Page 28 of Wicked Cowboy

“No,” she agrees. “You shouldn’t have.”

The clean honesty of it steadies me more than comfort would have. I let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding. “I’m not good at this.”

“Same.” She smiles, small. “But you’re very good at making me feel like I imagined last night when you disappear without looking back.”

The words thread straight through the ribs I keep pretending are armor. “You didn’t imagine it.”

Her shoulders ease a fraction. “Then say it like you mean it.”

I look at her, really look, and stop worrying. “You didn’t imagine it,” I repeat, steady now. “Last night happened. I wanted you, I still do.”

Her eyes go bright, and she folds her arms like she’s cold or bracing or both. “Okay.”

“I heard your friends, and all I could think was how it felt when someone I cared about decided I wasn’t enough,” I add, the words finding their own path now. “I hate that I dragged you into my old story. You don’t deserve my ghosts.”

“Everyone brings ghosts,” she says, moving until the table edge is in reach and her fingers curl against it the same way mine did. “The trick is not letting them get in the way of something special.”

“I keep thinking if I keep distance, I can’t be the reason anyone leaves.” I huff a laugh that doesn’t have humor in it. “It’s bad math.”

“Terrible,” she agrees. “Plus, you’re not that powerful.”

I blink. “Thanks?”

“It’s a compliment.” Her mouth turns wry. “People leave for their own reasons. People stay for their own reasons, too. I really like you, Rhett.” She pauses, then adds, “Actually, I think I more than like you.”

For a second, everything freezes. I step in. She doesn’t step back.

My palms frame her face, and hers are fisted in my shirt, and I kiss her hard. She makes a small sound, a moan, and it’s all I can do not to grin against her mouth like a fool. My hands slideto her jaw, the curve of her neck, the place where pulse meets promise. She rises onto her toes and comes closer, as if there was never any other choice.

When we break for air, we don’t separate. Our foreheads touch together, her breath skims my lips.

“Okay,” she whispers, a little stunned and a lot sure. “That was—”

“Yeah,” I say, because words are slow and the rest of me isn’t.

Her hands flatten against my chest, feeling the proof that I’m not as calm as I look. “Are you planning to run again?”

“Not from you,” I say, and know it’s true as I say it.

“Good.”

“Rhett,” she says, and I know that I want to hear her saying my name every day for the rest of my life. “I need to go back to my friends. Martha is entertaining them, but I can’t leave them any longer.”

“Right.” I touch a curl at her temple because I can’t not. “We can do all that.”

“We?” she echoes, testing the fit.

“Absolutely.”

She kisses me again, it’s a promise.

“Come on,” I say, finding the door with my free hand because my eyes are busy staring at her. “We can go see your friends, and you can either go with them to the retreat and then come back to me, or you can just stay here.”

“Stay?”

“If you want to.” I swallow past the lump in my throat. “I want you to.”

“For how long?”