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“Yes,” she said. “Let me.”

“Okay.”

She took the book over to the bed and got in it, partly beneath the covers, sitting against the pillow, leaning against the headboard. He joined her in bed, and she opened the book and started to read. She wasn’t sure how they shifted, but eventually, Levi was lying across her lap, his eyes closed. She held the book over him with one hand, and with the other, she pushed her fingers through his hair as she read about Elizabeth Bennet sparring with Mr. Darcy.

“Sounds familiar,” he murmured.

“Yeah, just a little bit,” she said.

“I like it.” He paused. “I like being able to hear something my mom read. Thank you.”

She finished the chapter, even though the letters were blurry because her eyes had filled with tears she was trying not to show him, and put the book down. And then they both got beneath the covers, and he pulled her into his arms.

Quinn was sleepy, but she knew she wouldn’t just be falling asleep. Because she wanted to live in this moment for as long as possible. In the sticky, sweet honey of it all. With Levi Granger, of all people. And maybe separately, it had been said that both of them were a little bit difficult. But together, right now, everything felt wonderful.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

LEVI MADE HER BREAKFAST, which was very nice, but did not ease the fact that she had to do the walk of shame back to the farmhouse now.

“Am I going to have to worry about your sister showing up to my house with a shotgun?”

Quinn would’ve loved to laugh and say no. Because it was a ridiculous image. To him, maybe. To her, it seemed all too possible.

“I’ll try to stop her from showing up with a shotgun,” she said. “I don’t actually know what her policy is on all of this. By the time we found out that Alaina was pregnant—” His expression shifted, just slightly, but she could see genuine horror there. “Not that that’s the same. But by the time we all found out that Alaina was having a baby, the guy had gone. And Gus had already thrown his hat into the ring and offered to marry her. So. Fia never really got to grab her shotgun. I’m not saying that she won’t.”

“Right,” he said.

“Thanks for breakfast. And the sex.” She stretched up on her toes and kissed his mouth, and then he wrapped his arm around her waist and looked her dead in the eyes.

“It wasn’t just sex. You know that, right?”

She felt warm. And she didn’t know why he was saying that to her. Because he’d said that he didn’t want anything. And the mention of pregnancy had terrified him; she could see it in the look on his face.

And yet... Then he did things like this. Except maybe there was ground between a fling—which she had already decided this could never be—and marriage and the like, and he wanted to make sure that she knew that even if it wasn’t everything, it was different.

“I know,” she said softly.

“Thanks for reading to me.”

And there was a wealth of words in that simple statement. Because her reading to him no longer felt like something condescending. He took it the way that she meant it. That she had found a way to fit around him, around his life, and was just enjoying the ways they were different, the ways she could help him and the ways he could help her.

“I’ll...I’ll see you later?”

“You know where I live. I haven’t been able to get rid of you for a few weeks now, and suddenly you’re worried that you’re not going to see me?”

No. Suddenly she was worried about how badly he wanted her there, and whether or not she was overstepping, because her feelings were involved.

Oh, boy, were they ever involved.

“See you later.”

She bolstered herself on the drive back home with a fortifying breath, with the windows down.

She was grateful that she’d been with Levi a few times before Fia had found out, but it still felt new and raw and not like something she wanted to share, but this was what happened when you lived in your sisters’ pockets.

She didn’t play any music or anything as she drove. She just replayed the events of the night before, reinforcing that this was right. That they were right.

That everything they did, everything they were, was special.