CHAPTER 8
Tate
By first light, the worst of the storm has passed. Neely is already dressed, her hair twisted into a knot and her radio clipped to her belt, insisting we get back to Ponderosa Flats before I can remind her that the access road may be covered in debris.
She puts her hands on her hips. “Your campground host has a job to do, Tate. I need to check on my campers.”
My campground host.
I grin as I button my shirt. “You like it when I call you that.”
She rolls her eyes. “If you say so.”
“You kissed me on Main Street because of it,” I point out.
“I kissed you because you have ridiculously nice forearms.”
I look at her in astonishment. “Forearms?”
She laughs and throws my other boot at me. “Don’t yuck my yum, Mr. Benton. Just be grateful your forearms do it for me.”
I laugh, too, but the truth is I am grateful. I have never been more filled with gratitude in my life.
We take the drive slowly, stopping twice so I can drag fallen branches out of the road.
The campground looks battered but intact when we arrive.
Pine needles and small limbs cover the loops, a few tents have partially collapsed, and the Hendersons are already handing out coffee from a giant metal urn to campers who are awake.
The radio crackles to life.
“Tate, you awake?” Ollie asks. “Because we’ve got ourselves a situation.”
Neely sits up straighter. “A bear situation?”
“A tree situation,” Ollie answers through the radio. “That widow maker at site thirty finally came down.”
I reach for the radio. “Anyone hurt?”
“Nope. Fell right into the area you taped off. Didn’t hit a tent, truck, or human. Scared the daylights out of folks, though.”
The dead tree lies exactly where I hoped it would, stretched across the taped-off section behind site thirty. It crushed a picnic table and took out part of the split-rail fence, but nobody was anywhere near it when it fell.
Neely stands beside me, staring at the massive trunk.
“You knew it was dangerous,” she says.
“I knew it could be.”
“And you kept people away from it.”
“That’s the job.”
She turns toward me. Her hair is still mussed from sleep, and she’s wearing my spare flannel over her shirt because hers disappeared somewhere in the ranger cabin last night.
“You saved someone’s life, Tate.”
“We don’t know that.”
“I do.”
Before I can answer, Jonas barrels toward us in dinosaur rain boots, with Bianca chasing after him.
“Uncle Tate! Did the bear knock down the tree?”
“What are you doing here?” I ask in surprise.
“Bev heard about the tree from Ollie and sent a group text,” Biaca explains. “Jonas and I were awake, so we decided to head over to check on things.”
“Was it lightning?” Jonas asks.
“Nah,” I say. “Just the storm.”
“I heard the storm. It was loud,” Jonas says with wide eyes.
“Sure was.”
“But Uncle Tate, a bear could knock down a tree, right?”
“Maybe a small one. But bears sleep in trees, so it wouldn’t be a very smart thing to do.”
“Jonas,” Bianca says, catching him by the hood of his raincoat, “let your uncle work.”
Neely crouches beside Jonas. “We need someone to help Mr. Ollie count the fallen branches near the bathroom. Think you can handle that?”
Jonas’s eyes widen. “Is that an official ranger job?”
“Very official,” Neely says.
Jonas takes off toward Ollie, who looks less than thrilled to have acquired an eight-year-old assistant. As scatterbrained as Ollie is, he finds it next to impossible to stay on task when kids are hurling questions at him left and right.
Neely watches him go with a smile.
She’s good here. Not just at the campground. In Whispering Pines. With my family and the campers and every oddball who crosses her path. She fits into my life so easily it scares the hell out of me.
By noon, we have the loops cleared enough for people to move around safely.
Ollie brings in a chainsaw crew for the fallen tree.
Neely organizes volunteers to collect branches and check every campsite for damage.
She keeps people calm without making them feel managed, which is a skill I’ve never possessed.
The bear hasn’t returned.
The trail camera shows him heading north sometime before midnight, away from the campground and toward the berry patches on the ridge. Hopefully, last night’s beanbag round and the storm scared some sense into him.
By early afternoon, the sun breaks through the clouds. Steam rises from the wet road, and the campground comes back to life. Kids ride their bikes through puddles. Campers reset their tents. Someone starts cooking bacon.
Neely and I stand beside her RV while she updates the incident log.
“You should add that the campground host performed exceptionally well under pressure,” I tell her.
“I’ll be sure to note that the ranger was distracting but mostly competent.”
“Mostly?”
She closes the clipboard. “I caught you staring at me more than once.”
“I can’t help it. I know what you look like under those clothes.”
Her cheeks turn pink, but she doesn’t look away.
I step closer, resting my hands on her hips. “About last night.”
Her smile fades a little. “I wondered when we’d get to this part.”
“What part?”
“The part where we establish that it was fun and we’re both adults and nobody has any expectations.”
I study her face. “Is that what you want?”
She hesitates.
That’s all the answer I need.
“I’m not going to pretend last night meant nothing to me,” I say. “And I’m not going to treat you like a temporary distraction because your contract has an end date.”
“Tate.”
“I know you’re leaving. I heard you the first ten times.”
Her eyes drop to the front of my uniform.
I hook a finger under her chin and gently lift her face.
“But while you’re here, I want you. Not just in bed.
I want to take you to dinner. I want you at my sister’s house when Jonas talks through an entire meal.
I want to bring you coffee in the morning and hear about whatever you’re writing. I want all of it.”
“And when I leave?”
“It’ll hurt.”
She winces.
“But I’d rather have the summer with you than nothing at all.”
“You make it sound simple.”
“It is simple. I’m crazy about you.”
Her mouth falls open.
I hadn’t planned to say it. But now that the words are out, I don’t regret them.
“I’ve known you for less than a week,” she whispers.
“I’m a quick study.”
She laughs, but her eyes are shiny.
“I’m not asking you to change your plans today,” I tell her. “I’m asking you to let this be real while we have it. Give me the summer.”
Neely wraps her arms around my neck.
“Okay,” she says.
“Okay?”
“We’ll let it be real. For the summer.”
I kiss her in the middle of the host site, with Ollie operating a chainsaw nearby and Jonas shouting that he found a branch shaped like a dinosaur.
And I’ll keep kissing her, every day, for as long as she’ll let me.
Fourteen weeks go by faster than fourteen weeks have any right to.
The bear stops visiting the campground after the storm. We catch him on the ridge cameras a few times, eating berries and tearing apart an old stump. He runs at the sight of the people now, which is a very good thing.
Ollie continues calling him Doug—and so does half of Whispering Pines. Neely and I keep reminding everyone that it’s best not to name wild animals.
Neely’s book grows from four hundred words to sixty thousand. I don’t know much about romance novels, but I know the park ranger hero is handsome, capable, and incredibly good in bed.
The copyright page says any resemblance of characters to real people is coincidental… but I’m not buying it.
She spends Sundays with my family. Jonas starts saving a seat for her at dinner. Lia learns to say Nee before she says Tate.
Bev adds Neely’s favorite pie to the diner menu.
The Hendersons leave in August, but not before telling me they expect to receive a wedding invitation.
Neely hears them and nearly chokes on her coffee.
I don’t laugh, because I bought a ring three weeks earlier.
I keep it in the locked drawer beside my bed.
I don’t give it to her.
Not yet.
I promised I wouldn’t pressure her to stay, and I intend to keep that promise, even if it kills me.
On the last morning of her contract, I drive into Ponderosa Flats before sunrise.
Her awning is rolled in. The picnic table is cleared. The welcome signs are down, and every storage bay on the RV is closed.
She’s really leaving.
I knew she would. She never told me otherwise.
Still, seeing the rig packed and ready feels like a punch to the solar plexus.
Neely steps outside holding two mugs of coffee. She passes one to me without a word.
“Cream?” I ask.
She smiles. “Too much cream, same as mine. Just how you like it now.”
I never bothered with cream before I met Neely. I didn’t even know how damn good it made coffee taste. She’s sweetened my life in so many ways.
She leans against the side of the RV, and we watch the sun rise through the ponderosas.
“What time are you heading out?” I ask.
“Soon.”
One word. That’s all I get.
I nod and take a drink. Even with the copious amount of cream, all I taste is stomach acid in my mouth.
“I’ll check your tires before you go,” I manage to choke out, turning away from her.
“Tate.”
“And the hitch. And Ollie said the left signal was blinking a little fast yesterday.”
“Tate.”
I stare into my coffee.
She takes the mug from my hand and sets it on the picnic table beside hers.
“I need to tell you something.”
I brace myself for the inevitable goodbye.
She takes a deep breath. “I canceled my reservation.”
My head snaps up. “What?”
“The campground in Oregon. I canceled it. Told them to hire someone else.”
Hope hits me so hard that it’s almost painful, but I’m afraid to jump to conclusions.
“Why?”
“Because I don’t want to go.” She says it quietly, like she’s testing the truth of it.
“I’ve spent four years leaving places before they could matter too much.
I told myself I was free, and maybe I was.
But somewhere along the way, freedom became an excuse to never take a risk.
I was so afraid of planting roots, of being hurt, that I wouldn’t let myself stop and smell the Ponderosas, so to speak. ”
I don’t move. I barely breathe.
She looks toward the campground, where the first campers are beginning to stir.
“I thought home was something I could tow behind me,” she continues. “Then I came here. And I met your family. I met Ollie and Bev and the Hendersons. I found a library I love and a diner that makes meatloaf that’s somehow better than filet mignon.”
“That meatloaf could change anyone’s life.”
A watery laugh escapes her. “And I met you.”
I step closer.
“I’m leaving Ponderosa Flats because a new host has been hired,” she says. “But I was hoping I could park my RV at your place for a while.”
“For a while?”
She smiles. “Maybe forever, if I don’t annoy you too much.”
I pull her against me so fast she squeaks.
“You’re staying?”
“I’m staying.”
I kiss her forehead, her cheek, her mouth. I kiss her until she’s laughing and pushing at my chest because she can’t breathe.
Then I remember the ring.
“Don’t move.”
I sprint toward my truck.
“Tate, where are you going?”
I yank open the passenger door, grab the small box from the glove compartment, and hurry back.
Neely’s eyes widen when she sees it.
“Tate.”
“I bought this three weeks after we met.”
“You bought a ring after three weeks?”
“I wanted to buy it after three days. I showed restraint.”
She covers her mouth with one hand.
I lower myself to one knee on the gravel of the host site.
“I told you I wasn’t going to ask you to promise me forever that night in the ranger cabin.” I open the box. “But I’m asking now.”
Her eyes fill with tears.
“Neely Quinn, I love you. I love how capable you are and how kind you are. I love that you read historical markers out loud and put too much cream in your coffee. I love watching you write, and I can’t wait until you’re a published author and I can hold your books in my hands.”
She laughs through her tears. “I write romance. You’re not my target audience.”
I look up at her from my position on the ground. “I’m on one knee here, Neely. I’m all about the romance.”
Her tears spill over.
“Marry me, Neel—”
“Yes.” The word is out before I finish asking.
“Yes?” I repeat, because I need to hear it again.
“Yes, Tate. Of course, I’ll marry you. I love you.”
I slide the ring onto her finger and stand, gathering her into my arms.
Behind us, someone claps.
We turn to find Ollie beside his maintenance truck, grinning like an idiot.
“I knew it,” he says. “Bev owes me twenty dollars.”
Neely laughs against my chest.
I tighten my arms around my campground host.
My fiancée.
My home.