Total pages in book: 62
Estimated words: 61723 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 309(@200wpm)___ 247(@250wpm)___ 206(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 61723 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 309(@200wpm)___ 247(@250wpm)___ 206(@300wpm)
The way things are going so easy with Lucy, I can’t help but realize I was wrong. It wasn’t that I didn’t do something right, it’s she wasn’t right for me.
When the day finally winds down, I take her to the hotel before we head all the way back to Freedom Falls. Two rooms were available when I booked—one with two queens, one with a king. I took the one with two queens because I’m not an idiot, and because getting this right still matters more than getting my hands on her.
Even now.
Especially now.
The hotel’s nothing fancy. Lakeside lodge, clean enough, quiet enough, mostly booked with brothers and their women for the night so no one has to ride back exhausted.
Lucy stands in the doorway when I unlock the room and just looks around.
Two beds. Small table. Lamp. Simple. She looks at me. Then at the room again.
Then back at me. “You got two beds.”
“Yeah. I didn’t want to make assumptions.”
She pauses a beat. Then her smile curves slowly. “You really are trying to be good.”
I drop my bag onto the chair. “Don’t spread that around. I’ve got a reputation.”
She laughs softly and walks in, setting her overnight bag on the farther bed.
The ease of it all settles over me again.
No awkwardness. Just the low, warm satisfaction of an absolutely perfect day.
I strip off my cut and drape it over the chair, then step out onto the balcony for a second to look at the lake darkening under sunset. A minute later, the door slides open behind me.
Lucy steps out and comes to stand beside me.
For a while, neither of us says anything.
The air smells like water and pine and summer.
Inside, I can hear distant laughter from somewhere down the hall—Stunt, probably, already making somebody regret knowing him.
Lucy leans against the railing. “This was a really good day.”
“Yeah, baby it is the best.”
“I was nervous.”
“I know.”
She glances up at me. “You always know.”
“Usually.”
“That must be exhausting.”
I huff a laugh. “Sometimes.”
She watches the water another second. Then says quietly, “Thank you for bringing me.”
I look at her. “You being here matters to me.”
The words come easier now than they used to. Not easy. Just easier.
Her gaze holds mine, soft and searching. “I know,” she explains. “It’s the kind of man you are, the kind of men you all are. If something doesn’t matter, it doesn’t happen. Cut and dry.”
And there it is again—that way she says simple things like they’re sacred. I rest one hand on the railing behind her, not trapping, just close. “You fit in.”
She smiles and shakes her head a little. “Lindsey helped.”
“Sure.”
“She did.”
“She opened the door,” I say. “You walked through it.”
That lands. I can see it.
The quiet pride, the relief, maybe even the realization that she’s not on the outside of this world looking in anymore. Not when she’s with me. Not if I have anything to say about it.
She steps closer then, just enough that our shoulders brush.
“I liked seeing you with them,” she says.
“Yeah?”
“You’re different with them than you are in town.”
“How?”
“Everyone respects you,” she says. “Not because they’re afraid of you. Because they trust you.”
The truth of that hits deeper than it should.
I look out over the lake because it’s easier than looking at her when she says things like that. “Comes with the patch.”
“No,” she says softly. “It comes with the man you are.”
I turn back. And for a second the whole world narrows to hotel balcony, sunset, Lucy in my shirt from this morning now swallowed up in one of my spare hoodies she stole from my bag because she got cold and looked too right in it for me to object.
Absolutely perfect day.
That’s what it is.
Not because it is flashy. Because it is easy. Because from the first mile to the last laugh, having her here with me felt natural in a way that should probably scare me more than it does.
Instead it settles me. Like I’ve been riding with noise in my head for years and only now figured out what quiet is supposed to feel like.
Lucy’s eyes flick down to my mouth, then back up. I feel it all the way in my chest. I touch her jaw lightly with the backs of my fingers.
“You tired?”
“A little.”
“You should sleep.”
She smiles against my hand. “There you go again.”
“Yeah.”
I lean down and kiss her. Slow. Warm. Nothing rushed.
The kind of kiss that belongs to the end of a good day and the beginning of something bigger if we don’t screw it up.
When I pull back, she rests her forehead briefly against my chest. And in that small, ordinary contact, I know one thing as clearly as I’ve ever known anything in my life.
This woman could become home.
And that’s the most dangerous, best thing that’s ever happened to me.
SEVENTEEN
LUCY
“You’re quiet,” he murmurs, stepping closer. His thumb hooked under the hem of my tank top, just barely grazing the waistband of my jeans. “That a good quiet or a bad quiet?”