Chapter 28
RHETT
Iam standing under the Old Oak with the woman I love in my arms and my entire family gathered around us holding wine glasses like they knew this was coming before either of us did.
Sadie's hand is tucked into mine. She hasn't let go since she said it, and neither have I.
The gala lights still glimmer across the lawn behind us, strings of them looped through the fence posts all the way to the tent. Somewhere above our heads, this old tree has stood watch over every version of the two of us there ever was.
Neither of us mentions it. We don't have to.
Evelyn gets there first, her glass already raised, her eyes bright in the light.
"To the harvest," she says, "and to every stubborn Beaumont who finally figured out what mattered."
Beck lifts his glass next. He doesn't say anything clever.
"Elbow-deep in a barrel sample, first day of harvest," he says, mostly to himself, eyes on me. "That's when I knew. Never seen you smile like that before, and never once since."
He just looks at me, then at Sadie, and nods once, like a man closing a book he's glad ended the right way.
Knox whoops loud enough to startle a cluster of guests still lingering near the tent, then raises his glass so fast half the wine sloshes over the rim.
"About time," he says. "I had money on the Fourth of July."
"You did not," Beck says.
"I did. Every bit of it."
Sadie laughs, and I feel it through her hand, a small tremor of relief and joy that goes straight through me. I don't let go of her hand once.
Not while Evelyn tells the story of two kids who used to run these rows barefoot. Not while Beck admits he's been rooting for this since the road with the colt. Not while Knox insists, loudly, that he called it first.
The toast winds down slow, like nobody's in a hurry for it to end, everyone drifting into smaller conversations, the night settling soft around us. Somewhere past the tent, the band is packing up.
The string lights sway in a breeze that smells like crushed grapes and cut grass.
Sadie leans into my side. "Your family is a lot."
"You have no idea."
"I think I might." She tips her head back to look at me. "I'm about to become part of it."
She doesn't look toward the driveway. Doesn't glance toward the gate the way she used to, like she's already clocking the fastest way out. For the first time since she came home, she isn't looking for one.
The words land somewhere low in my chest and stay there.
We stay until the last of the family wanders back toward the house, until it's just the two of us and the tree and the quiet.
I glance once toward the mansion, toward the study window where my father used to stand with his arms crossed, watching this same tree, this same land, like it owed him something.
The old weight I used to carry every time I looked at that window isn't there anymore. Not the guilt. Not the secret about the land, either. It's out in the open now, right where it should've been from the start. I let it go and don't look back at the house again.
I press my mouth to her temple, and she turns into me, and for a moment neither of us moves at all. Just this. Just her, solid and real against me, everything I've wanted finally caught up to right now.
"Take me home," she says.
I don't need her to say it twice.
The house is dark when we walk in, Rosa long gone for the night, only the porch light left burning over the door. The last of the gala's string lights still glow across the lawn behind us, but inside, I don't turn on another one. The moon through the windows is enough.
Sadie stops in the middle of the kitchen and looks at me like she's deciding something, though I already know what. I've known since the Old Oak.
"No storm this time," she says.
"No storm."
"No sabotage. No filing. No reason at all, except that I want you."
I close the distance between us, giving her every chance to change the pace, to stop me, to laugh and pull me toward the door instead. She doesn't.
She reaches for the front of my shirt and pulls me down to her instead, and the kiss that follows isn't rushed or desperate the way the storm night was. It's certain. It's the kind of kiss that already knows where it's going.
"My room," I say against her mouth.
"Lead the way."
We cross the house together, her hand in mine, stopping twice down the hall because neither of us can wait that long between kisses.
At my door she stops me with a hand flat on my chest, holding me right there in the hallway.
"Say it again," she says.
"I love you."
"Again."
"Sadie Collins, I love you." I back her against the wall, slow, giving her every second to tell me to stop. "I've loved you since before I had the sense to say so."
She pulls me down by the collar. "Then quit talking."
My bedroom door is already open. Moonlight cuts a pale line across the floor.
I walk her back toward the bed, in no hurry at all, my hands finding the zipper at the back of her dress, and she shivers under my palms, not from cold.
"You're sure," I say, because I need to hear it, even now.
"Rhett." She takes my face in both hands. "I have never been more sure of anything."
The dress slides off her shoulders and pools at her feet. I take a second just to look at her, standing in my bedroom in nothing but moonlight and the lace beneath that dress.
Something in my chest goes still and full at the same time.
"You're staring," she says.
"I've got years of catching up to do."
She smiles, slow and a little wicked, and reaches for the buttons of my shirt one at a time, unhurried, her knuckles brushing my skin with every one she frees.
When my shirt hits the floor she flattens her palms against my chest and pushes, gentle, until the backs of my knees find the edge of the bed and I sit.
She climbs into my lap like she already knows exactly where she belongs, her knees on either side of my hips, and kisses me again, deeper this time, her hands sliding into my hair. I reach behind her and unhook her bra with one hand, and she laughs against my mouth.
"Show-off."
"Been practicing."
"Liar."
I toss it aside and pull her closer, my mouth trailing from her lips to the curve of her neck, and she arches into me with a soft sound that undoes something in me completely.
My hands map her slow, her spine, her waist, the swell of her hips, memorizing every inch like I'm afraid this is a dream I'll wake up from.
"Rhett." Her voice has gone breathless. "Stop being so careful with me."
"I'm not being careful."
"You're savoring."
"Same thing, with you."
She pulls back just far enough to look at me, her eyes dark in the low light, and reaches down to work my belt loose with steady hands.
I lift my hips to help her, and in a few easy movements the rest of our clothes end up scattered across the floor, until there's nothing left between us but skin and moonlight and everything we've been waiting for.
I lay her back against the pillows and take my time with her, my mouth finding her breasts, her stomach, the soft skin low on her hip, until she's writhing under my hands and saying my name like a plea.
I settle between her thighs and taste her, deliberate, drawing it out, feeling her hips buck against my mouth, her fingers twisting into my hair to hold me right there.
I slide two fingers into her, slow, feel how wet and ready she already is, and she gasps and grips the sheets.
"Rhett, please."
"Tell me what you want."
"You. All of you. Now."
I move up her body and rub the head of my cock through her folds, slow, teasing, until she's arching up to chase me.
"Stop making me wait."
"I've waited years. I'm allowed a minute."
She digs her nails into my shoulders. "Rhett."
I sink into her slow, one inch at a time, giving her body time to stretch around me, and the sound she makes when I'm finally seated deep inside her is one I intend to remember for the rest of my life.
She wraps her legs around my waist and pulls me deeper, her clit dragging against me with every roll of her hips.
"You feel incredible," I say against her ear, my voice rough. "I've wanted this for so long."
"Don't stop."
I don't. I move over her slow and deep, her hips rising to meet every thrust, her nails dragging light down my back.
I catch her mouth in another kiss, swallowing the soft sounds she makes, and she reaches between us to touch herself while I move inside her, watching my face the whole time like she wants to see exactly what she's doing to me.
"That's it," I tell her, my voice rough. "Let me watch you."
Her rhythm stutters. Her whole body goes tight beneath mine, and she comes with my name breaking on her lips, her back arching off the bed.
The sight of her, undone and glowing and completely mine, is what finally takes me over the edge with her, my own release crashing through me as I bury my face in her neck and hold her like she's the only steady thing left in the world.
We stay tangled together after, neither of us in a hurry to move, her head on my chest, my hand tracing slow circles on her bare back.
"Well," she says eventually, breathless still. "That was worth the wait."
"Years of waiting."
"Worth every day of it."
I press a kiss to the top of her head and pull the sheet up over us both. She's asleep within minutes, her hand curled loose against my chest, her breathing slow and even.
I lie awake a while longer, just watching her, still not entirely convinced this is real and not one more dream I'll wake up from alone.
I wake before she does, the way I always do. The window's gone pale gray, then pink, then gold, dawn climbing slow over the East Vineyard exactly the way it does every morning of my life.
Except this morning, Sadie Collins is asleep in my bed, and the sight of her steals every thought I had about getting up.
She stirs eventually, blinking against the light, and pushes up on one elbow to look out the window at the vines turning gold below us. Her eyes catch on the two empty glasses still sitting on the nightstand from the night before, the last of the Iron Oak Cabernet we never finished.
"You let that breathe too long," she says, nodding at the glasses, her voice thick with sleep. "It'll have gone flat by now."
"Didn't notice. Had other things on my mind."
She laughs, low and easy, and settles back against my chest. "Occupational hazard. I can't turn off the tasting notes, even half asleep."
"Don't want you to turn it off."
There's no polish in it this morning, no room full of guests to read for. Just her, half awake, noticing the wine because it's who she is, not because she has anything left to prove.
"The view's beautiful," she says, quiet, like she's talking to herself more than me.
I sit up beside her, my arm finding its place around her waist without either of us deciding it.
Together we watch the sun climb the rest of the way over the ridge, amber light pouring down the rows the way it has every harvest I can remember.
"I've watched a hundred sunrises over this vineyard," I say.
"And?"
"None of them looked like this one."
She's quiet a long moment, her eyes on the horizon, her fingers laced loose through mine on top of the sheet.
"I used to count down the days until harvest ended," she says finally. "Every year since I left. Counting down until I could go back to wherever I was living and not think about this place at all."
"And this year?"
She turns to look at me, morning light catching the gold in her eyes, and there isn't a trace of guard left in her expression, not one wall standing between us anymore.
Below us the East Vineyard runs straight into Collins land, no fence line visible from up here, just one long stretch of vines catching the same light.
A true blend. Not swallowed by one name or the other. Just two things that were always better together, finally growing the same direction.
"This year," she says, "I don't want it to end at all."