Torchlight dancing gold across the surface. Same as it had that very first day. Been sitting here a while, she said, settling beside him, leg finally strong enough to manage it without help. What are you thinking about? Everything, I suppose. five years alone.
The morning I found you under that rock. All of it adding up to right here, right now. "Regret any of it?" Wade considered the question honestly, the way she always seemed to demand honesty from him whether he was ready to give it or not. "No," he said finally. wouldn't change a single piece of it.
Even the hard parts, especially the hard parts, maybe. Man doesn't end up somewhere worth being without walking through whatever it took to get there. She leaned her head against his shoulder, and they sat like that a long while, listening to water that had run steady and generous through the darkest years this desert had to offer. My father asked me something. The night we brought you your name, she said eventually asked if I understood what I was choosing, letting a white man that close to this family, I told him I wasn't choosing anything yet.
Told him I was still deciding. And now, now I'm not deciding anymore. She lifted her head, met his eyes steady in the torchlight. No hesitation left anywhere in her. I've decided, Wade Callaway, whatever comes next in this life, droughter soldiers or anything else this desert throws at us, I want to face it standing next to you.
Not because you saved me, because of every single thing you did after that, when nobody would have blamed you for simply riding away. Wade felt something in his chest crack open, wide and warm. Five years careful walls finally giving way to something he no longer had any interest in defending against. Autumn Sky, he said her name, feeling like the truest thing he'd said in longer than he could remember. I've got nothing much to offer a chief's daughter.
No land beyond a well and a burned down homestead. No name that means anything outside the one your people gave me. You're wrong about that. She took his hand, pressed it flat against her own chest. steady heartbeat underneath his palm. You've got exactly the thing that matters.
You've had it since the moment you chose to stop and look at that eagle instead of riding on past. That a yes to something I haven't rightly asked yet. Ask it then and find out. Wade laughed low, disbelieving, wondrous autumn sky. "Would you have me?"
All of me. The parts already healed and the parts still working on it. "Yes," she said. Simple as water finding its own level. Like there had never once been any other possible answer.