You could wake up and know what you’re doing and who you’re doing it with.
I picture mornings at the ranch, coffee on the porch with Dallas before chores, Lila sleeping warm in her pajamas. Afternoons taking photos of the horses with a real camera instead of a cracked phone, evenings scheduling posts while Dallas finishes paperwork across the table.
I picture having roots that aren’t just in other people’s expectations.
I picture him.
The future doesn’t look like a locked door or a blank wall. It looks like a road. A messy one, with potholes and snowdrifts and probably Lawson-related drama, but a road I could pick.
Running back to the city, to my father, to the life I walked away from, feels like putting the veil back over my face and pretending I didn’t already tear it off.
Staying, figuring everything out, that feels like the bravest, most reckless thing I could do.
And Lord help me…
It’s never appealed to me more.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Dallas
January 20th
I should’ve knownthe second she stepped into my kitchen tonight, cheeks flushed from the cold, hair soft around her shoulders, eyes too bright, that I wasn’t walking out of this evening with my sanity intact.
Hell, I’m not sure I even made it through dessert.
Lila went to bed hours ago, and Faith stayed. Not because she had to. Not because she didn’t know how to leave. But because she wanted to.
And that alone does things to me I’m not proud of.
She’s standing by the sink now, talking with her hands the way she does when she’s half nervous, half excited, something about social media strategies and color palettes, and I’m doing a piss-poor job pretending to pay attention to anything except her mouth.
I lean against the counter, arms folded, pretending I’m not cataloging every place I want to touch her.
She catches me staring.
“What?” she asks, half-laughing.
“Nothing,” I lie.
“Dallas.”
I push off the counter slowly. “You look good in my kitchen.”
Her breath stutters just slightly. She tries to cover it with a smile, but it doesn’t quite reach her eyes. Not because she’s hiding anything, but because she’s giving more away.
“Is that so?”
“Yeah,” I say. “Real good.”
Then I kiss her hard, tasting everything on her lips.
Her fingers sink into my shoulders hard enough to bruise. Her mouth opens under mine, needy, reckless, perfect.
Then I push her top up and off, and when that black cotton bra appears, plain, soft, not meant for seducing anyone, I feel my spine snap.
She kisses me as if she’s running from something, or toward something, and I grip the back of her neck, twist into her hair, and she moans. A sound from her throat, from her belly, from the part of her that’s done pretending she doesn’t want this.
