Page 86 of Where She Belongs

No. He couldn’t let her push him away. Not now. Not after everything. “Rylee, I think I started falling for you when we were kids. The first time you followed me to that treehouse. The first time you skipped rocks across the pond. The first time you made me pinky promise that I’d do something for you. It all started coming back to me the second you stepped foot in Rocky Ridge again. And this time I-I can’t let you go.” His brows pulled together as he waited for her response. He hadn’t thought he’d destroyed the tenuous relationship they’d started to build, but then he’d been wrong about things before.

He was rambling now. He had the urge to fling more words at her—anything to help her understand he was going to be better. For her, he’d do anything. But when he opened his mouth, she placed her palm over it.

“You’re talking too much,” she whispered.

His brows lifted and she giggled. “I knew something wasn’t right when I saw that picture. I knew you wouldn’t do something to hurt me like that.” She frowned and looked away for a moment before returning her gaze to his. “You did hurt me, though. When you said I didn’t belong. And when you stood in my yard and wouldn’t give me the truth⁠—”

He pulled her hand from his mouth and shook his head. “I was a big fool. I didn’t mean⁠—”

Her smile was soft and it pulled him up short. “We’re human. We’re going to make mistakes in the heat of the moment. Under duress and when we feel backed into a corner. That’s not an excuse, by any means, but I’d like to think I was raised with the ability to offer a little grace and understanding. Heaven knows I’m going to need it myself.” The light returned to her eyes and with it a little mischief. “You haven’t seen that side of me yet, Tater.”

Then she stepped back out of his hands. “I have to call your sister.”

“Faith?”

“I asked her to find homes for the goats.”

Tate went still. “When.”

“Before you got here.” She held his eyes the whole time she said it, which he decided later was the bravest piece of work anybody managed in that yard. “I told her the brown two were bonded and couldn’t be split up.”

He got a hand around the back of her neck and put his forehead down against hers and stayed there.

“Call her,” he said. “Tell her we’re keeping them.”

“We,” Rylee said.

“We.”

Tilting his head back, he chuckled. Tate returned his focus to her once more. “You forget I know just how wild you can be. You weren’t exactly the sort of kid who did what you were expected to.”

“No, I don’t suppose I was,” she murmured.

“Are you two done? I’ve fixed us some sweet tea and I want to get to know my future nephew-in-law.”

Rylee’s eyes widened and she whirled around to glower at her aunt, though there was little venom in it. “Roxy!”

“What?” she asked with a shrug. “September seems like a nice time of year for a wedding, don’t you think?”

Even from where Tate stood, he could see the pink spreading over Rylee’s face. When she cut him a look, he nearly stumbled. He knew her well enough to read that look. She was considering it.

But then she called out to her aunt, “Roxy, I don’t think⁠—”

He stopped her by crooking his pinky with hers and pulling up their laced fingers to his lips. “Since I was a kid, I always knew I’d marry you one day.”

The way joy brightened her whole face filled him with a sweet sense of satisfaction and exhilaration. But when she leaned closer to him so their noses almost touched and whispered, “Pinky promise?” he knew without a doubt that their lives had just changed forever.

“Pinky promise.”

EPILOGUE

END OF SEPTEMBER

“Have you seen my brother?”

Rylee turned from the conversation she was in the middle of at the sound of her husband’s voice. Tate looked drop-dead gorgeous in a tux, but she still preferred him in his usual work clothes. There was just something about knowing that strong cowboy had a thing for her.

“Hiding from your photographer, last I saw,” Faith said. “The man’s been best-manning since six this morning. Let him breathe.”