Chapter 3
CHAPTER THREE
Sedona
I love him.
Of course I love him.
That truth hums somewhere deep in my chest even while my thoughts scramble in a dozen directions at once. He’s watching me with that patient, hopeful look that always manages to pull something warm out of me, and it takes everything not to break apart right here in the middle of the clinic.
I try to focus on my paperwork, but my mind drifts back to the very beginning, to the day everything shifted between us. I had known Billy Carson and his brothers my whole life—Tex the wild one, Joey the stubborn one, Seth the sweet one with the crooked smile.
Billy is the oldest, the quiet strength of the bunch, the one who checked fences at dawn and fixed tractors at sunset. Six years older meant I never thought I’d be more than the little Archer girl who tagged along after her dad.
Then everything changed when I was nineteen.
I had been sweeping up the clinic floor when he came in carrying a gray-blue heeler against his chest. The dog’s trembling body was pressed to Billy’s shirt, and there was dried blood along its flank.
He said he’d found it by the edge of their back pasture, right where the ridge drops toward the creek. He’d been on the tractor and almost missed the shape curled under the mesquite.
I remember how scared I was at first—the dog’s labored breathing, the bite marks, the raw scrape along its ribs—but Billy didn’t hesitate. He held that dog like its life mattered more than anything else in the damn world.
We worked together to clean him up, and somewhere between disinfectant swabs and the slow rise of hope that the dog would make it, something opened between us. Boone survived because he’s a tough little thing, and Billy adopted him the very next day.
But that wasn’t what stayed with me. What stayed was the way Billy lingered before he left that night, scratching the back of his neck, cheeks a little pink, looking anywhere but directly at me.
He asked if he could take me out for coffee to say thank you for saving his new dog, and my heart practically tried to crawl out of my chest. Coffee turned into him driving me home, and in the parking lot outside the clinic, he’d leaned close, breath warm near my cheek, and said I was beautiful.
Then he asked if he could kiss me. He didn’t just kiss me, though—he changed the direction of my entire life with that first press of his mouth.
We’ve been together ever since.
So loving him isn’t the issue. Wanting him isn’t hard. Wanting a life with him isn’t hard.
It’s marriage.
Marriage makes the edges of my breath catch because I know what happens when two people rush into forever without understanding what forever feels like in the long run.
My parents married young, and then my mother left town when I was three because this place suffocated her. She never came back.
Sometimes I’m afraid the part of her that needed more is hidden somewhere inside me too, waiting to wake up one morning and ruin everything.
I’m only twenty-three. I haven’t even figured myself out completely yet. But he’s looking at me with those blue-gray eyes that always see more than I want to admit, and I can’t stand how much my chest aches from wanting to give him a yes I’m not ready for.
I realize I’ve been staring at him for way too long instead of actually finishing my paperwork. I clear my throat and slide the last folder shut, forcing a smile as I stand.
“I’m done. We can head out for dinner.”
Billy rises from the little waiting room chair, and even after five years together, he still surprises me with how tall he is, how his presence fills a room without him trying.
He waits while I tidy up, adjusting bottles on the counter, leaving notes for tomorrow, locking up supplies. I’m always making mental lists, always thinking ahead, always making sure nothing gets left undone.
When everything is finally in place, I lock the door, and he threads his fingers through mine as he guides me toward his truck. He opens the door for me—because he always does—and I climb in, breathing in the familiar mix of him that lingers in the cab.
Pine smoke. Leather. A hint of sweat from whatever he was doing before he came by. All of it makes something low in my belly clench.
He settles in beside me and turns on the radio, soft country humming through the speakers. “Ready?” he asks.
I nod and rest my hand on his thigh, the way I always do when we drive anywhere. He brings my hand to his mouth, kissing the inside of my fingers, and there’s a little sting of emotion behind my ribs.
I love him. I love him so much it scares me.
So why can’t I just say yes?
The drive to Daisy’s Diner doesn’t take long under the late evening sky. The neon sign glows outside the big windows, and Daisy Mae herself is at the counter pouring coffee for a pair of truckers.
She’s retired, but she refuses to close down the diner because she says people fall apart when someone stops mothering them. She’s probably right.
We slide into one of the corner booths. Daisy walks over with menus and sets them down with a knowing little smile.
She’s been watching us since we were kids. She probably sees the storm sitting between us before we even open our mouths.
We order meatloaf plates because that’s what everyone orders at Daisy’s after a long day. After she heads back to the kitchen, I realize Billy hasn’t said much, and it tightens something inside me.
“You’re being a little quiet.”
“I’m fine,” he says, but there’s a tension in his shoulders that gives him away. He’s trying to be strong for me, but the silence isn’t protecting either of us. It’s choking the air around us.
He starts to speak right when I do, and we both stop, then laugh under our breath. The laugh helps. It doesn’t fix anything, but it helps.
“You go first,” I tell him.
He leans back slightly and runs a thumb along the side of my hand. “Seth wants to see if we can get into team roping.”
I blink. “Isn’t that dangerous?”
His mouth twitches like he’s fighting a grin. “Not as dangerous as what Joey’s doing with those bulls. And I’ll be careful. I promise.”
He’s smirking now, and the corner of his eyes warm. “What?” I ask. “Why’re you smiling?”
“Because I like it when you worry about me.”
“I love you,” I say, softer than I mean to.
“I know.” His voice dips as he lifts my hand to his lips again and presses a slow kiss to my palm. “I know,” he repeats.
Our food comes, and we drift into easier conversation—feed schedules, the dog Old Roy picked up, the cat someone left in a cardboard box by the clinic door. Anything except the thing swirling between us like a live wire.
But in the truck afterward, the music low, the air thick with everything we’re not saying, I finally press my palm to the dash. “Can you park?”
He doesn’t hesitate. He pulls to the shoulder of the long stretch of road leading back toward Wildflower Hollow. The headlights hit the roadside grass, and the truck idles with a soft hum.
“Can we talk about it?” I ask.
He’s looking straight at me, but I can’t read what’s happening behind those eyes. So I find his hand, slide my fingers through his, and force the words out.
“I love you. I really do. I just need a minute to think about everything. Not because I don’t want you. Not because I don’t want us. But because this is big, and I want to make sure I don’t hurt you later.”
He nods, jaw shifting a little as he absorbs it. “Okay.”
The relief in that one word makes something inside me loosen. I lean in to kiss him, intending it to be soft, gentle, grateful.
Instead, the moment our lips meet, something in me breaks open, and I melt into him. His mouth moves against mine with a slow insistence, and the tension threading through my nerves gives way to a rush of heat.
He undoes my seat belt, sliding an arm around my waist, guiding me closer.
When I climb onto his lap, my knees bracketing his hips, his breath hitches against my mouth.
I don’t care about anything except the feel of him beneath me, the warmth of his hands sliding along my back under my shirt, the way his tongue brushes mine with a tenderness that makes my whole body shudder.
“I love you,” I whisper again, saying it over and over because I need him to hear it, because I need him to understand that my hesitation has nothing to do with my heart.
His hands move along my sides, fingers tracing the line of skin between my jeans and my shirt. The contact sends a ripple through me, and I clutch his shoulders, kissing him deeper, losing myself in the taste of him.
All I want is him. All I’ve ever wanted is him.
But somewhere in the haze of heat and need, I can still feel the shape of the question he asked earlier, hovering between us like something fragile.
I touch his jaw, kiss him one more time, and breathe his name into his mouth like it’s the only thing holding me together.
Billy.
And even as I tremble in his arms, I know I’m going to have to find the courage to answer him before I ruin one of the best things in my life.
It takes another four hours before he drives me home, and I know it’s entirely my fault. I didn’t want the night to end. I didn’t want the tension between us to be the only thing swirling around my thoughts.
So I told him to take the turn toward the little lake past the cattle dip, the one that still smells faintly of summer grass even in the colder months.
He didn’t hesitate. He never does when it comes to me.
The moon hangs low over the water by the time we get there, and the wind stirs the reeds along the bank. Billy pulls a blanket from behind the seat and lays it down like this is something we’ve done every day of our lives.
Maybe, in some ways, we have. Maybe all we’ve ever been doing is returning to each other over and over.
We settle on the blanket, my head resting against his shoulder, his arm warm and firm around me. The stars spread across the sky in bright clusters, each one sharp enough to make me feel small and somehow infinite at the same time.