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“Yeah?” Josie said, dumping the brushes into their bucket with shaking hands. “Anything?”
“Anything.”
She could make a joke, or she could be smart and sarcastic and string him along. But that hurt she’d been avoiding for days wasn’t going to let her do any of that.
“What if I ask you to stay?” Her voice was small and quiet. At first she didn’t think that he’d heard her properly because he smiled, a brilliant, bright thing and shuffled on his knees to pull something out of his back pocket.
“Well, I don’t really have a choice in that now… Made my bed, so to speak.” He held up a ring of keys that Josie would know anywhere.
“Luke’s keys?”
“My keys,” Sawyer said with a voice so gentle it was just a notch above a whisper. “Ourkeys. If you want them.”
Josie’s mind was pulling a blank, not quite able to keep up, and the confusion on her face must have shown because Sawyer’s smile gentled to match his voice.
“I bought the ranch. Instead of being an idiot and running away when it wasall too hard. So no matter what you decide about me, about us, those guys have a home that you’re always welcome at.”
He nodded at Indy and Clyde behind her, who were still watching everything with cautious eyes. Josie started to feel her chin wobble at that, just a little, and desperately tried to stifle the tears, knowing that she had no chance of remaining dignified. She’d cried enough for one week. How did she even have any water left in her body at this point? Since she couldn’t say anything, her throat feeling swollen and blocked, Sawyer kept on talking.
“I mean it,” he said earnestly, still on his knees like he’d forgotten how to stand. “You don’t have to have anything to do with me, not if you don’t want to. I mean, I’d love it, you know, if we could figure things out, move forward and all that. But if you don’t want to, if you decide you still hate my guts, that doesn’t mean the horses are going anywhere. It doesn’t mean I’m changing the locks either. You can come and go as you please, for forever. I’ll just hide in the house if you don’t want to see me or something—”
“Sawyer, shut up,” Josie croaked, managing to push the words out before she stumbled over to him and pretty much fell on top of him.
She wrapped her arms around his neck, not caring if he couldn’t breathe, just squeezing as tight as she could in a hug that she was terrified of ending. She was so afraid that if she let go, he’d vanish into a puff of smoke, that this whole thing would be a hallucination and she’d be back on her own, wondering where it had all gone wrong.
But then she felt large, warm hands on her back and arms like a blanket wrapping around her. For the first time in days she felt safe, and she let out the breath that had been stuck in her chest ever since she’d seen the corner of his note sticking out of that stupid bucket.
“You could have texted, idiot,” she said, voice muffled against his neck, but she wasn’t willing to move, not one inch. Sawyer chuckled, and she felt the rumble of it through her body, their chests pressed together.
“I figured you deserved more than a text,” he said. He stood up, not releasing his grip around her waist and lifting her up into the air, which was a good thing since she still point-blank refusedto let go of him and it would take a power tool to remove her. Sawyer just held her there, her feet dangling above the ground like a marionette puppet.
“I never hated your guts,” she said, voice still muffled.
“I’m glad to hear it. But what I said in my note, the one I never should have written, it’s still true.”
A flash of panic pulsed through Josie at that. She never wanted to think about that note again. “What part was true?” she asked, pulling back enough so that she could see his face.
“The part where I said I owe you apologies forever.”
“One will do,” Josie said firmly. “I’ll just remember it and replay it when needed.”
Sawyer laughed, and it was so good to see his smile again that Josie laughed as well. Sawyer finally put her down, placing her feet gently on the ground and smoothing some stray hairs from her face.
“You don’t really think you don’t belong here, do you?” she asked, recalling the note’s words despite how much she had hated reading them.
He looked away for just a heartbeat. “I don’t know,” he said. “I want to belong here. I want it more than anything.”
Josie put a hand against his cheek, tracing the contour of his cheekbone with her thumb. “You do,” she said. “Trust me.”
He turned his head and kissed her palm, a light peck that sent tingles of electricity shooting up her arm.
“Luke’s going to therapy,” she said, edging into the topic sideways to see how he would react.
“I’m glad. I told him I’d help him look for someone worth seeing.”
“Well, maybe you should look for someone to talk to as well,” Josie said softly, still stroking his cheek.
He smiled against her hand and nodded. “I told you,” he said. “Whatever you ask of me, I’ll do it.”
