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He didn’t think. He didn’t hedge. He just threw it out there.
And knew two things at once. One, that it was the God’s honest truth. And two, that he would do anything to make Everly smile at him like that.
As much and as often as possible.
“Me, too,” she whispered. “Peas are negotiable.”
And Blue stopped trying to shut off all the things coursing around in him. He picked her up, swinging her around until she wrapped her legs around his waist. Then he held her there while she threaded her arms around his neck and kissed him.
She kissed him like every fairy-tale ending he’d never believed in.
She kissed him until his heart hurt, but this time, because it was swelling. Expanding, whether he liked it or not—and he was pretty sure he liked it.
Or he liked her, anyway, which was the same thing.
She kissed him until they were both laughing, and Blue pulled back so he could look up at her, pretty and perfect and entirely his. Maybe she always had been. Maybe he’d just needed her to find his heart for him and bring it home.
“I love you,” she whispered, right there against his mouth.
“I love you, too,” he told her, and vowed, there and then, that he would spend the rest of his life showing her exactly how much.
• • •
On the first day that could reasonably be called spring, with the sun poking through and the temperature downright mild by Alaskan standards, Blue rolled over in bed and nudged Everly awake.
She woke slowly, the way she always did, especially when he’d already had her awake and beneath him once this morning already. Her green eyes were cloudy and her mouth a little sulky as she stirred, but she smiled when she focused on him.
“Congratulations, baby,” Blue murmured. “You made it through an Alaskan winter. Not many people can say that.”
“Does that make me an Alaskan?”
“Don’t get carried away.”
She laughed, and he let her lie there as he went and powered up the generator, then prepared her some coffee with the machine she’d brought when she moved in, because his woman needed her espresso. His cabin sat up the hill a ways, with silence all around and nothing but water and mountains out his windows. The view had always soothed him, and it still did. Snowcapped glory and the endless sea. It made his soul feel light.
But it was the woman in his bed who’d set him free.
She’d brought him back to life.
Everly had talked him into Christmas in Chicago with both their families. He’d caught up with his stepsisters and their lives. He and Ron had gone out for a beer. He couldn’t say they were buddies or were likely to end up best friends, but it had been fine.
Good, even. There might be some scar tissue, but the wound was closed. Blue was sure of it.
“I’m glad you came,” his mother had said the morning he’d said good-bye. Everly had been in the same room, chatting happily with Ron. He liked knowing she was there. He liked having her close. “I hope we’ll see you again soon.”
She’d been stiff. Awkward, as if she were waiting for him to hurt her again.
He’d done that, he knew. To his own mother.
“I love you, Mom,” he said gruffly. He’d pulled her into his arms and hugged her, tight. “And I’m glad you’re happy. I really am.”
About thirty years late, but it was something.
More than something, he’d realized, when she started to shake. And had then cried all over him.
Everly had started crying, too, and soon Blue hadbeen trapped between two weeping females, both clinging to him.
He and Ron had stared at each other in a perfect moment of horrified male communion, and Blue knew that it would all be okay. That he could make it right, those years he’d been off being a bonehead.