My stomach knots. “What’s a hashtag?”
Grace lets out a bitter, watery laugh. “#gracecanride. It has gone viral on social media. A bunch of old hookups sharing private information. Turning me into a joke. A slut meme.”
Silence.
She waits for us to flinch. To step back. To confirm every fear she’s been carrying like a stone. But we don’t.
Brody exhales, low and steady. “Well, fuck them.”
Dylan folds his arms, his jaw hard. “They’ve got nothing to say that we’d give a damn about, Grace.”
And me? I take her hand.
She tries to pull away, but I don’t let her.
“I don’t care what anyone else in this goddamn world thinks of you or says about you, Grace,” I say. “I care about the woman who showed my little niece how to twirl in her favorite dress. I care about the woman who stood on myporch and told me I needed to lighten up. I care about the woman who made us believe that eleven worn-out cowboys and six dusty kids could have a happy ever after.”
Her lower lip trembles.
“Grace, you’re ours,” Brody says, stepping closer. “Haven’t you worked it out yet?”
She looks down at her feet, swallowing hard, then around at the three of us—at our ranch-worn hands, clothes that don’t fit this place, boots ready for riding hell for leather across rough terrain rather than walking city sidewalks—and finally whispers, “I don’t know how to come back from this.”
“Come home,” Dylan says, the ache in his voice cutting into my heart.
Brody’s voice is quiet and steady. “All you have to do is say yes, sweetheart, and we’ll make all of it go away.”
I watch Grace’s breath catch, the war in her chest so obvious it almost hurts to witness. She swipes at her cheeks with both hands, messy and frustrated.
“I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” she mutters. “I used to be composed. I used to be sharp.”
“You still are,” I say. “This situation has been out of your control, but not anymore. Now, you get to decide the story you want to write, Grace.”
She lets out a breath that shudders through her.
“I was terrified you’d see me like they do,” she says. “Something to use. Somebody to discard.”
Brody scoffs. “We see the real you, Grace. And you’re beautiful inside and out.”
Dylan smiles gently. “You held all of us in the palm of your hand without even realizing you were doing it, even this grumpy asshole.”
There’s a pause. A stillness that feels like it belongs to us, drawing us together and bringing a warm feeling into this sterile office.
Then Grace breathes out a single word that changes my life: “Okay.”
I blink. “Okay?”
She nods, tentative but growing steadier with each breath. “Okay, I want to come home. I don’t know how to fix everything or what comes next, but I want to try. If you still have me, I’ll try to make things better.”
Brody’s laugh is low and relieved. “You’re already ours.”
Dylan pulls her into a hug without hesitation, squeezing her so tightly she turns a little red in the face as he murmurs something against her hair, I can’t quite hear.
I watch her melt into him, and all the anxiety I’ve been carrying since she drove away in a cloud of dust and regret disappears.
Grace steps back, breathless, cheeks still damp, but her smile is real this time. “I can’t believe you all came to my office,” she says with a little laugh. “Cowboy hats in corporate America.”
“You embarrassed?”
