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“Certainly not going to bust out of a garrote with any kind of efficiency.”
I barked a laugh, shaking my head. She really did just say whatever she was thinking, didn’t she? The best part was, I loved her all the more for it. “Do you regularly escalate to being murdered?”
“Sorry,” she laughed, not looking sorry at all. “I’ve been binging true crime shows this week.”
“Nothing says cozy Christmas bedtime story like serial killers.”
“Exactly.” She unbuckled her belt and turned to sit crisscross in her seat, back pressed against the window. With a timid little shrug, she added, “Kept my mind off of you when I couldn’t sleep.”
“You mean you didn’t just stew in self-loathing for the last seventy-two hours?”
“I would’ve come out of my skin.”
I chuckled, but looked out the window when movement caught my eye. Royal happily trotted across the yard with a rabbit in her wake. Shaking my head at the strangest animal alliance I’d witnessed in person, I found El studying me, half her face in shadow.
“I’m not giving you up,” I stated matter-of-factly.
Her eyes fell to her lap. “I’m moving to New York City.”
An out-of-body kind of buzzing erased our surroundings as her words burrowed into my stomach. My mouth failed. So did my lungs. Say something, some coherent corner of my mind snarled.
“My agent called tonight, and the network took my hesitation as a need to sweeten the deal because they knew we had multiple offers. They can swing a larger budget—not just for me, but for scholarships, equipment, everything—if we re-use a building that they purchased for another project that didn’t make it past the pilot. Already renovated. Historical, so it has the character I wanted. We’ll just need to outfit it.” She paused, looking at me like she was fighting the waves, and I was the only person with a lifeboat. New York. Manhattan. Hell, I’d never even been in Manhattan. Finn lived there, and with Pax in Chicago, at least they put her within visiting range of family. But… I’d never imagined myself in a city, let alone one as savage as New York. When the best response I could muster was my mouth opening and closing twice, she cleared her throat.
“They need me to fly in tonight and sign off.”
“Tonight?” I demanded, doing a crap job at curbing the panic in my voice. “El, it’s Christmas. You think the family isn’t going to flip their collective lid?”
Throat bobbing, El shook her head. “There’s some monster blizzard headed for the city, and they anticipate grounding flights the next few days. I either fly in tonight before it hits, or the storm doesn’t clear out until the end of the week. Network wants a commitment or a refusal, and I can’t blame them. I’ve strung this along for weeks already.”
Voice rough, throat tight, I asked, “You can’t just… sign electronically?”
El sucked down a breath, like she was bracing for backlash. “I want to see it in person before we finalize things. Mara already booked our flights. Pax is going with me.”
“And you just… decided all of this on your own?” The implied ‘without me’ was betrayed by the break in my voice. My mind was running a million miles a minute, the familiar holdover overwhelm creeping in.
“I’m sorry. I… Pax, Mara, and Max all already signed off. They’re waiting on me. And this is the kind of opportunity that can create generational wealth, not only for me, but for the women whose lives we’ll impact. The media attention will bolster my book sales. It’s, overall, just…” Pained eyes—more than a little wild—looked frantically between mine before she clambered over the middle console to straddle my lap. Her hands found my neck, my jaw. Mine automatically settled on her waist. I turned to press a kiss to her palm as she pled her case. “Brod, this is so much more than I ever prayed for. Please understand. Please. I can’t throw away ten years of effort. Mara and I have talked about this forever.”
“I know,” I breathed against her palm, soaking up her warmth. The feeling of her settled on top of me.
“And it’s important to me that you take your time making your next choice. I’ve been working toward this goal for no more time than you have yours. I won’t ask you to throw that away without doing your due diligence and thinking it through.”
“I know, baby. I love you, Pix,” I said, pulling her closer, smiling as she rocked her hips over my groin, “and I’m so fucking proud of you.”
Her lips came down on mine, hard and desperate, cutting off my questions, my protests, the million and one things that I needed to say. Because as urgently as we needed to talk, we needed each other. El immediately went for the buttons of my shirt, popping the first three apart until she could slide under it, a breathy, contented hum purring in her chest when she found my chest bare.
“Perks of southern heat,” I muttered as my hands went for her naked thighs beneath the scrap of a dress she’d taunted me with all day. Each touch, each pull of her lips and scrape of fingers became laced with both need and the kind of care I would never articulate in all my years.
I loved her. This fierce, independent, relentless, brash woman. I poured that reality into each stroke up her thigh and over her hip, each clash of teeth and graze of our lips.
“Bed?” she panted, and I nodded against her, reaching to unlatch the door, and kicking it open in the next beat. She yelped when I scooped her up and out of the SUV with me, landing on my feet and kissing her all the way across the yard to the unlocked back door.
“Gonna make a habit of carrying me around?” she teased.
“Until we go gray, baby.” Maybe if I just kept saying it, she’d get the picture. There was no quit once we started this. She might want me to take time, but I’d already made my choices. Her. I chose her. The moment I touched her in Vegas, I’d made my choice. The universe was just testing it.
Yeah, there’d be a transition period before I could respectfully leave home, but she could ask a million times and the answer would stay the same. For now though, I just needed to hold onto her. Honor her choices. Let her process. Or at least that’s what I gathered from her books.
We bumped into a corner or two, but I got to the room she was staying in before settling her on her feet. She turned, pushing the unlatched door open, only to stop so abruptly I walked into her back.
