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She pulls back, and I know I’ve said too much.
“Dean.”
“I know. Too soon.”
To my surprise, she shakes her head. “No. I think I do love you.”
“Shit. I didn’t mean for you to say it first. I love the hell out of you, Dakota.”
Her phone rings in the other room, and her whole body tenses against me.
“Ignoring your family?” I ask, arching an eyebrow.
“Kinda.”
“You need to figure out what to say to them because at some point, you’ll need to go home and get your stuff.”
“And find an apartment,” she adds.
“No need. You’ll live with me,” I say.
“Come on,” she says.
“Don’t you want to live with me?”
“Ideally, yes. It’s a lot to think about.”
I set the waffles down on the table and pull her to me, circling my arms around her waist. “It can wait until morning, after you’ve had a good sleep and you’re thinking clearly.”
She smirks. “That means you’ll have to let me sleep. Literally sleep. Is that possible?”
“I’ll even sleep on the sofa if you prefer,” I say innocently.
“That I can’t allow,” she says.
The oven beeps, and the bacon is ready. We sit down at the breakfast bar with plates of waffles, bacon, and maple syrup. This eventually turns into licking maple syrup off each other’s fingers, then off of other parts of our bodies.
This, then, leads to a much-needed shower. Later, we take a nighttime stroll around the square, and I point out all the important sights.
Only a handful of shops are still open at this time of night, but the town is a heck of a lot more active than it used to be. If I’d met Dakota five years ago, I would never have thought about taking her for a walk around here. Between the abandoned textile mill, empty storefronts, and the shuttered juvenile residential treatment hospital, there was not much to see.
We spend some time at the bookstore, where I insist on buying her everything that catches her eye.
Around the opposite end of the square, I point out the old textile mill that’s now rehabbed as a maker space for local artists and yarn spinners. The residential facility has been gutted and remade into apartments by the Wood brothers, something I never thought I would see in Fate. Most of the slumlords and absentee commercial building owners have been driven away by the sheer will and creativity of the townspeople, and I’m damn proud to have been a part of that.
“It’s no Tampa, but we’ve got some stuff,” I say.
Dakota, looking adorable as she wears a pair of my old basketball shorts and my hoodie, slings an arm around my waist. “Your town has the best stuff. You and I live here.”
I lead her by the hand into the nearby visitor’s center, away from prying eyes, and kiss her hard on the lips.
“What is that monstrosity?” Dakota says, pointing to something behind me and laughing.
I don’t even have to look. “That’s the world’s largest ball of yarn.”
“No way!”
I turn and gesture toward the plaque. “Well, actually, we claimed it, and it turned out to not be quite true. It was a whole rivalry between Fate and Gold Hill across the river. Finally, the Guinness people allowed us to claim the title of world’s largest handspun ball of wool yarn made from local sheep, but that doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue.”
