Chapter eight
Luke
I wake up to the soft weight of Holly draped across my chest, one of her legs thrown over mine, her breath warm against my neck. The room is still half-dark, but the first pale light of Christmas Eve is sneaking around the edges of the curtains, painting gold streaks across her bare shoulder.
She’s here. In my bed. In my arms. After last night in the barn, after she kissed me back like I was oxygen and she’d been drowning, she let me carry her home, strip her down, and love her slow and deep until we both fell asleep tangled together.
I’m never letting her go again.
She stirs, makes a sleepy little sound that goes straight to my dick, and burrows closer.
“Morning,” I rasp, voice gravel-rough from sleep and from whispering her name half the night.
She lifts her head, hair a wild cloud, eyes soft and unguarded. “Hi.”
I brush a thumb across her cheek. “Be my date tonight.”
She blinks, then laughs, the full, throw-her-head-back laugh that I’m addicted to. “Luke, I’m working the wedding. I’m literally being paid to be there.”
“Don’t care.” I roll us so she’s underneath me, settle between her thighs. “You’re still mine. I want everyone to know it.”
Her breath catches. “Yours, huh?”
“Damn right.” I kiss the corner of her mouth, her jaw, the spot just below her ear that makes her shiver. “Say yes, Boss Lady.”
She wraps her arms around my neck, arches up so every inch of her is pressed against me. “Yes.”
I kiss her for real then, promising her the rest of our lives in one sweep of my tongue. By the time I pull back, we’re both breathing hard and the sun is fully up.
“Gotta get moving,” I groan against her lips. “Rhett’ll kill me if I’m late.”
She nips my bottom lip. “Go be the best man. I’ve got a wedding to execute.”
I steal one more kiss, then force myself out of bed before I say fuck it and keep her there all day.
An hour later, I’m shaved, showered, and standing in the farmhouse living room in my black tux. Rhett is pacing in front of the fireplace, looking like he’s about to face a firing squad instead of marrying the love of his life.
I clap him on the shoulder. “You good, big brother?”
He stops, drags a hand through his hair. “I’m getting married, man.”
“Yeah. You are.” I grin. “Frankie’s the best thing that ever happened to you.”
“I know,” he says with a smile. “What about you?”
I know exactly what he’s asking. “Yeah. Me too.”
He studies me for a long second. “You love her.”
It’s not a question, but I answer anyway. “More than I thought I could love anybody.”
“You gonna leave the ranch?” His voice is quiet. “Follow her to Denver?”
I don’t even hesitate. “If that’s what it takes to keep her, yeah. I’ll sell my share, figure out city life, whatever she needs. I’m not losing her.”
Rhett’s eyes go soft in a way I’ve never seen. “Dad would’ve liked her.”
“Yeah,” I say around the sudden lump in my throat. “He would’ve.”
We stand there for a minute, two brothers who lost everything once and somehow found our way to this. The door creaks open behind us. I turn and there’s Holly.
She’s in a soft gray dress that hugs every curve, hair twisted up with loose pieces framing her face, cheeks pink from the cold. She looks like she stepped out of a dream.
Her eyes flick from me to Rhett and back, and I realize she heard every word.
“Luke,” she whispers.
Rhett clears his throat. “I’ll just go check on Grandma.” He claps my shoulder again and disappears, pulling the door shut behind him.
The room is suddenly very quiet. Holly takes a shaky step forward. “Did you mean it?”
“Every damn word.”
“You’d move to Denver? For me?”
“I’d move to the moon if you asked me to.”
Her eyes fill. “I don’t want you to leave the ranch.”
“I don’t want to leave either, not really, but I want you more.”
She crosses the room in three strides and throws herself into my arms. I catch her, lift her off the ground, and she wraps her legs around my waist like it’s the most natural thing in the world.
“I love you,” she says against my mouth. “I love you so much it scares the hell out of me.”
I kiss her hard, tasting salt from her tears. “I love you, too, Holly Jameson. And I’m keeping you.”
She laughs through the tears. “I don’t want Denver anymore. I don’t want to be ruled by checklists and timelines. I don’t know what I want exactly, but I know I want you.”
“We’ll figure it out,” I promise. “Together.”
She nods, forehead pressed to mine. “Together.”
Rhett and Frankie’s wedding ceremony is perfect.
The barn glows with a thousand fairy lights, pine garland dripping from every beam. Frankie walks down the aisle on her dad’s arm, looking like Christmas morning, and Rhett forgets how to breathe when he sees her.
Holly stands off to the side in her headset and clipboard, but every time our eyes meet, she smiles like it’s just us in the room.
The minister gets to the vows, and Rhett takes Frankie’s hands.
“Frankie,” he starts, voice rough, “I promise to love you on the good days and the bad days. I promise to hold your hand when the world feels too big, and to let you win every time we argue, unless it’s about pumpkin homicide, in which case we’re going to court.”
The whole barn erupts in laughter. Frankie’s crying and laughing at the same time.
She squeezes his hands. “Rhett Carson, I promise to love you even when you leave your boots in the middle of the floor and snore like a freight train. I promise to make you coffee every morning and to never, ever let you forget that you’re the best man I’ve ever known.”
They kiss before the minister even says they can, and the cheers are loud enough to rattle the rafters.
I watch Holly the whole time, and I know, down to my bones, that one day soon she’ll be walking toward me under these same lights.
The reception is pure magic.
The barn doors are thrown wide to the night, letting in the hush of fresh snow and the glow of a million string lights.
Inside, it’s warm, loud, and perfect. The tables are draped in ivory linen, with centerpieces of pine, cranberries, and candles flickering everywhere, the string quartet traded in for a country band that knows how to make a dance floor shake.
I’ve got Holly in my arms before the bridal party is even announced.
She’s ditched the headset and clipboard, swapped her gray work dress for a deep-green silk number that hugs every curve. She’s barefoot, she kicked off her heels the second the ceremony ended, and she’s laughing as I spin her under the lights.
“Luke!” she squeals when I dip her low enough that her hair brushes the floor. “People are watching!”
“Let ’em.” I pull her back up, flush against my chest.
The band slides into a slow cover of “Tennessee Whiskey,” and the floor fills with couples. Rhett and Frankie are in the center, foreheads pressed together, swaying like the rest of the world had disappeared.
Holly loops her arms around my neck. “You’re trouble.”
“Only the good kind.” I slide my hands down to the small of her back, fingers brushing bare skin where the dress dips low. “You look like Christmas and sin, and I’m real grateful.”
She laughs into my shoulder. “You clean up nice yourself, cowboy.”
I’m still in the tux, jacket long gone, sleeves rolled, tie loose.
Grandma Martha barrels past us, doing some version of the electric slide with three of Frankie’s cousins. She catches my eye and points a finger. “You two quit makin’ eyes and get over here for the family dance!”
Holly’s eyes go wide. “Family dance?”
“Carson tradition,” I grin. “Nobody escapes.”
Ten minutes later, the band calls every Carson to the floor.
Rhett drags Frankie, I drag Holly, Grandma drags the minister.
We form one giant, ridiculous circle, arms over shoulders, and the band kicks into some polka-type song that no one really knows where it came from or when this tradition started.
We stomp, we clap, we holler made up lyrics off-key. Holly is laughing so hard she’s crying by the second chorus, her hair flying as I spin her under my arm and back into the circle. At one point, Grandma dips the minister, he goes scarlet, and the entire barn loses it.
When the song ends, Holly’s doubled over, breathless, palms on her thighs.
“I can’t breathe,” she gasps.
I haul her upright and kiss the laugh right off her lips. She melts into me, fingers curling into my vest.
Frankie appears at our side, veil crooked, cheeks flushed. “Holly. Bouquet. Now.”
Holly’s eyes go comically round. “Absolutely not.”
“Tradition!” Frankie sing-songs, already dragging her toward the raised platform where the cake sits like a vanilla-bean masterpiece.
I follow because no way am I missing this.
All the single women are herded to the floor. Holly tries to edge toward the back, but Frankie shoves her front and center with a wicked grin.
Frankie turns her back to the crowd, counts to three, and launches the bouquet like a quarterback going for the end zone.
It arcs high, roses and pinecones and baby’s breath flying through the air, and lands square in Holly’s startled arms. The barn erupts.
Holly stares at the bouquet like it’s a live grenade, then slowly lifts her eyes to me, but I’m already moving.
I hop up onto the platform in one leap, drop to one knee right there in front of God and half of Montana, and pull the little velvet box from my pocket that I’ve been carrying since yesterday.
The music cuts. Someone gasps. Holly’s mouth falls open.
“Holly Jameson,” I say, loud enough for the whole room to hear, “I knew I was in trouble the second you stepped out of that SUV in four-inch heels during a snowstorm. You’ve been bossing me around and making me fall stupidly in love with you every damn day since.”
Laughter and awws ripple through the crowd.
I flip open the box. Inside is a necklace that used to belong to my great-grandmother.
“I’m not asking you to marry me tonight,” I continue.
“I’m asking you to let me spend the rest of my life earning the right to ask you properly one day when you’re ready, when we’ve figured out whatever beautiful life we’re building together.
But I need you to know, right here, right now, in front of everybody we love: you’re it for me. You’re my forever.”
Her eyes are swimming, and the bouquet trembles in her hands.
“Say something, Boss Lady,” I tease, voice rough.
She drops the bouquet, launches herself at me, and kisses me so hard we almost topple off the platform.
The barn explodes, cheers, whistles, Grandma Martha yelling “That’s my boy!” at the top of her lungs.
I kiss her back until we’re both dizzy, then pull away just enough to fasten the necklace around her neck. I stand, lift her off her feet, and spin her around.
Later, much later, after the cake has been eaten, after Rhett and Frankie disappear in a shower of sparklers, after the last guests stumble toward their beds, Holly and I sneak out the side door into the snow.
It’s falling thick and quiet, blanketing the world in white. The barn lights glow behind us like a promise.
She tips her head back, catches flakes on her tongue, then looks at me.
“I used to think happily-ever-after was just another box on a checklist,” she says softly.
“And now?”
She steps close, slides her hands inside my open coat, and smiles up at me with snow in her lashes.
“Now I think it’s this. You and me and whatever comes next.”
I kiss her under the falling snow, slow and deep and full of every tomorrow we’re going to build together.
When we finally break apart, she laughs, breathless.
“Take me home, cowboy.”
So I do. I scoop her up, carry her through the snow to my cabin, our cabin, and kick the door shut behind us.
Outside, the storm keeps falling.
Inside, we keep falling too.