Page 52 of Wild Then Wed
But the longer I sit with it, the less far-fetched it starts to feel.
Because if we got married—just on paper—the Wilding Ranch would keep its water. It would tether me, and by extension the ranch, to the Hart family’s water rights. And in the eyes of the county, that would probably be enough. It would be messy to challenge. Too many tangled threads of ownership, too many blurred household lines.
And small-town governments love clean answers. A Wilding married to a Hart would be a clean enough answer for them.
It wouldn’t solve everything, but it would buy us time. It would give us the breathing room that we don’t have right now.
The knot in my stomach tightens. This isn’t just about me, either. It’s about the horses and cattle that rely on our land, the training program I’ve poured the better part of my twenties into. It’s about Hudson, Jack, and Lainey never knowing what it feels like to run through those fields with the mountains on their backs as they grow up. It’s about my father’s hands in the soil, my family’s name carved into this place in a way you can’t erase, no matter how many times you change the deed.
It’s about the Wilding name meaning something twenty years from now instead of being a footnote in someone else’s land survey. Without water, none of it survives. Without water, there is no Wilding Ranch left to save.
And the ugly truth is, I would do it. I would sign my name next to someone else’s for the sake of a pipeline and a ranch deed. I would wear the ring and keep my life exactly the way it is now. I would call it survival and find a way to live with it.
But then there’s Sawyer.
It’s easy to say you could marry a stranger when you picture a stranger. It’s harder when the stranger is someone you can’t stop noticing. Someone whose steadiness makes you wonder if you’ve been bracing against the wrong things your whole life.
There’s no way he’d agree to this. No way he’d look at me and see a good enough reason to sign away his name and his future on some desperate, half-baked idea.
If anything, he’d think I was batshit crazy. And maybe he’d be right.
Still, some stubborn part of me can’t help but wonder.
What if he didn’t think it was crazy?
What if he said yes?
We could stay exactly as we are, living our separate lives, crossing paths only when we had to, moving forward the way people do when they have a silent agreement not to ask for more. Our names would be tied together on paper, nothing more, a technicality no one outside the courthouse would even have to know about.
And maybe it wouldn’t just save the Wilding Ranch. Maybe it could help the Harts, too.
The county isn’t just coming for us anymore. They’re coming for anyone still lucky enough to have private access to the aquifer, picking apart old claims and family deeds, looking for any excuse to re-draw the lines and tell us what no one wants to hear—that history doesn’t matter, that legacy isn’t enough, that survival has new rules now.
And the truth is, it won’t matter that Sawyer doesn’t own the Hart Ranch himself. It matters that he’s a Hart, that he still works the land, that he’s tied to it in the way that matters here—not just in paperwork, but in blood and sweat and years spent showing up.
The fewer family members the Harts have actively connected to the ranch, the easier it will be for the county to chip away at their standing, to argue that the land has outlived its purpose, that it belongs to newer, more “efficient” hands.
But if Sawyer was married—if he could show a growing household, another layer of permanence stitched into the fabricof the ranch—it would make it harder for them to be pushed off the map.
Marrying me wouldn’t just keep my family afloat. It would reinforce his, too. It would give the Harts another argument, another line of defense, another reason to be left alone.
My mind is spinning so fast I almost forget where I am. It’s not a perfect plan. It’s barely a plan at all. But when you’re drowning, you don’t wait around for the perfect solution. You grab whatever’s floating close enough to reach.
And maybe—if Sawyer Hart is as stubborn about holding onto what matters as I think he is—he might be willing to grab onto it, too.
Chapter 10
SAWYER
All Hank cares about after a three-mile run is bacon. Honestly, I can’t blame him.
The sky’s still soft and gray with a faint stretch of early light when we get home, the road slick from last night’s rain, his muddy prints trailing behind us through the kitchen.
He’s pacing now, his nose lifted toward the skillet like the smell of bacon might be enough to kill him if he doesn’t get a piece soon.
I lean a hip against the counter, flipping the strips with a fork while my golden retriever stares up at me as if I’m the sole reason for his suffering.
“You’renotstarving,” I tell him, even though I already know how this ends.
