Chapter 31
EVAN
Anticipation hangs in the air for a moment, then the state rep shakes his head, clears his throat, and looks to me. “The case will be dropped. This is ridiculous, and I’ll talk to my guys to make sure we put protections around the place from now on.”
“So, Evan is cleared to go back to his place?” Carp asks, crossing his tattooed arms.
“You are,” the state guy says, glancing at me—and, to my surprise, he actually looks guilty for what I’ve been through. Maybe he’s regretting being so checked-out for the first part of this meeting. “Feel free to go back tonight. You might want to get a member of the local squad to accompany you.”
“Great,” Carp says. “There’s more food out in the general area if you’re hungry.”
“Uh… thanks,” the state guy says, but I know there’s not a chance he’s going to take any. He’s probably more than ready to get out of here.
But I don’t waste any more time thinking about him, or this situation.
Instead, I’m staring right at Amy Callaghan, who’s turned to talk to a taller, thinner woman beside her who has many of the same features, but darker hair and fewer freckles.
I think Carp says something to me, but I can’t wait another moment.
Stepping down from the makeshift witness stand, I cross the room to Amy, watching as she turns around, her eyes widening when she sees me.
This woman just saved my ass. Saved my land.
I still have a lot of questions for her, but right now—right now, the only thing I want to do is hold her in my arms again.
So I do, scooping her up, tipping her head back, and kissing her deeply. She falls into it, her hands clutching at my jacket, a little noise coming up from the back of her throat.
Her sister makes a surprised sound. Someone from the council bench—Leticia?—lets out a little whoop!
Normally, I hate PDA. Wouldn’t be caught dead doing something like this. But I needed to touch her, to get my hands on her. To anchor her to this moment and, somehow, find a way to tell her everything I won’t be able to get across with words.
“Evan,” she whispers when I pull back, staring at her. There are dozens of people around us, but she’s the only person I see.
“You came back,” I say, knowing my voice is coming out thick.
“I love you,” she says, her eyes darting back and forth between mine, her fingers loosening their hold on my jacket. “I love you, and I love Granite Peaks. If you’ll both have me.”
There are a million things we need to talk about. But right now, I give her my answer the only way I can.
“Okay,” the woman to her left says, breaking us out of our second kiss. “Hi—I’m Kirstin. Amy’s sister. Nice to meet you.”
“Hi,” I say, a flush rising to my cheeks, some of my self-awareness returning to my body. I keep one hand on the small of Amy’s back and hold the other out to her sister. “Thanks for coming. Interested in some of my famous chili?”
She opens her mouth as if to say no, but then glances at her sister and smiles. “You know what? Yeah, why the hell not?”
“Thanks for coming with me,” Amy says to her sister, throwing her arms around her as we stand on the sidewalk outside of the town hall, one of the off-duty cops standing by to take me back up to the cabin.
“Of course,” her sister says, squeezing her back, then shooting me a look over her shoulder.
Stepping away from Amy, Kirstin throws her arms around me, too, then pulls back and narrows her eyes at me.
“I don’t want to do the whole cliché if you hurt my sister thing because I know she’s more likely to hurt you. So just keep that in mind.”
I laugh, thinking back to that first night Amy stayed with me, when she was stranded up in the mountains. The way she’d said, I’m armed, so confidently that it nearly made me shit my pants.
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
Then, we’re making the drive up to the cabin, the cop is taking down the tape at the end of the driveway, and Amy, Blue, and I are driving up to the little building. I only realize how much I’ve missed it when I feel my throat get thick at the sight of it.
It’s been less than a week, but I feel like I’ve been away for years.
At first, I walk through the place, examining every nook and cranny to make sure nothing has gone wrong. The water stores are fine, and the solar panels have stayed clear. Other than a bit of accumulated dust, the place seems okay.
“Evan,” Amy says, tugging on my arm to stop me from doing a third walk-through. When I turn to her, I realize for the first time that she looks slightly nervous, and that gives me pause. “Maybe you should look again in the morning. With fresh eyes, daylight, all that.”
“Yeah,” I say, scratching the back of my neck and laughing. “Maybe I should.”
I was so happy to have her back—and so happy when she’d agreed to stay with me again tonight—that I hadn’t thought about how this conversation was going to go. Or how it might be awkward to see one another again after that night.
“Amy,” I say, stepping toward her, taking her hand in mine. “I’m sorry for the way I acted that night. I didn’t even give you a chance to explain yourself.”
“In your defense,” she whispers, her eyes dropping to the floor, “I was working for McKay up until today. It took a lot for me to let go of that, even knowing about some of the terrible stuff they’d done. And Nathan made it seem pretty believable that I was working against you the entire time.”
I give her a joking look. “You weren’t, right?”
She rolls her eyes, cuffing me on the arm. “Right—I—everything was real for me, Evan. It’s important to me that you know that.”
“I think blaming you was an easy way to cope with what was happening,” I admit, clearing my throat, knowing that, with Amy, I talk more than I have in the past ten years combined.
“I was so used to relying on myself, and I let myself think it was trusting you that led to that outcome, rather than just accepting that bad things can happen, and sometimes you don’t have control. ”
She nudges into me, wrapping her arms around my chest and tucking her head under my chin. I breathe her in, tugging her close, knowing that as long as I get to wake up next to her each morning, I’ll be okay.
“I was afraid to admit things were getting serious with you,” she whispers, her jaw moving against my chest. “Because I thought that meant sacrificing my career. And I was still trying to convince myself that my career was the most important thing to me.”
I grab her by the shoulders, hold her at arm’s length, just now processing something. “You quit your job at McKay,” I say, scanning her face.
She nods.
“So, what are you doing now?”
As much as I hate that company, I get a sinking feeling about her losing all the progress she made. Having to start over somewhere new.
“I’m not entirely sure right now,” she admits, clearing her throat. “But I have enough savings to get me by while I figure it out. Beverly mentioned something to me about a job for the town—working on tourism, managing other restoration jobs.”
“Do the lodge next,” I mutter, and she laughs, that same blanket of nervousness rolling over her face again.
“What?” I ask, eyes darting over her, trying to figure out what it is that’s making her so anxious. “What’s wrong, Amy?”
“I…” She clears her throat and looks to the ceiling, as though for strength. “I was actually wondering how you’d feel about renovations to the cabin.”
“To the cabin?” I echo, not following her.
She nods, taking a few steps away, pushing open the door to the guest bedroom. The place she slept when she came that first night. The room we completely ignored after that, when it was obvious she was much more than a guest.
“For a home office?” I guess, already nodding and stepping into the space, looking around, thinking of how I could easily build her a desk, some bookshelves. We might even want to permanently mount the internet satellite if she wanted to make video calls.
“Actually,” she says, and when I turn, my eyes locking with hers, she gives me a watery smile. “I was thinking more like… a nursery.”
“A nursery,” I parrot again, because apparently the only thing I’m capable of is repeating the last thing she’s said.
It takes an embarrassingly long time for the information to process in my head, and when it does, my eyes drop down to her stomach.
“A nursery,” I whisper, stepping toward her, feeling my face transform with this news.
Amy nods, tears brimming in her eyes as she looks up at me. I take another step toward her, brushing the hair off her forehead, wiping her tears away with the pads of my thumbs. “Yeah,” she says, hiccupping. “If you want it.”
“If I—” My words cut off. There are no words that I could possibly use to express what I’m feeling.
Instead, I pick her up, twirl her around the room, holding her as tightly as I can—without squeezing.
“Of course I want it, Amy. I want you, Amy. All of you. Whatever your future looks like, I want to be right there with you.”
She hiccups again, laughing as I stop spinning and set her down. “Really?”
“I was ready to move to Denver for you,” I say, point-blank, knowing that, as much as I would have hated the city, I would have missed her more. “If that’s what it took.”
The hiccup turns into a noise somewhere between a sob and a laugh, and this time, she’s the one stepping forward, rising up on her tiptoes to kiss me.
We stumble backward out of the guestroom—nursery—together and into our bedroom, slowly stripping off our clothes, falling into bed, languid and slow and loving.
I touch her like I’m never going to let her go, and when she’s naked before me, I bracket my body over hers, leaning down to whisper in her ear and let her know that I’ll never stop making up for every kiss we missed while she was gone.