Page 38 of Holden: Bucked By Love (Crawford Ridge Ranch #1)

We committed to a lot of things that we let slide, and since I want to break that pattern, I take my own deep breath and nod.

It might seem silly, but doing the list as written has started to feel like taking our relationship seriously again.

So, I turn on the speaker and connect it to my phone, having downloaded the song earlier today.

"Do we play it on repeat, then, or just once?" I ask.

"How long is the song?"

Sadly, I know, because I looked. "About four and a half minutes."

"And how long do you think it will take us to cycle Main?" she asks.

I shrug. "In actual minutes, maybe five. In minutes my brain experiences, a million."

She laughs and shakes her head. "I think one time would fulfill the list."

Gratefully, I nod. "No one said we have to play it loud."

She grins. "It just said loudspeaker, not the actual volume of said speaker."

I stand the bike upright. "You get front seat."

"Why?"

I nearly chuckle at this surprising show of deference and shyness from her.

She was all over this type of stuff as a kid.

Fifteen years ago not one person in town would have blinked an eye at seeing Lenora Stilton doing the splits on the basket of a hot air balloon floating overhead, but apparently she thinks the sentiment has shifted and she'll be mocked.

"I promise you that no one will think anything about you doing this. It's me who's going to get all the looks and the whispers," I respond.

At this, her cheeks tug up. "That's so true. You've become known as the town grump."

"I have not."

She nods vigorously. "Oh, you have. Everyone is always like, 'Did Holden Crawford lose his smile out on the range?'" she teases.

I'm happy she's teasing, because it means she's relaxing, so I don't push back on the exaggeration.

"Front seat, shorty."

"Maybe I want to be on the rear seat so I can watch you fight the pedals with your boots," she teases..

I hold up a foot. "These boots do everything I ask them to, and they do it well."

She tosses her ponytail, glances down Main Street once, and with squared shoulders she climbs on to the front seat. I hitch my leg over the back seat and she looks at me over her shoulder.

"Hit play, Holden. Let's give Pinehaven something to talk about."

I do not want to hit play, but with my wife's ponytail nearly tickling my nose, and the way she's trying so hard to be brave, I don't have a choice. I may get mocked for this for the rest of my life, but as long as that life is spent with Leni, I'm willing to take the chance.

I hit play, and as soon as the song starts wailing through the speaker, I count with Leni and we push off.

It quickly becomes obvious that we've never tandem biked.

We're both trying to set the pace, and attempt to balance from different angles, and I have to put my foot down a few times to keep us from tipping over.

Leni hilariously keeps scowling back at me, and when I stop fighting for my own way of doing it and sync up with her, things smooth out.

There's a lesson in that, probably, but I'm too busy desperately avoiding eye contact with anyone we pass to think on it much.

We don't say a word as we pedal down the road, passing the feed store and the cafe, the bakery and gas station.

The people who are out pause and we get a few waves and whistles.

I try to smile back, to make it look like I'm in on the joke and having a great time, but mostly I'm trying not to have a nervous bladder condition.

Leni, unsurprisingly, sheds the shy thing and gets into it. She's waving and hooting and singing along at the top of her lungs, and it's a good thing I'm pedaling and balancing, otherwise we'd have already crashed.

I'm a sweaty mess by the time we pass the last buildings in town and the song ends.

Leni, however, tosses her head back and laughs at the cloudless sky as we keep cruising along.

Her laughter settles my heart rate and I don't fight my answering smile.

I don't laugh out loud—that's just not me—but I do take off my hat and wave it once around my head with a whoop, which makes Leni laugh again.

We stop pedaling once the buildings of town have grown small and the pavement has become rough. Leni's breathing hard as she puts her feet on the ground and twists to face me sideways, white teeth flashing in a smile wide enough to crack her skin.

"That was both embarrassing and freeing," she states.

"Not sure we'll live it down." I hold us steady with my feet firmly planted .

"I didn't see anyone recording us, so maybe it will become folklore," she giggles, putting a hand on her chest. "Whoo." Another deep breath. "Now what?"

I don't want to tell her just yet, so I tip my head at the road ahead and say, "We keep going, that way."

She looks down the road and then back at me. "You going to clue me in?"

"Nope," I respond with a smirk, and I put one booted foot on a pedal to signal we're moving again.

Leni chatters happily while we move along, and I give the occasional grunt or oh, yeah?

to let her know I'm listening. She tells me about which teachers the kids were assigned to next year, meeting Steph for lunch, and how Mason's swim team is doing.

I eat it up. I want her to talk. Her silence has been painful these past months.

I love being the receptacle of her thoughts and ideas.

It's when her chitchat dies down that I realize she's caught on to where we're going. She doesn't ask—probably afraid to assume—but she's onto me, and when I tell her to take the dirt road to our right I watch a smile lift the side of her face that I can see.

"I've always loved this place," she says dreamily as we pull up to a grove of quaking aspen a quarter mile down the rutted road.

I brake and we come to a stop in some shade.

The only sound here comes from the green leaves above us dancing in a light breeze that is saving me from heat stroke.

I consider myself to be in shape. I lead an active lifestyle.

But cycling a few miles out of town on a poorly paved road, with my heart rate increased by nerves, was harder work than I'd anticipated .

I step off the bike and Leni does the same, holding it while I unstrap the picnic basket and the speaker. She looks around and I see memories in her eyes. The same memories I'm experiencing, and the reason I brought her here.

This very spot is where we promised to have and to hold, from this day forward and forever. And it felt like the right place to see if we could start again.