“Good luck, Stevie.”
I blow out a breath. “Thanks.”
I watch as he pulls away, heading down the hill and disappearing behind a copse of trees, leaving me alone. After taking a steadying breath, I pull the truck next to Jack’s car. Inthe morning I’ll need to park the Airstream a little better, but it’s too dark to navigate now.
My heart is pounding as I climb out, the cold wind whipping at my hair. I pulled it out of its braid an hour ago, my scalp protesting, and now it hangs around my shoulders in a mess of waves.
The cabin isn’t large, probably just a bedroom or two. It’s traditional, wood logs with a stone chimney that’s sputtering out smoke. The roof is metal. It’s nothing like the cabin where Jack and I spent our weeks in Fontana Ridge, but it feels just as important.
My hands shake as I make my way across the yard and up the porch steps, halting in front of the door. I shouldn’t be this nervous, but for a moment I wonder if he will reject me. After driving two days to a state I’ve never been before. But just as quickly, I dismiss it. Jack was ready to move for me. I only hope he’s okay with my change of plans.
With an unsteady hand, I knock on the door. There isn’t a porch light, so I wait in darkness for Jack to answer, blood rushing in my ears. Seconds that feel like hours pass, then I hear footsteps on the other side of the door. One erratic heartbeat passes before it swings open.
StevieLynchisstandingon my porch. I blink, waiting for the mirage to disappear, because thiscannotbe real. Just a minute ago, I was wishing for her to be here, aching from missing her, and now, she’s here.
“Stevie,” I breathe.
Her smile is wobbly, not the confident thing she usually wears. “I don’t want you to move to Fontana Ridge.”
My heartbeat stutters. “What?”
She shakes her head, dark waves tumbling around her shoulders. “I don’t want you to move to Fontana Ridge. I don’t want you to find a job there. I don’t want you to give up your lifestyle for me.”
“Stevie—”
She cuts me off with a lift of her hand. It’s shaking, and my chest squeezes at the sight of it. It takes everything in me not to reach for her.
“No, let me finish,” she says, her eyes focused squarely on me. There’s determination in them, like I saw when she was healing from her concussion or working on the Airstream or trying to care for her family. “I don’t want you to do that becauseIwon’t be there. I have a proposal for you.”
I listen as she tells me her plan to travel during the off-season and head back to Fontana Ridge with the tourists.
She’s out of breath when she finishes, this woman who is in better shape than I could ever hope to be, and I wonder if her heart is racing as fast as mine. “And I was wondering, if you wouldn’t want to come with me. If you don’t, it’s okay, but…” she trails off, holding my gaze. I watch as she settles something in her head, taking a deep breath before she finishes. “You don’t have to come with me, but I’d like it if you would, because I love you, Jack Sullivan, and I don’t want to live my dream with anyone else.”
I stare at her for a heartbeat that feels too long, wondering if all of this is an elaborate dream. But then I decide I don’t care if it is. I close the distance between us, wrapping a hand around her neck, pulling her against me.
Her mouth hits mine like a freight train. The kiss isn’t gentle. It’s a clash of tongues and teeth. Her back hitting the doorframe, her hands in my hair, her thighs coming up around my waist. Stevie isn’t a soft woman, but she melts against me, and she feels too good for this to be a dream.
With a foot, I kick the door closed, and press her up against the nearest wall, dragging my mouth from hers, over the curve of her jaw, down the slope of her neck, across the delicate skin at the collar of her sweater. She tastes better than I could have imagined.
“Stevie,” I breathe into her skin, and she shivers against me, her breath coming in short pants in my ear, hot on my skin. “Are you really here?”
She pulls back from me, her eyes connecting with mine. The pupil swallows up the hazel. “I’m here,” she says. Her voice is a rasp, the scrape of sandpaper. “I’m here with you.”
Her chest heaves against mine as I draw my hand over her jaw, pulling at her swollen bottom lip with my thumb. “And you love me?”
She hadn’t said it on the phone, and I didn’t want her to say anything she didn’t mean. She’s already given up so much of herself. I wanted her to keep this until she was ready to say it. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t wonder. That I didn’t crave to hear her say it.
She leans forward, eating up the space between our lips. Hers coast against my own as she says, “And I love you, Jack Sullivan.”
Her words feel like honey dripping over my skin. I want her off this wall, splayed out beneath me. I want her hair wrappedaround my fist and her mouth on my skin. I want her in more ways than I can cohesively conceive right now.
I pull back from her and let her legs go, dropping her feet softly onto the hardwood. My gaze travels over her face, lower, before coming back up. She looks disheveled, like she’s been traveling all day and kissed in the cold. “I like your plan,” I tell her.
Her expression clears a little, and for a moment she looks almost shy. Unsure. I want to wipe it away. “Yeah?”
I nod. “A lot. But is it what you really want? I don’t want you to sacrifice anything else. I want—God, I want you to have everything.”
“I want you,” she says, holding my gaze. It sends awareness spiraling down my spine, settling in the bottom of my stomach, the backs of my knees, the palms of my hands. They itch with the need to touch her, to make her feel the way I am right now.
