Page 55 of Running Hott (Hott Springs Eternal #4)

Eden

R hys gets up to get rid of the condom. I lie in bed, wrapped in bliss, my whole body bathed in warmth.

“Eden,” he calls from the hallway.

I don’t think I’d call his tone alarmed exactly, but it’s…something. Alert. It gets me out of bed and into the hallway, where I can see what he sees: Cressie and Milo lying side by side on the couch, tucked tight against each other, Cressie’s snout resting on Milo’s.

“Are they…always like this?” Rhys asks.

“Oh, yeah,” I say, grinning. “It’s definitely true love. They’re completely inseparable. I have to keep them both on the same side of my body when I walk them. And Milo won’t let me put Cressie in her own crate at night. He barks until I let her in with him.”

I can’t read the expression on Rhys’s face. It looks like he’s been smacked in the gut, but not entirely in a bad way.

“Eden,” he says slowly. “I know how we’re going to fix things with the will.”

“What do you mean?” I ask warily.

“I mean,” he says, a smile creeping over his face, lovely and mischievous, “Cressie and Milo are getting married.”

Late the next morning, around the conference table in Weggers’s office, Matias, Rhys, Hanna, and I present Weggers with the plan.

“Look,” Matias says. “The will doesn’t say the bride and groom have to be human. It doesn’t say the bride and groom have to be the same bride and groom as the original plans call for. It just says that the planned ceremony has to occur. The planned ceremony will occur.”

Weggers sniffs. “You know that’s not the spirit in which this was intended.”

“True,” Matias says. “I also know that you like to be true to the letter of the law. Plus, it will save us both so much time and trouble if I don’t file the contest.”

Weggers eyes him warily.

I wouldn’t want to go up against Matias in a court of law, and apparently Weggers is thinking the same thing, because he straightens himself up like a cat trying to preserve its dignity and says, “It’s true that I have a fondness for the letter of the law…”

He says it like it’s a good thing, when I think the whole idea of the letter and spirit of the law is the opposite? Spirit is good, letter is bad? But obviously no one points that out.

Once the meeting with Weggers is done, Hanna confirms the vendors are all still available, and I reach out to as many local guests as I can to convince them to attend Cressie and Milo’s wedding.

It’s not a tough sell because I include a small album of the hundreds of photos I’ve taken of them since Cressie came home.

Everyone agrees that they’re the perfect couple.

We know we won’t get quite as many guests to RSVP as Paul and I had originally, but—Matias points out—the will doesn’t say that the ceremony must be attended by any particular number of guests.

“I like to operate in an ‘if it doesn’t say I can’t, I can’ mindset,” he says, grinning.

Finally, by late afternoon, everything’s set, and Rhys and I head back to the guesthouse and fall into bed together, exhausted.

“You must be so relieved,” I say.

“I won’t breathe completely easy till after it’s over…but I’m pretty sure I’m off the hook. Talk about under the wire.”

“It’s the wackiest solution ever. You’re a mad genius.”

“And you love it.”

“You know I do,” I say, putting my palm to his cheek, a day of scruff rough and delicious against my fingers.

He makes a sound that’s half sigh, half groan.

We make love again, and it’s slow and sweet until it isn’t, until it’s wild and unhinged and I’m telling him to fuck me like he means it, and he lasts three seconds after that, which is so hot—Rhys out of control—that I come with his fingers on my clit and his roar in my ear.

Then we talk.

“I still need to take this slow-ish,” I warn.

“I know,” he says.

“I’m not moving in with you or anything.”

“That’s fine,” he says. “I don’t have anywhere for you to move in to. ”

“I do,” I say. “But I’m not ready to issue an invitation.”

He laughs. “I don’t need one. I mean, maybe the occasional sleepover.”

That makes me smile. Look at us, right? “Oh, God, Rhys, of course. More than occasional, probably. I’m not ready to let you leave—the bed or the room, I mean.”

He grins at that. “Yeah,” he says contentedly. “Why is sex like that?”

“Like…?”

“You know. Like with some people it’s just sex. And with the right person, it’s?—”

“Like holiday lights coming on in the dark,” I say.

“Ha. Yes. The old-fashioned, non-LED kind. With no bulbs missing.”

“When you get them seated in the tree right, so they’re distributed evenly and tucked back at different layers, so you get that all-over twinkle?—”

“This is the worst metaphor ever ,” he says. “I’m trying to say that I didn’t actually believe there was a whole other level, but what I feel with you is definitely a whole other level.”

I’m quiet, because my feelings are too big for the moment. “Yeah,” I say. “Me, too.”

“So, okay, no cohabitation for a while. Just sleepovers. Lots of sleepovers.”

“And maybe we never get married. We can be one of those couples that’s been together fifty years?—”

I realize what I’ve said.

He’s smirking at me. “Fifty years, huh?”

“I’m just saying, we could be together and there doesn’t have to be any lifetime commitment involved.”

“What if I want lifetime commitment?”

“No marriage proposal for at least a year,” I say sternly. “You don’t believe in marriage anyway.”

“I think we’ve been over this: I believe marriage exists. I just have never believed it was a good idea. Before.”

“But now you do.”

Rhys bites back a smile. “If I tell you I do, will it freak you out?”

“Probably.” But I’m grinning.

“Slow-ish,” he says. “We can revisit this question another time, on another day, with more perspective.”

I hug him. Hard. “I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

“And you can be my boyfriend,” I say. “We can be exclusive. And we can keep doing this. ”

I gesture at our boneless, pleasure-soaked selves, still curled together in the bed.

“That sounds good to me.”

“And you should definitely stay. In Rush Creek. I?—”

My voice gets choked. I have to stop. I realize that in all of this, I haven’t said the one thing I’ve been thinking for days, as I pieced the squares of the quilt together, as I laid in the last few stitches through the layers of our time together.

I haven’t said the words that matter most to him. Not yet, not exactly this way:

“I want you to stay.”