Bear was at the counter, mug in hand, already dressed, already watching with a faint smile as she greeted the dogs. He set the mug down and crossed to her, and she tipped her chin up. He caught the back of her neck in one hand and kissed her.
“I need to go. I have to open the shop,” she protested when they came up for air.
“Okay,” he rumbled against her lips. “Text me when you get there.”
“Bear.”
“Text me,” he repeated.
She shook her head. “I’ve been getting myself places for thirty-one years.”
He opened his mouth to say more, but she pushed up on her toes and pressed a kiss to the crease between his brows—the one that lived there permanently, like it had been carved in. “Stop worrying, Care Bear. I’ll see you later.”
“Greta—” He started as she went to the door, then cut himself off.
She glanced back at him, saw the internal war he was fighting with himself clear as day on his face. He wanted to talk about last night. About what it meant.
“I’ll see you later,” she repeated and walked out before he started a conversation she wasn’t ready to have yet.
Outside, the rain had thinned to a fine mist that fogged glasses, found collar gaps, and made every surface shine with a thin, cold gloss. She got her jacket halfway zipped, took two steps off the porch, and heard the truck.
X’s truck. The new Ram pulled up to the curb with the radio cutting off mid-bass note.
Logan climbed down from the passenger side.
X leaned over the center console and took in the scene through the open door: the mist, Greta on the porch steps in jeans that were clearly held together by stubbornness and a prayer, wearing a flannel that clearly did not belong to her. His face went through three expressions in about two seconds before it landed on a grin so wide it ought to have required a permit.
She pointed at him and mouthed, “Don’t.”
He threw both hands up in surrender and reversed out of the space, still grinning.
Well, fuck. Everyone at the ranch was going to know about her and Bear within the hour.
She turned to Logan.
He’d made it to the bottom porch step and stopped. He was fifteen years old and already taller than the average man, putting his gaze even with hers. He had his father’s eyes, and right now those eyes were doing a complete inventory of the situation.
“Hi, Greta.”
“Hi, Logan.”
His cheeks flushed, and he looked away first. At the street. At something down the block. But then he must have decided he couldn’t avoid this conversation and looked back at her.
“Please don’t mess my dad up.”
She opened her mouth. She wanted to make a joke. She had jokes ready—she always had jokes ready, it was her best and worst quality—but right now every single one of them died somewhere in her throat.
He deserved better than a joke.
“I’m going to try really hard not to,” she said.
He thought about that. She watched him turn it over. He wasn’t looking for reassurance— he was looking for honesty, andshe’d given him honesty, and she watched him decide whether it was enough.
He nodded. “Okay.”
Then he went up the steps past her and pushed through the front door, and she heard King’s frantic barking erupt from inside, heard Logan’s low voice saying “hey, buddy, hey, big dummy,” and then the door banged shut.
She stood there another second. Watching the closed door. Thinking about a fifteen-year-old boy who’d asked her, quietly, in the rain, not to hurt someone he reluctantly, grudgingly loved.
