Page 95 of Sexting the Cowboy
“Scream for me, baby!”
I erupt on him, crying out his name while the fireworks explode overhead, one after another, until he growls through his own explosion, his lips locked on mine.
EPILOGUE
ANNIE
One Year Later
The bellover the clinic door has never been this busy. It rings the way hope rings—bright and a little shameless.
When I signed the lease on this squat little suite wedged between a barber and a nail salon, I pictured patients trickling in because they trusted me, because they needed low-cost care, because they liked the way I explained why their body did what it did instead of just telling it to stop.
Now they pour through like we’re giving away kittens and ice cream. Some of them are here because they have a sore throat or a cholesterol panel or a thumb that’s been numb since April. A nontrivial number of them are here because I’m marrying Brick Wyatt, and they would like to “establish care” and also “just see if he’s here today in any capacity whatsoever.”
The first time one of the ranch wives said it out loud—“Doctor, if it isn’t too much trouble, I wanted to ask whether your fiancé prefers pecan or apple, because my sister and I were having a debate and also, is that his hat I see back there?”—I thought I’dmisheard. The second time, I laughed and then apologized for laughing. The third time, I started keeping a printed sign at the front desk that says in block letters:
Dr. Pearl’s fiancé does not provide medical advice.
No, you may not touch his hat.
Pecan. But he will eat any pie you put in front of him and give you a sincere speech about how it is the best pie he has ever tasted in the history of pie.
Mac designed the sign in five minutes with a rodeo font and a cartoon hat so jaunty that even Jaden grinned. It sits wedged between a hand sanitizer pump and a stack of new patient forms, and every time I look at it, my chest does that quiet ache that means I’ve drifted into ridiculous happiness.
I wanted this clinic to thrive because we offered something people needed. It’s thriving because we offer something people want to look at while they wait to have their blood drawn. The old me would have felt insulted. The current me is more mature.
If the waiting room fills because the town wants to gawk at a legend carrying a diaper bag, fine. If they stay because the test results come with respect and clarity, better.
“Doctor, there’s a family of five wanting back-to-school sports physicals,” Jaden calls from the front desk, his voice pitched to carry over the polite murmur of eager eavesdroppers. “And one of them has brought her goat.”
“Tell the goat we’re cash-pay,” I say without looking up from a throat culture that refuses to be quick.
“Goat says they have Venmo.”
“And the nurse is already billing them,” Mac says from her perch on the filing cabinet, camera in her lap, hair up, cheeks flushed. She’s here editing a documentary on small-town medicine that she swears is not about me while she eats the lunch she forgot this morning. It’s a miracle she still remembers to eat at all.
The door rings again. The weight changes in the room in a way I can feel more than hear. People make space the way they do for someone who saved their kid from a storm once, even if the storm was mostly a headline.
Brick is back from taking a stack of boxes to the donations closet in the hall, and the light catches the gray at his temple like the universe just found the perfect filter. The babies love him. The old men love him. The ranch wives pretend to scowl and then love him so much they make extra pie.
He doesn’t wear his hat in here. He hung a hook by the back door himself and put a little hand-lettered label above it the day after he settled in that says simplyBrick. The first time he walked in with Mae strapped to his chest in a sling and a box of tongue depressors under his arm and said, “Where do you want this, Doc?” I thought Mac was going to faint with glee.
I pretended to be annoyed so I wouldn’t cry, and then, later, when he was asleep on the couch with the baby drooling on his collarbone and Jaden had slipped a blanket over them both, I went into the bathroom and let my face break into the ugly cry it needed.
Domestic life is odd.
Now he belongs here in a way that feels old and right. He lifts the box of patient education pamphlets onto the counter like he’s carrying something precious, and the kid with the goat says,reverent as a prayer, “Is that…him?” and his mother hisses, “Hush,” and pretends she has never shouted that name louder in the stands.
“He’s him,” Jaden says cheerfully, ushering the family toward the scale. “He’s also carrying handouts about vitamin D, so please adjust your awe accordingly.”
Brick catches my eye and lets the corner of his mouth curl, small and private. The ring on my hand will take some getting used to. I keep snagging the amethyst on my lab coat. A lavender stone to remind me of the lavender ring he proposed with, and also, because it’s my favorite. I mentioned it to him once in passing, and then he surprised me with the ring.
He keeps surprising me.
We moved him into my house the week after the festival ended. It was fast by any polite standard. It was inevitable by any standard that mattered. His duffel and his boots took up no space at all. His presence takes up exactly the space I wanted it to.
He wakes early and makes coffee, and he does dishes with a focus that makes me grin into the doorframe. He has opinions about laundry and none about pillows. He is always, always fifteen minutes early to pick Mae up from a nap because he likes to stand at the door and listen to her breathe before she wakes.
