Chapter 24
TWENTY-FOUR
WINNIE
The Places We Belong
Ice crystals decorate the top of the bedroll’s waxed canvas whenever I move.
Their tinkling sound is sweet, but it reminds me that there are other bodily functions that also need attending to.
I slide out of the warmth of the nest West made for us and into the early-morning air and pull the beanie lower over my ears.
Even as my skin pebbles with instant gooseflesh, it’s impossible not to be awed by the stunning vista spread out before me.
In the morning light, the mountains are twice as stunning as they were the night before. I stare, my need to pee forgotten as I drink in the ice-laden caps, the behemoths that seem to have crept closer during the night, as though wondering why we’ve come here at all to disturb their slumber.
“Hoodie’s in the cab. Toilet paper too.” West’s voice emanates from the depths of the bedroll I’ve abandoned.
I grin and dart for his pickup, pulling the door open. “What, you didn’t think the dire wolf would hop in and drive it away overnight?” I call back to him, digging around for what I need.
“Do you want me to hold your hand? Is that it?” West groans and rolls over. “It’s five fucking a.m., Winnie. Couldn’t you have waited another hour for the one day in my life that I have to sleep in?”
A laugh bubbles up in me as I wave a hand over my head to encompass the view I’m not looking at anymore. “Not with that here!” The toilet paper is exposed and I grab it. “Ta-daa! And hoodie. This is mine now,” I inform him. “You’re not getting it back.”
“Good thing I brought a jacket.” He pulls said leather jacket on over his shirt and yanks his boots on, already up and kicking at the fire that still smolders. “That way, Winnie.” He points me toward the tree line after I dress. “Trust me, it’s clear. I’ve already been up.”
“Oh. thanks.” He’s right. Nothing bothers me, and I’m back in minutes. West already has a freaking steak breakfast cooking with what looks like a loaf of bread that he’s sliced up—Levi’s flavor is all over it in seeded patterns. “You’re still spoiling me.”
“Forever.” His arm tucks around my shoulders as I clean my hands with waterless soap. “I keep telling you. Sometime soon, I need you to believe me, but I’m not gonna stop, Winnie.” His gaze drifts across to the mountains I can’t stop looking at either.
“Stalker,” I mutter, leaning into him. He’s too easy to cuddle. “You’re like a damn big fuzzy bear, you know that?”
He laughs, banding his arm tighter around me as he cooks. “There are regular ranch hands out at Coyote who are still terrified of me, and you’re telling me that you find me…” Roughened fingers catch my chin and tip my head back. “…cute?”
I smile enthusiastically. “Yep.”
“Damn, girl.” He leans down and kisses me deeply.
The world falls away until it’s just us standing on the top of a mountain and nothing else. I grip the front of his shirt in case I fall off the world, but he holds me up because Wilder West won’t let me go. I know that now.
“I love you,” he murmurs.
Tears prickle the backs of my eyelids. I don’t open my eyes because that’ll mean it’s all too real and he’ll see them. “I love you too,” I whisper back, unable to make real sounds.
The all-male noise he makes low in his throat ripples through me. “We’re gonna have to do something permanent.”
“Too fast,” I manage.
“Hell, no. I’ve wanted you for fucking years,” he growls back.
“Oh.” That’s all I get out before he’s kissing me again. Not slow or steady, but quick and rough. The groans that leave me are feral, raw sounds as he lifts me onto his hips. Something metal clatters to the ground, but I’m too busy wrapping my arms around his neck and kissing him back to care much.
“Winnie?”
“Yeah?” His stubble is a little longer than usual and feels so good against my cheek.
“I’m gonna have to sort that fire out before the food splatters all over the forest and we light the damn thing ablaze.”
“Oops.”
“Hmm.”
West gets breakfast under control as I ogle him happily.
“You know, you’re a little stalker yourself,” he mutters, passing me a plate. His fake scowl is cute as hell, and I beam up at him as he passes me freaking apple juice.
“You’re still spoiling me.” I can’t stop grinning like a bear with honey. Do bears do the honey thing? I have no idea. In my imagination, mine does, and that’s what matters right now.
“Yep.”
“I’m stuck with you, aren’t I?”
“Yep.”
“What happens when we go back?”
To reality. Tomorrow.
Tonight.
He shrugs. “Whatever happens, happens, Winnie. But we do it—”
“Together. Yeah, I know.” His words tumble out of my mouth, sharp and prickly like a half-cooked cactus.
His hold tightens. “You gotta stop fighting it sometime.”
“Nope. I can sass you for the next two decades and still come out on top.”
His eyes darken and glitter. “Is that what you need from me? ’Cause I’ll give you that.”
Fuck me sideways and hand me a cowboy. Actually I already have one of my own on call, it seems.
“Uhhh—steak’s ready,” I supply handily.
“Hmmm.” West shoots me a look that promises me we are far from done, and serves up the sort of breakfast I will never, ever refuse.
“Dallas played Uno with me. The fancy version. For four hours, West.” Sally looks at him pointedly that screams benchmark set.
I snuffle a snort behind my hand as we head for Valiant Peak. Coyote Falls recedes behind us, the enormous property that takes up literal mountainsides and golden grass fields little more than a flurry of contrasting color in my wing mirror.
“You’re in trouble,” I murmur, keeping my voice low as Sally carries on, unaware.
West sends me an amused sideways glance. None of our brand of crazy seems to bother him, though it does me. At some point the penny will drop and he’ll have enough.
Enough of our clinginess, enough of our chatter. Sally’s loud. I’m loud. The two of us together? Cacophony from hell in the small space of his pickup cab for the next few hours.
“We’re gonna go by Dallas’s place,” West interrupts Sally’s flow smoothly. “You can tell him yourself, tiny chicken.”
Sally stops talking and bounces in her seat. “We are? I love Aveline. She’s so soft-spoken and graceful. And she plays music. I think some of it is hers, even,” she tells me.
“Really?” I ask, but she’s already turned back and is speaking to West.
“Did you know—” She’s off on whatever has caught her interest in the back of Aveline’s shed. Nothing rusty, I hope as I cast an eye over her hands and arms. Maybe I should check her feet too? I never thought to give her a tetanus shot.
“Stop,” West murmurs. “She’s fine.”
“You don’t know that,” I hiss, sending him the stank eye. That thing is in high demand right now.
He brushes his knuckles across my cheek and then rests his arm over the back of my shoulders. “Relax, Winnie. The world hasn’t ended, and you’re okay. It’s okay to let go now. He’s not here.”
Fail.
Of all the things that West could have said, that one is my trigger.
“Fu—”
“Frog legs,” he says firmly, and pulls over. “I think there are frog legs stuck under my front wheel. Winnie. Are you game to check them with me?”
“That better be a damn big frog,” I mutter.
“Nibble your toes off.”
“I wanna see!” Sally cranes about, searching for the incident.
I snap her seat belt back into place. “Stay. Here. Got it?” I warn her.
“Yes, Mom.” She looks downcast until West passes her his phone, flipping over to his videos.
“Some of the rodeo clips on there. You can go through all of them,” he reassured her. “And then there’s lots of Dustan falling off the bull, okay?”
Sally cheers quietly, already engrossed.
“Better not be anything else on that phone she’s not supposed to see.” The stank eye is back, but West is out of the truck and walking around the front.
He crouches to check the front wheel of the biggest, most imaginary frog that was never squashed. “Winnie.” He cups my jaw when I crouch next to him. I try to skitter backward, but his grip is firm. “I upset you.”
“Yeah. We don’t mention him.”
“We’re gonna.”
“Fu—”
“No.” His voice is firm, calm, and soft. I stop. Look at him, and see—
Just West.
I swallow. “All right. I hate this, but I’m listening for about eight seconds. One.”
“He’s the asshole, but he’s not here. We are. And hiding from him has helped you survive.”
I swallow. “Two,” I whisper, though my resolve is already cracking with a West-shaped hole right in the middle.
West strokes my cheek with his thumb, in no hurry whatsoever.
He doesn’t give a shit about time or if he runs out of the seconds I’m counting that are as imaginary as his giant frog.
“I get that he’s been terrifying. But we’re gonna stop that now.
All of us. We’re family, Winnie. We have been for a really long time.
But only if you let us be. Can we do that? ”
I hiccup as the tears flow. “Y—No?”
“Does that count as a second? Do you need more time?”
I shake my head. “No.”
“So is that a yes? Can you say it?”
I nod. Shake my head. Close my eyes. “Fucking frog making me cry.”
“Yeah, beautiful. It was a sad death. But I’m glad.”
Damn that imaginary frog.
The drive into Valiant Peak is quiet. We hold a minute’s silence in respect of the frog, but it’s more than he’s worth. He gets it anyway at West’s insistence and then…
He’s gone.
All the pressure, all the fear. Somehow, by the time that I step out of the truck cab with Sally still watching rodeo videos on repeat on West’s phone, the tension that’s attempting to heal inside me, while the edges fester, corrupting and biting away at my soul for so many years is just…
Lighter.
West is there, beside me. He doesn’t touch me. He’s just there. And I appreciate that he waits for me to come to him. So I wait too. Right until Dallas greets us, a wary look on his face when he sees how quiet we are.
“Everything good?” His muted tones are deep and low. This man is a protector, and I know why Aveline and Sally both trust him. Sally doesn’t raise her head as she keeps watching the videos West gave her and walks into Dallas’s arms, still sniffling. “We ran over a really big frog. It was sad.”
His eyebrows rise sky high. “A big frog, huh?” He stares hard at West, his disbelief clear in his narrowed gaze. “Musta been a tragic incident.”
“Damn near threw us off the road. Asshole.” West scratches his chin, completely at ease with the faux lie.
I trace patterns across the back of his hand as he looks down at me. “It was.”
Dallas leads us into the house. The fake frog incident is forgotten the moment he brings out the deck of cards Sally loves so much.
After a while, I forget too.