She would have never thought that a friendship that had spanned seventeen years, her ridiculous rebellious phase where she had basically kicked back against everything in the world just to test her freedom, his grief and the stress that he felt over ensuring that all of his siblings and cousins made it into adulthood, could possibly become complicated.

But it had.

They had survived raging teenage hormones only to be completely overtaken by the heat between them in their thirties.

Now they were getting married because of a pregnancy that had made exploring that heat difficult, and it forced them into another new space entirely. They weren’t just friends. They weren’t just lovers.

It was all blending together. And it only got yet more blurry when he held her through bouts of morning sickness, his touch intimate but not sexual.

It made her chest ache in good ways she didn’t want to explore.

She returned, somewhat triumphantly, to her camper for the evening, and stopped when she saw a note pinned to the door. She pulled it off, recognizing Ryder’s blocky handwriting immediately.

Follow the trail.

She looked around and didn’t see anyone there. It was getting dark out, the sun sinking down below the mountains, the sky illuminated with gold. The trail...

She looked down, and right next to her foot was a sugar cube.

A small smile touched her lips at the same time her heart crashed hard against her breastbone.

He was baiting her.

And in all their years of friendship, she couldn’t recall that happening.

She picked up the first sugar cube, then the next. Then started leaving them behind, because the silly man had put a surplus through the field, and they became more difficult to follow as the grass got taller, but she managed.

Then in the distance she could see it. A big wooden frame wrapped in light suspended high above everything else on the near horizon. White swathes of fabric were wrapped around the frame, with flowers and lights entwined all around.

Magic.

A fairy house right there in the field, just for her.

But they hadn’t talked about doing anything like this. In fact, they had basically committed to standing out in a patch of dirt while Pastor Michael came and said all the right words. She quit looking at the sugar cubes and started to run.

Her long skirt whipped against the grass as she did, her hair flying in the breeze behind her. And then she saw him, standing in the center of that big bright creation. She was glad that she had run, because when she stopped about ten feet away from it, from him, she could pretend that the sickening thud of her heart was from physical exertion, and not from wondering what this was.

He was standing there in a black T-shirt, black cowboy hat and jeans, and suddenly she didn’t even want him to wear a suit for their wedding. She wanted him like this. Her cowboy. So stalwart and perfect.