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“You didn’t—” Emmett began at the same time we all moved in her direction. Her eyes widened as we converged on the screen.
She had it on the one of us wrestling, generally looking like idiots.
“Delete it,” Emmett insisted.
Marley pulled her phone away as if to protect it. “These are amazing.” She glanced down at the screen and scrolled through several images of us in various stages of grappling with each other. “These are real. You’re brothers who run this place, but you love each other, too.”
Emmett pointed at the picture. “You think that’s love?”
“You weren’t punching each other,” Sebastian said.
The corners of her lips tipped up. “This is love. How you work together”—she scrolled through pictures of us measuring and tagging the trees—“and help each other.” She flipped through more images of us carrying Seb’s furniture into his new cabin and then the final one, the picture of standing in front of trees. A few of us were smiling, me wider than the others, and Emmett looked stoic. This was us. “You captured us, baby. I love it.”
“And another one bites the dust,” Talon grumbles to Sebastian.
But I couldn’t take my eyes off Marley. I drew her into my arms, the camera between our bodies. “Thank you for getting us.”
Her eyes filled with emotion. “You’re welcome.”
I kissed her softly, knowing my brothers were probably elbowing each other and rolling their eyes. Nothing mattered but the look on her face when she was scrolling through those pictures, the joy that she’d effectively captured.
When I finally lifted my head, they had scattered, probably to give us space. I brushed her hair out of her face. “I know we’d said we’d wait to see where this took us, but I can’t hold back anymore. I love you.”
My heart was full, but Marley wasn’t responding. I ignored the racing of my heart. “You don’t have to say anything. I just had to tell you how I felt.”
She went up on tiptoe and kissed me. “Heath, I—”
“Don’t say anything. I didn’t mean to rush you.”
“You aren’t.”
“Are you coming? Ireland brought a cake,” Sebastian said from the porch.
“We should go inside,” I said, interlacing my fingers with Marley’s and leading her inside. I tried not to think too hard about what it meant that I’d shared what was in my heart and she hadn’t said anything. But how else was I to take her lack of response?
Ireland sliced the cake and handed plates to everyone, and I tried to keep my panic at bay. Would Marley run? Would she move back to California? I was supposed to be patient.
She didn’t meet my gaze while she talked to the girls. I couldn’t get a read on what she was thinking.
The guys drifted outside on the deck like we usually did when all of us were gathered. I’d placed heaters here earlier, and Talon plugged them in.
“Everything okay with you and Marley?” Knox asked.
“They were sucking face after she took those pictures,” Talon said.
“Sucking face? What are you, twelve?” Emmett asked.
I wasn’t sure how to answer his question. But when Knox’s gaze turned to me, I said, “Seems to be.”
“She sticking around?” Sebastian asked as he grabbed beers from a cooler and handed them around.
“I think she will. It sounds like she has plans to help with social media throughout the season. I know she wants to get more pictures.” She can’t do that from California.
Knox took a bottle. “Someone could take those pictures for her if she needed to get back.”
I swallowed over the lump in my throat. “I’d like her to stay, but I don’t know what her plans are.”
“Don’t you think you need to have the conversation?” Knox asked.
