Page 160 of Sunkissed Colorado

“Can I put you on speaker? Introduce you?”

“Absolutely.”

I pressed the button, then said, “Grayden, this is Zandra. Z, my oldest brother.”

A long, slow exhale left my chest. As if I’d been holding it in forwaytoo long.

Zandra sat closer. “Hi, Grayden. It’s great to meet you.”

“Likewise. I heard about the fire. Are you doing better?”

The three of us talked for a little while. It sounded like Grace had been filling him in on what was going on in our lives, but she hadn’t told him about the events of last night. And that was fine by me. Zandra didn’t bring it up either. That was too much of a painful saga for her to tell it all over again right now.

As we spoke, I put my arm around Zandra again, pulling her up against me. It meant everything that she was here. Sharing this moment with me. In a way, I was sharing a key piece of myself with Grayden too. Zandra was the most important thing in my life right now, and I hoped my brother understood that. Not just that she was my priority, but that this was my way of inviting him in, too.

“What about you?” I asked. “Are you seeing anyone out there in Seattle?”

My big brother’s low, gravelly laugh was the same as I remembered. “Nah, not me. But I’m good. I’ve got my own business here. It’s a freelance thing, but…yeah. I’m a tattoo artist.”

“That’s not what I expected. I thought you hated art class.”

He laughed again, brighter this time. “It seems it was the class part I hated. When it’s my own art, it’s different. Figured that out after… Well, after.”

I gripped the skin between my eyes. That word said a lot.After. The part we were all still struggling to figure out.

I almost brought up his last visit to Silver Ridge. Thethings I said and my regrets about that. But Grayden headed off that subject, as if he could sense I’d been about to get heavy.

“It’s getting late there,” he said. “I’ll let you go. I just wanted to say I love you, Cal. I’m different now, okay? I need you to know that.”

“Same here,” I choked out. “A lot’s changed. But, uh…I love you too.”

I hadn’t even known I would say that until I did. But I’d spoken from the heart.

After we said goodbye and I lowered my phone, Zandra cupped my cheek. “What do you need?”

“I think I need to take you to bed.”

“Snuggle sex?”

“Hell, yeah.” Couldn’t imagine anything better.

I switched off the fire, and we carried the mugs and blanket inside. Stripped off our clothes the moment we were back in my bedroom. Kissing her gave me breath, soothed the ragged edges of my soul. I lifted her up and carried her to the bed with our tongues still tangled together.

For a while, I lay back with Zandra on top of me, her hair a dark curtain closing us off from the world. Then I rolled her to the side and rubbed my erection against her butt cheek. “You ready for me?”

“Show me who I belong to,” she murmured, and gasped as I entered her.

She was spooned in front of me, my cock deep inside her and my arms holding her tight. So peaceful and perfect and right, even as my heart raced with anticipation for what was next.

After all the false starts and stops we’d had, this truly felt like our beginning.

FORTY-FOUR

Zandra

It was a crisp,early-autumn day when I stepped into the Silver Ridge Cemetery.

Not many of the aspens had changed yet, so their leaves were still vivid green, quaking with the breeze. It wasn’t hard to find Jessa’s headstone. Even though I hadn’t been here in over a decade and a half, I still remembered.