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“Thought I would.” Taking her hand in his, swaying her side to side to a song that wasn’t playing, he said, “You’ve kind of got your hands full over there. I figured it might be nice for you to have a place you could sneak away to. We could have sleepovers.”
Her wish hadn’t been enough, not by a mile. His wish for them had been so much better.
“You see, Mira. I was kind of lonely in Seattle.” He held her close, the heat of his body finally making her warm again. “I was a bit aimless, lost. I thought,Maybe I need a change. I thought,Maybe if I move to this little town in Montana, I’ll meet someone. Maybe at a bar, or at a concert.”
“A concert,” she said while pressure built behind her eyes. “And after the concert, maybe we had a once-in-a-lifetime first date.”
He kissed her forehead with a smile on his lips. “The next day, maybe I found you on Instagram. Maybe I followed you.”
“Maybe I followed you back so fast I sprained a finger.”
“Maybe we started DMing.”
She blinked her tears free. “Maybe I gave you my number, and we started texting.”
“Maybe I got the courage to call you.”
“Then I got brave enough to FaceTime you.”
“And then, slowly,” his fingers threaded through hers, “we became…”
“Us,” they said at the same time.
And as she stared into his eyes, he asked, “So, what do you think, Mira?”
With her cheeks wet and her heart so full it might burst, she said, “It feels right.”
He took her hand, pressed a kiss into her palm, and said against her skin, “It always has.”
She kissed him again, then pulled away, and while he dried her tears with his thumbs, he frowned down at her and asked, “So what was that about getting your throat looked at?”
“Whatever it was”—she slid her fingertips under the hem of his shirt, flattening her palms on the warm expanse of his back, easing him close again until his arms surrounded her—“it’s all better now.”
“I love you,” he whispered into her ear, each word a shiver across her neck as he held her the way he always held her, like she was precious to him, like she was necessary.
Trying her best to hold him so that he’d know how precious he was to her, she said, “I love you too.”
After a moment, with his cheeks flaring pink, his grin almost bashful—which was exceptionally adorable on a fifty-four-year-old man, he said, “I did some unpacking before I came to find you.”
She raised a brow, looked around. “You did? I don’t see anything.”
“Well, it was really only one thing. I didanunpacking. It’s upstairs.”
Sliding her hands over his shoulders, up his neck, she sucked her lower lip into her mouth and dragged it out slowly between her teeth while he watched. “What is it?”
Grasping her ass, he hauled her close and said, “My bed.”
EPILOGUE
October 10,2:58pm
Cole: Hi Mira
Mira: Hi Cole
Cole: Can you get away?
Mira: Ian just offered to clean up for me, so upside is I can. Downside is my son might be possessed.
