"Then we won't."
She nodded once more and went back to the kitchen.
He stayed in the hall and listened to her voice pick back up the cover debate with Makenzie and thought about the wordyet.
Yet,was something to work with.
CHAPTER 19
EMILY
She was on the back porch at nine that night when it happened.
Not anything dramatic. There wasn’t a crisis, phone call, or emergency. Just the compound settling into its evening rhythm around her, and Clover asleep across her feet, and the Colorado sky doing the thing it did at night out here where the stars were unreasonably present and the dark was actually dark and not the orange-gray murk of city sky. Crystal clear.
She'd been thinking all day.
About forty-eight hours and going home and the wordyetand the specific way he'd saidit will always be your choicelike the choice being hers was not a consolation prize but the whole point.
She'd been thinking about Makenzie's face when she talked about Irish. About Savannah's voice when she saidthis place is mostly just people looking out for each other.About the morning she'd bought the coloring book in the Grand Ridge and stuffed it in her tote bag like a secret, and how it had turned out not to be a secret at all, just a thing she needed, and nobody here had made her feel anything other than completely fine about needing it. There were stuffed animals and little toys all overthe clubhouse. The girls had playdates and pizza parties and weekend slumber parties. They’d told her about a local BDSM with a monthly DDlg event that sounded amazing.
She'd been thinking about Rampage. His quiet confidence that made her feel secure. The way he didn’t push her into things. How for the last week his hand would settle on the small of her back when they walked, and how they’d started to kiss before bed every night. He was taking things slow, almost painfully slow, but in a respectful way. In a way that allowed her room to think and process and decide for herself. There was no pressure from him. It felt like he already knew. Knew she was his and he was waiting for her to come to the same conclusion.
His kisses made her want more. She wanted to feel his fingers and lips on her body again, the way she had in the shower. But, without being sure of what was to come, she didn’t want to risk having to say goodbye to him after taking that step. She had a feeling, deep down, if she were to sleep with Rampage, she wouldn’t ever leave this place.
Rampage came out at half past nine. She heard the door, heard him cross the porch, felt the particular shift in the air that meant he was close.
He didn't sit. Stood at the porch rail, looking out at the tree line like he was reading it. He was nothing if he wasn’t intense.
"You've been thinking hard today," he said.
"Is it visible?"
"To me."
She looked at the sky. "I've been thinking about what you said this morning. About it being my choice."
He didn't answer. Just waited with that complete, unhurried patience. He was an expert at silent strength.
"I've spent a lot of my life," she said, "making choices because they were the sensible thing. The independent thing. The thing that proved I didn't need anything from anyone." She pulled herblanket tighter. "And I'm starting to wonder how many of those choices were actually about what I wanted versus what I thought I was supposed to want."
The porch was quiet.
"What do you want?" he asked. Low. Direct.
She looked at him. He'd turned from the rail and was watching her with that level, certain intense attention that she no longer flinched from, that she had started, somewhere in the last two weeks, to move toward instead.
"I want to stay," she said in a whisper. "I want… I want the thing I've been reading about and thinking about and telling myself was just a preference for fiction." She held his gaze. "I want what the others have. What I've been watching all week. The structure and the safety and the—" She stopped. Steadied. "I want someone to tell me I'm good when I've been good and I want someone to deal with me when I'm not and I want to not have to carry everything by myself all the time." She takes a breath. "And I want it to be you. Specifically. Which I know is…it's fast and it's a lot and I'm still?—"
"Emily." His voice was quiet.
She stopped.
He came to the chair beside her and sat.
"I know it's fast," she said.
"I know."
