Reuniting with the Rancher (Silver Creek Ranch)

7. Same Side

7

SAME SIDE

LILY

“Sounds like Mr. Monroe’s mom is a bitch,” Caleb said over breakfast later that morning.

Logan arrived as the sun rose with breakfast items and helpfully suggested Greyson leave with him to give her and Caleb time to adjust to the news. They had spent the hours since his confession in teary silence. Why did it feel like they were grieving all over again?

“You shouldn’t call women bitches, Boogie,” she said gently as she tugged off his hoodie and smoothed his locs. “But…you’re not wrong. I just can’t believe it…There’s still so much I still don’t know.”

“What do you think she’s like?” he asked with a mouth full of bacon.

“We’re going to find out, sooner than later,” she growled as she tapped a pen.

“Auntie?”

“Yeah, Boog?”

“You’re gonna be a good mom.”

Lily blinked away wet and gave her nephew a watery grin. “I’m not so sure. I keep forgetting to feed you Boog and I’ve known you your whole life.”

“Yeah, but you also look like Mom did when she found out about those kids stealing my stuff at school and the school didn’t believe me. She hulked out and I think, unless Mr. Monroe figures this out real quick, you’re gonna Hulk Smash this whole ranch. But you should also stop me from swearing, not just who I aim it at.”

“Shit. You’re right.”

She peeked in on Caleb as he took a midmorning nap. He still slept like he did when he was a baby - on his back spread eagle like sleep hit him with an uppercut. She closed his door and considered taking a nap herself, but as soon as the idea appeared in her mind, the little girl she’d only imagined gave her renewed energy…and anger.

Lily stormed as quickly as she could move across the ranch with a single purpose—she wanted her baby.

Every cell in her body felt electric, buzzing with the surge of emotions that had overwhelmed her since they started to piece together the truth. She wasn’t sure how she’d made it through the night without losing her mind. The shock, the anger, the gut-wrenching sorrow—it was all too much. It pressed her down and held her in place. That energy had shifted, and she needed to know everything. She wouldn’t rest until she had the full truth about Ivy.

She knocked twice before letting her herself into his home uninvited. She figured he wouldn’t or couldn’t mind, considering he pulled some weirdo stalker shit last night before dropping the nuke that blew up her entire world.

She was halfway through the living room, calling his name before he appeared at the top of the stairs. She skidded to a halt when she saw him. Shirtless, he descended the stairs slowly, his eyes locked on her, but the condition of his torso distracted her. Part of him was completely flawless, smooth skin stretched over muscles much larger than he had ten years ago, the rest was stretched, shiny skin that looked pieced together in spots with seams tracing across his body and disappearing around his back.

“Don’t stare.”

Her eyes snapped back to his, and his face hardened. She felt bad about the staring and the black eyes and tape across his nose.

“Does it hurt?”

“The nose or the grafts?”

She shrugged. “Either, both, whatever you want to tell me.”

“Most of the time the grafts don’t anymore… Other times I feel like I’m still on fire.”

She didn’t realize she had moved toward him until she felt the warmth and texture of his skin beneath her fingers. He stilled on the bottom step. “How?”

“I received a permanent vacation earlier than I planned, courtesy of an IED.”

She took in the wry smile on his face, and it struck her as wrong. “You shouldn’t joke about that.”

“You don’t get to decide,” he growled and moved past her, giving her a view of the extent of his scars on his back. They went up the back of his neck and spidered over his otherwise smooth bald head.

“You get your fill Lily?”

“I don’t mean to…um…thank you–”

“Don’t…Jesus, don’t fucking thank me for my service. Just tell me what you need.” He shrugged on his snug, long-sleeved shirt over his hard body and sat on the edge of the couch.

She shook herself out of her rudeness and focused on why she was there. “I need to know everything about Ivy. Everything. I’m not leaving until you tell me, so cancel whatever you’ve got planned today,” she demanded, her voice hoarse.

Greyson nodded, his face softening. “I’ll clear my schedule,” he said quietly, grabbing his phone from his pocket. After a brief conversation with someone on the other end, he hung up and turned to her. “Come with me.”

Lily followed him in silence, her heart pounding in her chest as they walked further into his house. She was still trying to wrap her mind around the enormity of it all—the daughter she thought had died, the lies Greyson’s mother had spun, and the years of lost time. Through it all, her brain just kept whispering, “Ivy’s alive.”

Eagerly, she looked around the walls for a glimpse of her baby and was disappointed and worried when she didn’t find a single photo.

“Ivy likes to do the decorating whenever we move. She sends the sketches and I follow them to a tee or there’s hell to pay,” a small smile played on his lips. “She hangs the photos when she comes home. Says she needs to be in person to get the ‘vibe’ of the place.”

Lily’s throat felt like it would swell shut. She felt the same way. She never hung photos until she had lived in the space for a while and felt its vibe.

Greyson pushed open the door to his study and led her inside. It was quiet, dark and manly with heavy wood furniture and built-ins. The thick rug cushioned their footfalls, and in the quiet, it held a certain reverence.

“Have a seat,” he said, pointing to a large leather sofa situated close to the door.

Lily sat down on the edge of the sofa, her hands trembling as she waited. The quiet gurgle of a fountain in the corner was the only sound in the room, each second dragging out longer than the last.

Greyson pulled several volumes of books off the shelf to her left and when his arms were full, he set them down gently on the coffee table and sat across from her, the weight of the past heavy between them.

“These are everything,” he said, his voice low. “Every year of her life.”

Lily stared at the photo albums, her eyes prickling as the reality of what was in front of her sank in.

Ivy’s life, the life she should have known, documented year by year—photographs, milestones, moments she had missed. That spot in her chest ached deeply.

“Why didn’t you tell me sooner?” she whispered, her voice cracking.

Greyson’s jaw clenched. “I didn’t know how. I didn’t even know the full extent of what my mother had done until you asked Logan about the NICU. I still don’t know if I understand everything. Logan’s looking into it now.” He rubbed his hands over his bald head in frustration and his eyes pleaded with her to believe him.

“All mom told me was that you said you couldn’t deal with a sick baby and your singing career. She said you’d signed over your parental rights and checked out of the hospital room against doctor’s orders. By the time I got to your hospital, you were gone and Ivy was so sick… I couldn’t be by her side and search for you at the same time. I didn’t have the resources I have now.”

Lily shot him a look, eyes wet with unshed tears. “You didn’t know? I called you and you screamed at me. ‘How could I be so irresponsible?’ ‘The time to do the right thing was before this all happened—” She stopped, the memories of his coldness and anger cutting into her like shards of glass.

“I was wrong,” Greyson said quietly, his voice thick with regret. “I thought you didn’t care. That you just signed her away because you didn’t want the responsibility. My mother fed me lies, and I believed them. I was grieving, scared, confused... angry. One moment I have a fiancé and a new baby and the next moment you both almost died and then you were gone. I had no reason not to believe her.”

Lily’s eyes filled with tears, her heart aching. She remembered her time in the hospital after she woke up—the exhaustion, the numbness after Mrs. Monroe told her Ivy hadn’t made it, and the papers she’d signed in a haze, too broken to even read what they were.

“I thought she was gone,” Lily whispered, wiping her eyes roughly. “I thought I lost her that day. She was… your mother was so kind to me. For the first time, she was really actually warm to me. She cried with me, said that your behavior horrified her, that you blamed me because I wanted Ivy to be born at home. She said she wanted to be there because mother-to-mother she understood how I felt.”

Lily shook her head. “Who just has parental rights waivers on their person? I knew she didn’t agree with us having a baby so soon and my wishes, but…to tell me Ivy was dead…”

Greyson’s hand twitched, as if he wanted to reach for her, but he stopped himself and hung his head. “She’s alive, Lily. And she’s been asking about you. For years, she’s asked about her mother. I sent Logan to find you. As fate would have it, you were already on your way back to her.”

Lily’s breath hitched at the words. Ivy had been asking about her? Her heart ached at the thought of her daughter, a stranger to her now, wanting to know who she was. The gravity of what she’d missed, what they’d both missed, weighed heavily on her chest.

Greyson nodded, pushing the first album toward her. “This is from the first year,” he said, his voice soft. “She’s strong like you are. She fought so hard those first weeks.”

Lily’s hands trembled as she opened the album. The first page showed a picture of a tiny baby girl with a head full of ebony curls, tubes attached to every part of her. Her tiny fingers curled around a finger, Grey’s finger tight.

“She was beautiful,” she whispered, tracing the outline of her daughter’s face with her fingertip.

“She still is,” Greyson said, his voice thick with emotion. “She’s always had your eyes and round little nose.”

Lily turned the pages slowly, absorbing each photo—first smiles, first steps, birthdays. Ivy’s life unfolded in front of her, and the pain of missing out on every moment crushed her. Each page served as a painful reminder of what she had lost, of all the years she had been denied.

Greyson sat silently across from her, watching as she flipped through the albums, his own emotions raw. “She’s strong, just like you,” he reiterated softly. “And stubborn too.”

Lily let out a shaky laugh, the first sign of lightness she’d felt in hours. “I wonder where she gets that from,” she muttered, her voice barely above a whisper.

A knock at the front door took Grey out of the room for a few moments. When he returned, Caleb was with him.

“I wanted to make sure you were ok,” Caleb said before he sat close and peered at the most current album. “Wow, she looks a lot like you and Mom in that picture that Grandma kept in the living room.”

“Yeah,” was all she could get out.

They fell into silence again, the only sound the turning of pages as Lily and Caleb continued to soak in the lost years.

After a while, an alarm on her watch went off. “Feed Caleb” flashed.

“What did that say?” He asked incredulously.

“Nothing,” she mumbled.

He picked up her phone with the notification clearly on display. “Auntie. ‘Feed Caleb?’”

“You do want to eat, don’t you?”

He dropped his head and shook it slightly. “I could also just tell you when I’m hungry. I’m not a little kid anymore.”

“Help yourself to anything you find in the kitchen,” Grey said, smiling at him.

When Caleb had gone, his face turned more serious. “If it’s okay with you, I think she should finish the rest of the school year before she meets you,” Greyson said after a moment. “It’ll give you time to prepare and for us to work through…everything.”

Lily closed the album slowly, her emotions swirling. “I both don’t think I can wait to see her, and don’t know how to be her mother, Greyson. I don’t know where to start.”

He leaned forward, his voice gentle. “Just be honest with her. She’s been asking about you for a long time, Lily. So this is a bigger shock for you than her, and maybe taking this time will give you both the reunion you deserve.”

Lily swallowed the lump in her throat and looked up at him, her eyes filled with a mixture of fear and hope. “I don’t know how to forgive you. Forgive myself for this,” she admitted. “But I want to be there for her now.”

Greyson nodded, the weight of his own guilt and anger pressing heavily on his shoulders. “I don’t expect you to forgive me. I won’t forgive me. But I’ll help you learn about her. I’ll do whatever it takes to make this right.”

He started to get up and changed his mind, instead scooting closer to her. His jaw clenched and unclenched, the words he wanted to say catching in his throat.

“I’ve been angry with you for so long, Lily,” he finally said, his voice rough and low. “So damn angry. I blamed you for everything—for walking away, for choosing fame and leaving me and Ivy behind. And now…” He stopped, his eyes locking with hers. “Now, I don’t know what to do with it. I don’t know how to process any of this.”

“I thought you didn’t care,” he continued, his voice shaking slightly. “And I carried that with me for years. It became a part of me. It ate holes through me.”

He moved closer to her, his voice softer now, filled with a vulnerability she barely recognized anymore. “But now… we know some of the truth. And I don’t know what to do, Lily. I don’t know how to undo all that hurt. But we have a month. A month to figure it out for that beautiful little girl with her momma’s eyes. I went to war for her Lily. I went to war to get her the care and security she needed. I never hesitated. And now I can make peace for her to bask in the love she has always deserved and desperately needs. Your love.”

They sat in silence, the years they’d lost stretching between them like a vast chasm. But for the first time in ten years, Lily felt like they were both standing on the same side.