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“What are you thinking right now?” she asks, her eyes searching my face.

“Just that I’m happy. So damn happy.”

That seems to be enough for her right now because she smiles. “Me, too.”

A few slow kisses later, I reluctantly pull back. “We should probably get clean. I think we might have used up our head start.”

Her eyes widen and she looks around the shower until she spots her shampoo. “Oh, we don’t want to make everyone wait.”

“We don’t have to rush, cowgirl.” I grab the bottle and squirt some into my palm. “Turn around and I’ll get the mud out.”

She obliges, wiping down her stomach as I lather her hair. The space fills with the smell of her shampoo: lilac. As I massage her scalp, she makes little sounds letting me know she’s enjoying this. I work the suds farther down her strands to dislodge the streaks of dirt.

“Tip your head back,” I instruct so I can rinse everything out.

“This feels amazing,” she mumbles.

She lets me condition her hair as she uses her body wash and loofah to scrub her body and insists that she washes my hair. When I lean forward she laughs.

“Everything is going to go right into your eyes if you stand like that, Tommy.”

Instead of trying to bend backwards, I get on my knees in front of her, kissing her smooth belly.

“I suppose I can work with that,” she says, working my shampoo and conditioner into my hair. Her fingers take their time massaging and I let mine explore her back and ass, memorizing the shape and feel of her.

Once we’re both clean, I step out for our towels and close us back in the steamy space. I somehow missed that she brought in a second towel which she uses to twist up her hair in. Sam is thorough as she dries herself off and uses her towel to get the drops on my back that I apparently missed. It’s sweet and such a detail-oriented thing that she would notice.

I think I might purposefully leave my back wet from now on just so she has an excuse to touch me a little more.

Even though she’s using travel-sized bottles of her products, the way they’re neatly on the counter, with their labels facing us, feels like it won’t be a big shift for her to be here. That our lives can easily come together without huge bumps while we try to figure things out. These moments have been smooth as we watch and learn how the other lives.

I put my face moisturizer on while watching her work her way through a couple of the bottles.

“What is that?”

“My face lotion,” I reply.

“It says it has SPF in it, but we’re going to be inside.” Her eyebrows furrow and her nose scrunches just a little.

“Habit,” I say with a shrug. “I can burn pretty easily so I always use it.”

She nods. “I burn easily, too.”

“At least we know any kids we have will need to wear it.”

I hold perfectly still as what I said sinks in. I know that I want everything with Samantha, but when did I add kids to that picture?

Oh God, I should say something.

Anything.

She’s unscrewing a bottle of some sort of face product and my brain has officially short-circuited. It’s like I’m having an out-of-body experience just watching things happen. My mouth opens to speak and that’s as far as I get.

What the hell am I supposed to say? I can’t lie and say I don’t want kids with her. Because now that’s all I can picture. Little versions of the two of us running around with her blonde hair and sunscreen smeared hastily on their exposed skin as they barrel out of the house and onto the ranch to see the new foal.

I’m so screwed.

Chapter 51: Sam