Chapter 10
Shelly
Amos had changed in the last thirty days.
It had happened so gradually that I hadn’t noticed at first.
But now, the difference in him was all I could see.
He didn’t wear his lucky horseshoe shirt tonight.
He was in his regular work flannel, soft and worn at the elbows, the kind of shirt he wore when he wasn’t performing for anybody.
I’d caught myself staring at him across the pool table earlier, watching him laugh at something Cedar said, and thinking that I liked this version of him just as much as the flamboyant one.
Maybe more, because this version felt like something he normally only let a handful of people see.
And he’d spent the entire evening focused on me, which a month ago would have been unthinkable.
The old Amos would have drifted around the bar, charming every table.
Tonight he’d barely looked at anyone else.
I told myself that didn’t mean anything.
Tonight was a test, after all. The last night of our thirty-day fake-dating agreement.
“I need another beer,” I said, sliding out of the booth. “You want one?”
Amos looked up, his eyes landing warmly on mine. “Yeah, Thanks Shelly.”
Things had been… intimate between us since last night. We made love so many times I lost count, and when Mina came home this morning, we’d been laughing in the kitchen making pancakes from scratch.
She’d been happy to eat some with us.
I made my way to the bar and caught Max’s eye, holding up two fingers. He nodded and reached for the tap.
Someone patted my back, and I turned to find Mina there, a nearly empty glass in her hand. She looked happy, which was a relief because she’d been stressed all week.
“Hey,” I said, leaning in to hug her. “There you are. Are you staying late tonight?”
“For a little while.” She settled against the bar beside me. “So I finally booked the flights for Austin. It’s going to be the third weekend in October. Are you still in?”
“Are you kidding? I’ve been waiting for this concert since they announced the tour.” Iron Hillbilly was one of our new favorite bands. I grabbed her arm. “Tell me you got floor tickets.”
“Front section,” she said, grinning. “We’re going to be so close we’ll be able to see their faces sweat.”
I laughed, and we spent a few minutes sorting out the details, talking about the drive down versus flying and whether we could convince Kelly to come along. She’d been glued to Brady’s side ever since he came back to town.
Talking to Mina felt easy, and I needed that because underneath my smile, my chest had been tight all evening. The countdown was in its last hours now.
Mina looked like she could read my mind. “How’s it going with Amos?”
I exhaled slowly. “It’s the last night.”
“Of the thirty days?”
“Yeah.”
She was quiet for a moment, studying me. “Shelly. You need to tell him.”
“Mina.”
“I mean it. Tell him how you feel. If you don’t. I will.”
I looked down at the bar top. “I’m scared.”
“Of what? That man took you to his mother’s Sunday dinner table. You know what that means.”
She was right. In a small town like Red Oak Mountain, it did have certain connotations attached to it.
Mina continued, “He’s never done that with any woman. Ever. And he wouldn’t have taken you there if he didn’t genuinely care about you.”
I thought about his poor mom. She was practically printing the wedding invitations.
Something she’d said had been rattling around in my head for weeks now.
At Red Oak Market, she’d said she knew all about me. Then at dinner, it had seemed true.
Amos had talked about me over the years. She even knew about the time my skirt got caught on the mechanical bull here at the Bear Den.
It had been ripped right off me, and Amos had stripped his shirt on the spot, wrapping it around me like a knight protecting his queen.
After that memorable incident, long skirts were banned on the bull.
Max set the two beers in front of me.
“Do you really think I should? What if it ruins everything between us?” I asked Mina.
But she wasn’t listening to me. She was looking over my shoulder.
She winced. “Don’t panic.”
I turned around, panic already fluttering inside me. Those were the magic words you say whenever you do want someone to panic.
“Oh, you’ve got to be fucking kidding me? How can I compete with that!” I hissed.
Pink Shirt was here tonight, and she’d forgotten to put most of her clothes on.
She was wearing the tiniest short-shorts with a busty halter top that could hardly hold her ample curves.
The worst part? She was cutting through the crowd in a direct line toward Amos’s booth, her hips swaying with obvious purpose.
My heart dropped straight to the floor of the Bear Den and disintegrated on the spot.
Because this was how it ended. With Amos slipping back into who he really was… who he’d always been.
“Go,” Mina said, nudging me hard. “Go right now.”
I didn’t want to.
Every self-protective instinct I had told me to stay at the bar and let it play out.
He was never really mine to begin with. I’d only gotten to borrow him for thirty days.
It wouldn’t matter if he ended things one night early to be with her.
I’d survive it… somehow.
But not before I put up a little bit of a fight.
My feet started moving in their direction, carrying me back across the room with both beers in hand, and I caught the tail end of what Pink Shirt was saying as I got close.
“You took the wrong girl home the other night, sugar. Should’ve been me. I could’ve given you a real ride.”
Amos’s voice came out low and flat, nothing like his usual easy drawl. “Shelly’s my girlfriend now. I’m going to need you to clear out and leave me the fuck alone.”
He looked up then and spotted me.
His eyes softened, and he stood up from the booth, stepping around Pink Shirt as if she weren’t even there.
He took one of the beers from my hand, slipped his arm around my waist, and pulled me gently to his side.
“I like the Cozy Bean better,” he rumbled against my temple, quiet enough that only I could hear it.
My lips trembled as emotion shot through me.
“Can we go outside?” I whispered. “I need to talk to you.”
It was time to tell him everything. He had to know how I felt about him. And after what he’d just said, I had more than a little hope in my heart.
He stared down at me for a moment, reading my face, and then he nodded and steered me toward the door with his hand at the small of my back.
A minute later we were sitting on his tailgate, holding hands, as the distant sound of music drifted out from the Bear Den.
“I hope you know I wasn’t flirting with her, Shelly Bear.”
“I know.” The look on Pink Shirt’s face when he’d told her to clear out had been unmistakable. She’d been furious. “I could tell by her face that she was pissed. She wasn’t expecting that.”
He turned toward me. “Then why are you crying a little?”
I hadn’t realized I was until he said it. I pressed the back of my hand to my eye.
“I don’t know. I guess seeing her got me thinking about tomorrow.”
Amos was quiet for a beat. “What about tomorrow?”
“It’s the last day of our agreement.”
He looked at me steadily. “I wouldn’t mind getting a permanent extension on it. What would you say if I told you that?”
My heart leaped… and then immediately tried to protect itself.
But it was too late. My chest cracked open as hope bloomed and then flourished.
“Do you mean that, Amos?” I squeaked out.
His eyes landed on mine, a soft warmth in them that I’d grown used to seeing.
He dragged a hand down his beard, exhaling hard. The man looked more serious than I’d ever seen him before.
“Yeah, I mean it. I don’t want this to end tomorrow,” he rumbled. “I don’t want to go back to the way things were before.”
Taking my hands in his, he shifted on the tailgate, facing me. “I don’t want to watch you walk into the Bear Den and pretend I don’t notice every damn man in the room looking at you.”
My breath hitched as I stared at the man of my dreams.
“You’ve always mattered, Shelly-Rae,” he growled, his eyes locking onto mine. “I don’t want to see you with another man. I want you to be mine.”
My whole body stilled beside him, the whole world clicking into place.
“But I don’t know how to do this right,” he said quietly. “I don’t know how to be the kind of man who deserves you.”
I shook my head. “Amos—”
“But I know one thing,” he cut in, his voice firm.
“I know I don’t want thirty days.”
His hands tightened around mine.
“I want you.”
My heart opened so wide it expanded to fill the universe.
Amos loves me. He always has.
His eyes hooded over, and then it was like he was giving me the dirtiest, sexy talk ever. “I want you to steal all the blankets and make me watch bad rom-coms. I’ll even eat your rabbit food, girl.”
A tiny laugh spilled out.
“I might hold you to that, Amos.” My fingers curled tighter around his.
“I want to come home to you,” he growled, his voice dropping. “Even if it’s just some shitty little cabin to start with.”
“And…” he leaned in closer, his lips almost brushing mine. “I want to spend the rest of my life trying to figure out how to be a man good enough to keep you.”
Everything he’d just said was better than any diamond ring another man might have bought me.
Amos was my everything.
He had been for years.
I planted a tiny, sweet kiss on his lips, then whispered, “I love you, too, Amos.”
He shuddered, his breath going ragged.
Then he pulled me straight into his arms and kissed me until I forgot where we were.
The Bear Den parking lot faded away as we lay back in his truck bed, our kiss growing frantic. We had to make up for so much lost time.
My hips bucked against his and I didn’t care if we were making a scene right now. The parking lot was dark, and all I wanted to do was devour my man.
But when he reached down to slip a hand under my skirt, I knew I needed to stop him.
I needed to get Amos somewhere private before we both lost control.
We didn’t need Mason arresting us tonight.
I opened my mouth to tell him that when Mina’s voice carried sharp and frightened through the parking lot.
We both looked.
A man had her by the wrist near the side of the building, leaning into her space. I could see that his posture was aggressive even from a distance.
The blood drained out of my face.
“Oh, no. That’s her ex.”
“Is he bad news?” Amos asked, already standing.
“The worst,” my heart started wobbling in my chest.
Amos was across the parking lot in a fast sprint before the words even left my mouth.
A second later he shouted, his voice carrying the kind of authority that made people stop and look.
He was as loud as a bear, moving fast and lethal.
Every muscle in my body tensed. I hopped off the edge of the truck, running after him.
“Amos, be careful!”
But I might have been warning the wrong man, because Amos reached into the back of his waistband and leveled a pistol I hadn’t known he carried directly at the man’s chest.
“You’ve got ten seconds to let go of her arm and get in your truck,” Amos said, his voice deadly calm. “And if I ever see you near her again, I’ll drop you off the cliff at Jasper Rock. Are we clear?”
Mina’s ex let go of her arm, cussing up a storm, full of fake bravado as he stalked off to his truck.
Amos holstered the gun and put his hand on Mina’s shoulder after her ex drove off, saying something quietly to her that I couldn’t hear.
She nodded, wrapping her arms around herself, and he walked her back toward the bar door and made sure she got inside before he turned back around.
Then he crossed the parking lot toward me, unhurried now, tucking his flannel back down over the holster like it was nothing.
I looked at him standing there, big and steady and completely unrattled, and I knew that I wanted him to be my person.
I wanted him to be my person so bad it was almost unbearable.
I needed a lifetime with this man.