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I follow his movements so well. We let our motion and the music do the talking, and it’s like we’re telepathically linked with how in sync we are with one another. He makes me feel so damn alive that I can’t possibly imagine life without Jack in it now. Our passion had burned so hot for a year so far, and it felt like the sun itself would burn out before our love did.
Dusk turned to night, and night into twilight. We had the time of our lives together, and were never more than a foot away from one another for long. He treats me like a queen, because he is my king. As people head home, our kingdom empties, and we look at one another, smitten and love drunk like we’re just a pair of hormonal teenagers. It’s not far off from the truth for me, but it just made me feel all the sexier that I had turned him into one as well.
We stumble toward the ranch house, both of us exhausted from the night's events. Would we enjoy our first night as husband and wife together in a more traditional, carnal sense? Or would we bilk cliché and simply go to sleep? I had read that the latter is more common than people believe, given weddings are surprisingly exhausting.
Jack sweeps me off my feet nonetheless, and carries me across the threshold, all while I giggle like a lunatic. “You didn’t need to do that.”
“Hearing you laugh is absolutely why I did need to do that.”
I slap him on the chest. I love him. And with the way he looks at me? It’s absolutely mutual.
Our union would be eternal ecstasy forevermore, a love that would never burn out.
12
JACK
SIX MONTHS LATER
“And there we go. It’s official. The Perry and Thomas ranches are now one,” Sarah says, as she finishes laying down her signature.
It’d been a long fight to get all this done. Even when arraigned for all of his crimes, Max hired lawyers to snap back at his daughter, and things got messy. Thankfully, Sarah’s lawyers had more than enough cunning to win over the judge, so Sarah got her inheritance, while Max got twenty years.
She negotiated pretty hard, wanting to make sure everyone and everything was taken care of. This included having me hire all the wranglers and other workers who were employed by the Perry ranch and honoring all the contracts, they had made, to the best of my ability for a few years after the fact. Then on top of it all, Sarah gets a little bit of a nest egg to take care of her for the rest of her life if she’s smart about it.
“And you’re free of your father and your future as a rancher,” I reply, stroking my chin. “Off to wedding-planner college or whatever you need to do to be a professional wedding planner?”
She laughs. “No. Not just yet. It’s weird, but I’ve never really not been bound to the land. My father was always too much of a control freak to ever leave the ranch for too long, so the only vacations I ever got were at an amusement park a county over. So I think it’s time I remedy that.”
“Off to see the world, huh? Where to first?”
“Where our supposed honeymoon would have been.”
There’s a smile on her face suggesting I should have known where that was. Which is fair, given we were engaged. But I truly remembered nothing, and instead stare at her like I’m a deer in headlights.
“Italy, Jack. We were going to go to Italy.”
“Oh. Right. That did seem kind of fun. If only for the food.”
Lily and I had spent two weeks in the Bahamas. Nothing too exotic for a honeymoon, but I did gain appreciation for fried alligator in between spending most of my time there in a room with Lily.
Sarah closes up her folders and sighs. “It’ll probably be a bit before we ever see one another again.”
I let out a deep sigh. “Yeah. We have no official reason to be around each other anymore. No sham of an engagement, no business meetings, no running into one another in town.”
“No pointless family feud. The idiotic thing that brought us together in the first place, I’ll remind you.”
I smile. “You’re always welcome here, Sarah. This is still your home, even if I technically own where you grew up.”
“Never doubted it. But you ought to invite me back sometime, and not just rely on me getting homesick.”
“Invite you back for what?”
“I don’t know. Your and Lily’s fifth wedding anniversary? The anniversary of us ending this dumb feud?” Her eyes narrow at me. “Or how about your kid’s first birthday party?”
More laughter from me. “What, just writing off that maybe Lily and I want to be child-free?”
“You’re so full of shit, Jack. And if you weren’t, that’d be a shame, because you’re going to be one hell of a father.”
