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Last week he’d gotten porcupine needles in his nose. Alexis had to sedate him and take them out with pliers. This wouldn’t have been noteworthy except that he’d done the exact same thing the week before that and clearly learned nothing about sniffing porcupines.

I couldn’t say I could really fault him for chasing down things that could hurt him. I couldn’t stop doing it either.

We’d already hosed ourselves down using the same stuff we’d cleaned Hunter with, so this was just a quick shower to wash our hair.

She stood under the water rinsing out the shampoo, and I wrapped my arms around her from behind and kissed the side of her neck.

My body reacted to her. Everything in me reacted to her, all the time.

When she called, my mood lifted. When I saw her coming down the driveway, my heart would pound. When she was here, I slept better. When she was gone, I was sad. She felt like the sun. Like she was the reason for everything. Like I’d always been waiting for her to get closer and bring me to life.

I pressed my hard-on into her, and she leaned into my chest. “Don’t you want to wait until we get out?”

I shook my head. “No.”

She laughed and turned around to kiss me. “Let’s rinse and get in bed,” she whispered. “We have another hour until check-in.”

We toweled off and barely made it to the mattress. I slid over her body, both of us still damp.

I pulled the blankets over us and caged her under me, warming her up. She nuzzled my Adam’s apple with her nose and wrapped her arms around my neck, and I felt like my entire universe was here in this bed, like everything that mattered was somehow right here in this dusty garage in this tiny town in the middle of nowhere.

Nothing could convince me this woman wasn’t made for me to love. I think my soul recognized hers the second I laid eyes on her. Our bodies knew it the very first night.

The power she had over me terrified me. But it also gave me clarity.

There is a peace in knowing the one thing you can’t live without. It simplifies all things. There was her, and then there was everything and everyone else. And only she really mattered. It was easy to know it.

I just wished she knew it too.

I hovered over her, kissing her softly. I brushed her wet hair off her forehead, and she gazed up at me with those beautiful brown eyes, smiling, and I couldn’t not say it. It came out like an exhale, like something that was always there, only now I was finally giving it a name and breathing it into the universe and acknowledging that it existed.

“I love you,” I whispered.

And then everything changed.

Chapter 31

Alexis

The words drained me like a plug being pulled from a basin.

I wiggled away from him and sat up against his headboard. “Why did you just say that to me?”

He sat back in the bed. “What?”

“That you love me. Why did you say it?”

“Because I feel it?”

“You can’t feel it.”

He looked amused. “Well, I do. And it’s not a big deal. If you’re not there yet, it’s fine.”

But it wasn’t fine.

“What are you doing?” I said. “We’re not doing this.”

“Doing what?”