Page 80 of Stay With Me

“Dance with me,” I tell Magnolia, standing in front of her and holding out my hand like I watched Fisher do.

She gives me a hesitant expression, purses her lips, and circles her gaze around us as if to ask, “are you sure?”

I nod once.

“Um…okay.” She grins, placing her hand in mine.

“Wait.” Harrison’s voice interrupts. “She told me she broke a toe and couldn’t put too much pressure on it.”

Magnolia’s eyes widen at getting caught lying. I hold back a laugh at Harrison’s butthurt tone.

“That’s why I plan to hold her up the whole time,” I tell him.

“You can’t be serious,” she mouths.

I wink, then step closer until I can pick her up just enough forher shoes to lift off the ground. She wraps her arms around my neck as I settle my hands below her ass.

“Let’s go, Sunny.”

She pouts as I make my way to the opposite side of the dance floor and hopefully out of view from Harrison.

Then I slowly lower her feet to the floor.

“That was obnoxious,” she hisses.

I chuckle, pulling her to my chest and wrapping her back in my arms. Lowering my mouth to her ear, I say, “Noah caught me staring at you and basically told me to stop being a coward. Then said I should ask you to dance. She’s gonna freak out when we tell her we were already together.”

She laughs and gazes up at me. “If she wasn’t leavin’ for her honeymoon first thing Monday, I’d tell her now, but her finding out we’re dating will require a full girls’ night of juicy details while eating cookie dough and watchingDirty Dancing.”

“That’s oddly specific.”

She lifts a shoulder and grins. “We have our guilty pleasures and Patrick Swayze in the eighties is one of ’em.”

“As long as no one tells her before you or I do, I think she’ll be happy for us,” I say honestly. “When I asked her if it’d make things weird between us in the event we broke up, she said it’d be a risk I’d have to take.”

“And to think all this time you coulda asked me out in high school.”

I scoff. “You were jailbait, Sunny. Getting on Sheriff Wagner’s bad side once was enough.”

“You’re only older by two years!”

“Doesn’t matter. Why do you think Landen waited a couple years to ask you out on a date? He wasn’t about to do time for you either.”

She rolls her eyes as we sway to a song that is surprisingly not a Taylor Swift one. I’m pretty sure they’ve played every single one of hers tonight, which has kept Mallory and Serena happy.

“By the way, I loved your speech. You had everyone in thepalm of your hand by the way they were glued to you and laughing, especially when you recapped Noah fallin’ in horseshit on Fisher’s first day on the ranch. That was epic.”

“Right?” She beams. “Totally funnier than Damien’s.”

“Obviously.”

“Oh, that reminds me. I bet Landen if we danced together, he had to ask Ellie out.”

“There’s no way she’s gonna say yes.”

“Exactly. That boy could use some humbling.”

We laugh, and I inch as close as I can without making it obvious I’m dying to kiss her.