.”

“How often do you have OJ now?” Bailey asked, her voice pitching up.

“About the same,” Mama said. “He comes every couple of weeks.”

Bailey nodded and watched her daddy and OJ play with the dogs. They looked like mutts to her, and Bailey knew animals from her job as a veterinarian in Butte.

“Mama, are we ready for Bryce to get married?” She spoke in a tiny, quiet voice, because while she’d known for years and years that she and Bryce were not meant for one another, there was still a piece of her—a very, very microscopic piece—that wasn’t sure how she felt about him moving on so permanently.

Of course, she’d seen him, and he’d moved on a long time ago. He’d healed in ways she had only just started to comprehend in the past ten months or so, and Bailey actually found herself a little bit jealous of him.

“Yes,” Mama said. “I think we’re ready for the wedding. Lord knows that man has worked for his happiness.” She threw Bailey a look, but Bailey ignored her.

She watched the dogs for another couple of minutes and then said, “I’m going to go put my stuff in my room, and then I have to take him out to Bryce.”

“Yep, he’ll be ready,” Mama said, flashing her a smile. Then she went to rejoin them down on the grass, and Bailey turned away from the happy scene. Her emotions stormed through her as she collected her bags and took them downstairs.

Her tears filled her eyes, but they didn’t fall. She couldn’t believe she was back to this place, back to crying in her parents’ basement. She’d been here ten years ago, and while the tears weren’t for the same reason as before, it felt the same. It felt like she’d been thrown back in time, and she’d never find her way out of this deep, dark, dank basement.

“You have,” she said, drawing a deep breath and wiped her eyes. “You’re not the same person you were a decade ago. Not even close.”

She sank down onto the bed and covered her face with her hands. “Dear God,” she said aloud. “I have been working so hard here. Why does coming back here throw me for a loop every time?”

And how could she make sure it didn’t again?

“Help me,” she begged in a way she hadn’t before. It wasn’t the same kind of plea as when she’d begged for help when she’d found out she was pregnant. Or one she’d made to help her pass her finals and earn her veterinary of medicine credentials. Or one she’d done while gripping the steering wheel as she drove back into town to see OJ for the first time since she’d given him up for adoption.

This wasn’t a cry for help out of desperation, but from a place of genuine longing to be helped by a loving Father in Heaven. Maybe desperate, yes, but from a different place. From her heart, and not because she was worried about what someone else would think of her. But because she wanted to be a different person, and she couldn’t do it alone.

She’d been seeing a counselor for months now, and as she wept, a new kind of cleansing washed through her in a brand new way. She drew in a long, deep breath and looked up at the ceiling.

“Thank you,” she whispered as everything seemed to fall back into place inside her. She hadn’t started dating again, but for the first time in a decade, she felt like she might be ready to do so.

She headed down the hall to the bathroom to clean up and wash all evidence of her tears away, and then she went to get OJ and take him out to Bryce’s.

“One more hard thing,” she said, though she felt like perhaps she was kidding herself. She had plenty more hard things to go through, but she finally believed she could do whatever the Lord asked of her without falling apart as completely as she had in the past.

“I’ll go find him,” OJ said as he opened the door. He exploded from the SUV with such energy, and Bailey could only watch him go. A type of exhaustion she didn’t understand weighed way down in her bones, and she’d only felt like this two other times in her life.

Right before OJ had been born. She hadn’t been able to sleep for anything, and she’d been so, so tired. And once while she’d studied in her final term for her veterinary exams.

She sat in her car with the early evening streaming through her windshield, Codi’s big white school bus with the cartoon dogs on the side of it off to the side of the lane that went back onto Bryce’s farm.

Bailey closed her eyes and leaned her head back, searching for that center of herself she’d had an hour ago, in her basement bedroom. It’s just dinner , she told herself. Then Codi would take OJ back to Georgia and Otis’s house, and Kassie and Reggie would go home to their cute-as-apple-pie cottage just down the road, and Harry?—

A sharp knock on the glass had her jerking upright and crying out. She leaned away from the window at the same time she looked that way, and it only took her a moment to recognize country music star Harry Young.

She reached to turn off her car and get out, and she swatted at Harry as he laughed. “You scared me.”

“I’m sorry,” he said between his chuckles. “Really, Bailey.” He wrapped her in his arms and laughed again. “It’s good to see you.” He stepped back and looked at her. “How are you?” His eyes held a wisdom she hadn’t seen in them before, and she reasoned he’d been in his mid-teens when she’d seen him last.

“I’m, uh, okay,” she said, hearing the falseness of it in her own voice. “How are you? Mister Big Shot Rockstar?” She painted a smile on her face, hoping this whole night could be played behind this grin .

He smiled and shook his head. “Glad to be home for a minute.”

“How long are you in town?”

“I’ve been here a week,” he said. “I’m staying for another. Or ten days. I don’t know. I, uh, have a guy who tells me what to do.”

Bailey laughed, thinking he was kidding. When he didn’t, she silenced herself. “Oh, you have a guy who tells you what to do.”

Harry nodded. “And he told me I have a date with you tonight.” He nodded to her car. “Is that why you were waitin’ out here alone?” He raised his eyebrows, but Bailey wasn’t going to confess all of her innermost feelings to someone she didn’t know very well.

She knew Bryce and Harry were very close, and Bailey had no idea what either of them had said to the other about her. She hated this feeling, but she pushed it away and focused on the here-and-now. Harry wore no judgment on his face, and he put his hand on the small of her back and guided her around the front of her car.

“I heard my grandmother catered tonight’s meal,” Harry said easily. “With Joey, so we are going to eat like kings tonight.” He took her up the sidewalk and right into Bryce’s house without knocking. The air carried the scent of something roasted and delicious, with garlic and beef and rosemary.

Chatter echoed from the kitchen, and Bailey saw Reggie, Kassie, and Codi there, putting dishes on the table as they talked and laughed. Bailey reminded herself she had friends in Butte, and that she’d gone to dinner parties like this there too.

“Oh, hey,” Kassie said, noticing them first. She abandoned her task of setting silverware on the table, and she came toward them with a handful of forks and spoons. “Harry and Bailey are here.” She grinned at them and swept a kiss across Harry’s cheek. “Hello, my nephew.”

She wore a cheeky grin, and Bailey looked between the two of them.

“Hey, Aunt Kassie,” Harry said in a deadpan. He rolled his eyes and took his cowboy hat off. He hung it on a rack next to the bookcase in Bryce’s living room, and he caught her hand as he went into the kitchen.

But Bailey couldn’t get past Kassie. “Hey, Bailey,” she said, and she wasn’t exactly cool, but she wasn’t warm either.

“Hi, Kassie.”

She did smile then, and she nodded her head back toward the kitchen. “Come on in. Bryce is still outside on the ranch.”

“OJ went out there too,” she said, suddenly worried. “I should’ve said something or gone with him.”

“He’ll be okay,” Codi said, and she wore a much bigger smile as she moved around Kassie and hugged Bailey. “How was the trip? How are your parents?”

“They got two new dogs.” Bailey hugged her back lightly, wondering how she could become a woman like Codi. “Some of Georgia’s rescues.”

Codi stepped back, surprise coloring her expression. “ You’re kidding. They took Georgia’s rescues? Those two big dogs?”

“Yes,” Bailey said. “My mom said they’ll be great on the farm.”

“Well.” Codi reached up and pushed her hair off her face. Today, she wasn’t wearing one of her wigs, and her white hair blew around her cheek as if the simple act of the air conditioning could push it wherever it wanted. “Good for those dogs, because your parents do have a great farm.” She turned and went back into the kitchen. “Come on in. We’ve got you by Harry and OJ, if that’s okay.”

“Yeah, that’s fine,” she said.

“Has Harry told you about his girlfriend?” Kassie asked.

“Kassie, stop using that word,” Harry said in a tired voice. He’d found a spot on the couch and had his phone out, texting.

Bailey’s stomach clenched. “Am I—is this going to be a problem?” She watched Harry, who didn’t even look up from his device. He was probably texting his girlfriend right now.

“No,” Harry said. “I don’t have a girlfriend.”

“You’ll see her at the wedding,” Kassie said. “He’s bringing her as his date.”

“That doesn’t mean we’re dating,” Harry said. “It’s one date. I live in Nashville. She lives in Jackson Hole.” He finally looked up. “She’s not my girlfriend, and everyone knows it except my aunt Kassie.”

Before anyone could say anything else, the back door opened and the wind blew in Bryce. Tall, handsome, full-of- life-and-laughter Bryce Young. Bailey loved him on-sight, and the way he paused, took in the room, saw her, and grinned made him all the more charismatic and handsome.

“There she is,” he said as if he’d been waiting all day to see her. He laughed as he came toward her, OJ behind him, and took her into his arms. “Good trip?” He stepped back and slid his arm around Codi’s waist, the two of them looking at her with such hope, so much love, so much…just everything good.

Bailey felt the tears stinging in her eyes again, but she pulled them back as much as she could. She couldn’t get her voice to work, so she just stood there and basked in the spirit in this house, on this ranch, with these people.

“Lord, she isn’t talkin’, and that’s not a good sign.” Bryce grinned at her. “Help us to know what to do to make her feel comfortable.”

That got Bailey to shake her head, her smile more genuine than it had been since she’d arrived in town. “I had a good trip. It’s good to see you guys.”

She wasn’t sure how the wedding would affect her in a few days, but for right now, everything had somehow been made all right. She fit here, somehow, even if her edges were rougher than the others. Even if she didn’t have a partner the way Bryce had Codi and Kassie had Reggie.

She still had ties to these people, and she didn’t want to sever them. She just had to figure out how to soothe the raw ends of them so she didn’t have to fight tears every time she came back to Coral Canyon.

Oh, and it would be great if she could figure that all out in the next three days, before Bryce and Codi’s wedding, or she was going to be a blubbering mess.