Page 12

A woman stands near the window when I open the door and walk into my hotel room, and the tightness I felt in my chest on the walk back to my room seems to dissipate at her presence.

I wondered whether she’d really show up.

She did.

“Hey,” I say when I walk in, and she blows out a breath when she spots me. I twist the ballcap I’m wearing down low over my eyes so the bill is in the back since I know I’m going to want to kiss her and the bill tends to get in the way of that.

She studies me a beat. “Did you get hotter in the time we were apart?”

I chuckle as I make my way across the room. “Yes. I worked hard on that.”

We stare at each other a beat, neither of us touching as we both take in the fact that we’re here in this place again and the fantasy we started twenty-four hours ago can continue.

I lean in and press a soft kiss to her neck just below her ear. “I missed you.” My voice is low and gravelly, and it forces a soft moan from her.

“I missed you, too,” she says, and then she loops her arms around me and my lips find hers.

Just like with everything between the two of us, the kiss intensifies to fire rather quickly, but she forces the end first. “My truck is down at valet if you’re ready for the thing I planned, but if you’d rather get naked, I’m down with that.”

“Back up a second,” I say. “You have a truck?”

She laughs. “I do. A Ford Ranger.”

“I drive an F-150,” I admit. “And can I just say it makes you even hotter that you drive a truck?”

“Yes, you can say that,” she deadpans. “And it’s true. I always wanted one, and I find guys who drive trucks hot, too. Now answer the question. Date or sex?”

I laugh at her impatience. “Let’s go on a proper date. Then I’ll get you naked afterward.”

“Deal. Unless I get you naked during our date.” She grabs my hand, and heads toward the door, pulling me behind her.

“Where are we going?” I ask.

“It’s a surprise.”

“Is it another nightclub?”

She narrows her eyes at me. “A, you don’t like nightclubs, and B, the challenge was to show you a side of Vegas you haven’t seen before. I assume you’ve been to your fair share of Vegas clubs, so no, that’s not what it is.”

I turn my hat forward again to duck beneath the bill as we approach the elevator. “Thank God.” I sling my arm around her shoulders as we take the trip down to the first floor, and I follow her out to the valet stand.

As expected, a black Ranger pulls up a minute later. She hops into the driver’s seat, and I settle into the passenger one. I pull my hat off and run my hand through my hair, and she navigates out of the busy valet area and onto the even busier Strip. Taylor Swift plays in the background, the Red album, and I’m quiet as I let her focus on getting out of traffic.

She heads toward the highway and merges on. We travel north for a few minutes before she merges onto another highway to head west. As the car carries us further away from the bright lights of Las Vegas Boulevard, I start to see stars in the sky and I’m even more curious as to where the hell she’s taking me.

Eventually she gets off the highway and turns toward Red Rock Canyon. I spot the hours of the driving loop, and it’s closed, so I still have no idea where we’re going. She follows the signs toward a campground but then drives right past it, dust kicking up in our wake toward the nearly deserted campground. She drives another couple minutes, and eventually she pulls off the road to a stop in total darkness except for the lights of her truck.

“We’re here,” she announces proudly, and she gets out of the truck. She opens the door to the backseat while I jump out of the passenger seat and walk around toward her, and when she emerges, she holds a huge basket.

“We’re…here?” I ask.

“Yep!” She nods toward the tailgate. “Can you open that?”

I pull the handle, and she sets the basket down. She pulls out a camping pad with pillows built in, and she spreads it out along the bed of the truck. She grabs a blanket, too, and a bottle of wine—no glasses.

“Are you a camper?” I ask.

“I’ve gone a few times, but I got this pad for my birthday and figured it was time to break it in.”

I hop onto the tailgate easily, and I hold out a hand to help her up. She sets the bottle of wine on the side, and we both take off our shoes to get comfy before we lay back on the camping pad.

I draw in a deep breath. It’s still hot and dry in the middle of August here in Vegas at eighty-five degrees at nearly ten at night, but without the sun beating down on us, it’s not so bad.

“You asked for a side of Vegas you’ve never seen before, and I assume you’ve never driven out to the middle of the desert to look at the stars,” she says as she settles into a comfortable position.

I reach over and grab her hand, linking my fingers through hers. “This is incredible.” My voice is low even though it’s just the two of us out here. The closest people are probably a mile away at that campground, and it was pretty quiet back there.

We stare up at the night sky as it glitters with stars. It’s a clear night, so clear that I can even see the milky haze of the Milky Way from here.

It’s peaceful and quiet—the opposite of the loud exuberance the Strip offers, and it’s hard to believe all that excitement is just a half hour away from this tranquil paradise.

“The pad’s comfy,” she muses as we both stare up at the sky, baffled by its complexity and its beauty from this angle.

“I want to take you camping someday,” I say. “We can sit around a bonfire drinking beer and roasting marshmallows, and then I can wreck you in the best way inside our tent.”

She laughs, and it’s that heartwarming sound that’s already so familiar to me. “I’m in.” She clears her throat. “But that assumes we’re taking this beyond this weekend.”

“I’d like to,” I say quietly. Earnestly.

“I’d like to, too. But you’ll be in San Diego, and I’ll be here…it’ll get complicated, don’t you think?”

“Most definitely. But it’ll be easier once I move here,” I say carefully.

She sucks in a breath. “You’re taking the job?”

“I was seventy-five percent sure I was going to take it anyway, and then I met you. You put up a pretty convincing argument to cover that last quarter, and then I talked to my friends tonight at dinner…it just feels like this is where I’m supposed to be.”

Her fingers tighten in mine. “This?”

“Right here. Beside you. We’ll have challenges, but I want to figure out how to make this work in the real world. You’re in college, and I’m…not. You’re young and have so much life to experience.” Meanwhile, I’m almost thirty-three and I’m at a point in my life where I’m ready to start a family.

Could it be with her?

Crazier things have happened.

My parents were only together a few weeks when they got engaged.

“But if you want to see where it goes, well…so do I,” I finish.

“I want that more than anything,” she breathes.

“My parents only knew each other three weeks before they knew they were going to spend their lives together,” I admit.

“Tell me about your parents,” she says.

“I grew up in Chicago. My mom is a first-grade teacher, and she’s my best friend. My dad was an electrician.”

“Was?” she asks softly.

“He passed away when I was nine.”

“Oh, God, Cooper. I’m so sorry,” she murmurs.

I squeeze her hand. “Thanks. He lost his father when he was a teenager. It made me feel like the men in my family don’t get much time with their kids, and that’s part of why I always wanted to have kids at a young age.”

“Do you have kids?” she asks.

“No. I have two nephews, my brother’s kids. He’s four years older than me and his kids are nine and eleven. It just…hasn’t worked out for me yet, and now I’m beyond what I’d consider young to have kids. But I still want three or four,” I admit. “What about you? Do you want kids?”

“Yes and no. I don’t think about it much. I figure I have plenty of time, and it’s not a pressing priority at the moment. I’ve never been one of those people who felt like I was born to be a mother. I want to establish myself in a career first before I’m ready to go down that path.”

I think about that for a beat. It’s the first red flag of our short time together. I’m at a point in my life where I want to settle down, where I want to start a family. She’s not ready for those things, and that’s fine. She’s young, and she shouldn’t have to make those types of decisions yet.

But what the hell am I doing here?

Am I just prolonging the inevitable?

Or is this worth exploring?

I don’t know the answer to that, but I do know one thing.

I’m not quite ready to let go yet.