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“You don’t have to do that. I’ll be fine,” Thea said.

Gage looked back and forth between Brett and Thea. “I’ll call in the morning.” He picked up his worn-out baseball cap and headed for the door.

As soon as they were alone, Brett asked, “So, how was it?”

Thea slowly tilted her head from side to side.

“Let me guess, it was nothing,” Brett said.

Thea grinned and rolled her eyes. “I know it was silly to worry, but I’ve never done any of this before.”

“Not silly,” Brett said quickly.

“I’m so tired,” she whispered.

Brett stepped to the edge of her bed. “Then rest. I’ll be here when you wake up.”

Her eyes drooped, not closing all the way before opening again like she was trying to fight sleep. She looked as if she could sleep for a year, and the way her bruised eye was changing to a deeper mix of purple made Brett’s chest seize with a wave of fresh anger for whoever did this to his girl.

His girl?Where had that come from? It’d been a long time since she’d been his.

“Brett?”

“I’m here.” He jerked out of his daze and stepped closer, careful not to jostle the bed but needing to take her hand.

She looked out the window at the darkening sky again. “It’s getting late. You better head home.”

“If it’s okay with you, I’d like to stay. I don’t want to leave you alone.”

Thea’s gaze locked with his. Would she send him away?

Finally, she said, “Okay. You can stay. For the record, I think it’s a bad idea.”

Brett jerked back. “What are you talking about? All of my ideas are good ideas.”

“No, all of your ideas are extravagant and half baked,” she said.

He scratched his chin and made a show of thinking. “I don’t know how you could possibly get that idea.”

She raised her hand and ticked off on her fingers. “You bought a car when we were seniors that was falling apart because you said it just needed some TLC, you asked me to go on a date with you after the first time we sat next to each other in biology class, you wanted to run away and get married the weekend before we graduated.”

“Hey, I stand by all of those ideas,” Brett said. “Especially the last one.”

Thea sighed. “Who knows where we’d be if we’d gone through with it,” she said softly.

“Probably better off than we are right now.”

He’d never regretted asking her to skip town with him. There would have been a Texas-sized mess to deal with when they came home, but they would have been family–in the eyes of the state and God. Even without the confirmation of a marriage license, Thea was his one and only.

She always would be.

Her lips curved into a small smile as she finally let her eyes close all the way. “Thank you for staying.”

And before he had the chance to tell her she didn’t need to thank him because she already had and because there was no way he’d have been able to make any other choice after what she’d been through, her head tilted to the side, and she finally drifted into sleep.

She’d thanked him for staying, and it was a simple thing since he’d just told her he’d be there when she woke up. But he couldn’t help but wonder if she meant it in a bigger, more important way. Like thanking him for staying after finding out her reasons for leaving. Thanking him for understanding, and for not walking away.

The only question was, now that everything was out in the open, where would either of them go from here?