Chapter 50
50
Preston
“ O ut,” Hanna says.
“There’s still a lot of cleanup,” I tell her.
“Leave. Begone.”
“Are you quoting Professor Wormbog in Search for the Zipperump-a-Zoo ?”
“No. I’m telling you that you need to take Natalie and go do whatever it is that my brothers do with the women they love when they’re well out of range of both my sight and my hearing, and I don’t want to know anything at all about it.”
Natalie makes a small sound that I can’t identify.
“You should go,” Sonya says more kindly and gently. “We have this.”
“I made the mess,” I protest.
“You made the grand gesture,” Shane says. “Go have makeup sex.”
The sound Natalie makes this time is distinctly a choking sound. I’m hoping it’s laughter and not disgust with my family. Because if I have my way, she’s stuck with them.
We say goodbye and go out.
“I’m so sorry about them,” I say when we reach the parking lot.
“They’re perfect,” she says. “I love them. Also, are they wrong?” She gives me a saucy look.
“No,” I say. “They’re right. But I have a few things I want to say before?—”
“Before what?” she teases.
I lean in, whispering against her ear. “Before I make you scream my name while I’m buried to the hilt inside you.”
I pull back to see her eyes go dark and her cheeks pink up. It’s the prettiest thing I’ve ever seen.
“Better start talking,” she says.
We’re walking along the path back to the lodge, but I stop her and face her. “I was so busy trying to prove to my grandfather that I was good at what I do that I never took a second to ask myself if I liked what I do. When I went back, I realized that the way I live in New York, it’s like—it’s like Dorothy in Kansas. Black and white. And being here, with you, it’s like Oz. All color. Vivid. Real. I had to go back to New York City to see the difference, and when I did—I can’t stay there. Not without you.”
“But I could come there,” she says. “I would come there. To be with you. If that’s what you wanted. I’m sure I could find the kind of work I like to do, and I’d make New York work for me.”
“I know you would,” I tell her. “You’d find a way to be happy anywhere, and you’d have enough left over to make the people around you happy, too. But that’s not what I want for either of us. I want this. I want us to be surrounded by people who love us, in a place that both of us love.”
“I want that, too,” she says. “But what will you do here?”
“Truth?” I ask.
“Truth,” she says.
“I don’t have to do anything if I don’t want to.”
She opens her mouth. Then closes it again. “That must be nice.”
“You don’t have to, either.”
She grins at that. “Are you offering to keep me?”
“I guess I kind of am.”
“Do I seem like the kept type to you?”
I shake my head. “Not in the slightest. And I don’t think I am, either. I think I need to be busy. But I don’t know with what yet. Maybe it’s helping to run the family business—if Hanna will even let me—maybe it’s ranching, maybe it’s finance. Maybe it’s none of those things. But I want to give it the space to be its own thing. And—I want to do it with you by my side. That’s the one thing I know.”
She smiles at me and takes my hands. I love the feel of her fingers wrapped around mine. It’s safety and excitement and fun all at the same time, and I don’t remember the last time I felt that way. I know I was a kid. It was a long time ago. And it’s so fucking good to feel it again.
She tilts her head against my arm, a trusting lean. “While you were gone, I realized that I needed to stop wanting to fix my life to match my mother’s vision. I realized that my vision is the only one that matters. I was—going to come tell you that. And to tell you that you were the biggest and best part of what I envisioned for myself.”
“Natalie—”
She pulls me down, and I kiss her. Hard.
“I told her that, too. We talked, and…I walked away at the end of the conversation. I don’t know if that’s it for us, or what. But I think I’m okay either way.”
I give her a big hug. She feels amazing in my arms, curvy and alive and strong, her body relaxing and softening into our embrace. I can feel my own muscles tighten in answer, and her thigh presses a little closer.
“You really quit your job?” she asks. “Before you even knew if I wanted us to be together?”
I nod. “I did it for me. Because I don’t need a decision I made years ago in anger to be the last word on what I want from my life.”
“If you end up wanting to go back to New York?—”
“ If that happens, we’ll talk about it,” I tell her. “We’ll make a decision together. But it won’t be to prove something. It’ll be because it’s what I want and what works for us .”
“Us,” she repeats with wonder in her voice.
I cup her head gently and stand there a moment. I want my mouth on hers so much it feels like hunger, but the anticipation is so good, I don’t want that to end, either.
She’s the one who pulls me down, making a little greedy sound as our lips meet. Hers part, and I groan into her mouth.
“We should?—”
She makes a gesture toward the lodge, tilting her head to one side. “I’d say your place or mine, but I’m guessing?—”
“‘Mine’ right now is the guest room at Hanna’s.”
“And given that your plans for me involved me screaming your name while you were—what?—‘buried in me to the hilt’?”
The words in her desire-roughened voice wrap themselves around my cock, and another groan husks out of me.
“C’mon,” she says and takes my hand.