Chapter 9
Chapter Nine
PAIGE
The walk lasts forty minutes.
Nacogdoches is flat. Sticky. Even at eight in the evening, the air sits on my skin like a wet cloth, and the cicadas are screaming from every tree on the block like they've got something to prove.
The sidewalk's cracked. Old oaks line the streets.
Everything's green and overgrown in that East Texas way, where nature doesn't ask permission, just grows right over whatever humans put down.
I can see why he left. And I can see why it cost him so much.
This is a place that holds onto people. The houses have wide porches.
The yards run together without fences. Somebody's smoking ribs three streets over, and the smell follows me the whole loop, and if I grew up here, if my mama's kitchen and my granddad's mill and the girl I loved and the brother I trusted were all within a twenty-minute drive, leaving would've taken a piece of me that never grew back.
That's what happened to Aiden. The piece didn't grow back. He just learned to live without it.
And now he's sitting in a hotel room trying to hand me back because Delaney Harrison said victim in a hospital lobby and it went through him like a bullet.
My phone buzzes.
Gwen
How's Texas
Hot.
Gwen
And?
Hot.
Gwen
Paige.
He's shutting down. His ex said some things. His mama doesn't get it. He's trying to send me home.
Gwen
Is he succeeding?
What do you think.
Gwen
That's my girl. Give him tonight. I tried to shut Hunter out a bunch of times before he convinced me to stay. We do that. The scared ones. We shove you away to test if you'll go, and when you don't, something cracks open.
What if it doesn't crack open?
Gwen
Peaches. The man carved you a SPOON.
I laugh in the middle of a Texas sidewalk, and an old man watering his lawn gives me a look.
Gwen's right. She's always right about this, because she married a man who didn't speak for a decade and loved him until he did. If anyone knows what it looks like when a broken man tests the fence, it's Gwen Richardson.
I walk back.
The hotel lobby's empty. Elevator up. Hallway. Room 412 is quiet behind the door, and my hand hesitates on the keycard.
Mama. What would you do?
I'd walk in, baby girl. I always walk in.
I open the door.
The room's dark. His bag is on the floor. His boots are gone.
He's gone.
My stomach drops. For one terrible second, I think he left. Got in the rental and drove to the airport and went back to Oregon without me, the way he drove out of Nacogdoches twelve years ago when it got too heavy to hold.
Then my phone buzzes.
Aiden
I'm at the hospital. Don't leave. Please.
I need to do something. Then I'm coming back.
Please be there when I come back.
My knees give out. I sit on the edge of the bed, staring at my phone, reading those three messages over and over.
The please twice. Aiden Harrison doesn't say please.
Aiden Harrison grunts and nods and fixes your stirrup in the rain without telling you.
The word please from this man is a door blown open.
I'm here.
I set the phone on the nightstand. Pull off my boots. Sit on the sagging bed in a blue sundress in a hotel in East Texas and wait.
An hour passes.
I don't turn the TV on. Don't shower. Don't move. Just sit with my hands in my lap, watching the parking lot through the curtain gap, counting headlights.
His rental pulls in at nine forty.
Headlights sweep the ceiling. Engine off. Car door. Then nothing for a long minute, and I know he's sitting in that car the same way he sat on his porch steps after Delaney came to the ranch. Hands hanging. Staring at something nobody else can see.
The hotel door opens.
He's standing there in the same clothes. Same flannel. But something's different. His eyes are red. Not crying now, but he has been, and he's not hiding it, and Aiden Harrison doesn't cry, which means whatever happened in that hospital room took him apart.
"Paige."
"I'm here."
He comes in. Closes the door. Stands in the middle of the room with his hands at his sides, and for a second he looks lost, genuinely lost, like a man who's been running on a map that just changed and he hasn't found his bearings yet.
"I told her," he says. "Everything."
My heart starts hammering.
"Told my mama what it did to me. Not yelling.
Not accusing. Just told her." He swallows.
"Told her I loved her, and that watching her choose his comfort over mine broke something in me that took twelve years to name.
Told her I forgive her, because I do, but that forgiveness doesn't mean pretending it was okay.
Told her I'm not coming around. I came back.
There's a difference, and she needs to hear it. "
"Aiden."
"She cried. I held her hand. She said she was sorry." His voice splinters. Holds. "First time in twelve years. She said she was sorry and she meant it."
My eyes are burning. I blink hard. Stay on the bed.
"Wyatt was there. Didn't say much. I told him the same thing. That I'd pay the bills, but I'm not here to reconcile. I'm here because Mama asked and because the woman I love told me I'd regret it if I didn't come."
Everything in the room stops.
The woman I love.
He said it in the middle of a sentence, tucked between hospital bills and his brother, like it was a fact he's been carrying so long it came out without ceremony. Like breathing. Like cutting a hinge.
"What did you just say?" I whisper.
He crosses the room. Kneels in front of me. Both hands on my knees, those scarred, calloused, steady hands that shook when I bled.
"I love you." Simple. Plain. His eyes are wrecked and wide open.
"Not for show. Not because you problem-solved me.
Not because you brought coffee or held my hand in a parking lot.
I love you because you rode into my clearing on a buckskin mare and decided I was worth the trouble, and you were right, Paige.
You were right. I'm worth the trouble. You made me worth the trouble. "
"You were always—"
"Let me finish." His grip tightens. "An hour ago I sat in this room and tried to push you out the door because Delaney called me a victim and it lit up every rotten thing I've believed about myself since I was twenty-eight.
And you walked out. You didn't fight me.
You didn't yell. You walked out and gave me space to hear my own stupid voice in an empty room, and you know what I heard? "
I shake my head. Can't speak.
"Nothing." His thumbs move on my knees. "I heard nothing. Because the only voice that matters to me was on the other side of that door, and I sent her away."
A tear gets loose. I catch it with the back of my hand.
"Then I drove to the hospital. Told the front desk I needed to see my mother. And I walked into that room alone, without you, and I felt the difference. I felt what it's like to stand in front of people who hurt you without the one person who makes you brave enough to stay standing."
"Aiden."
"I love you, Paige Adulsa Thomas." He presses his forehead to my knees. "I love you, and I'm sorry I tried to send you home. I'm sorry I let that woman put a word on me that made me forget who I am when I'm with you. I won't do it again."
I take his face in both hands. Lift it. His eyes are red and open and terrified, and behind the terror there's something new. Something steady. Something that looks like a man who just chose his own story for the first time in twelve years.
"I love you too," I tell him. "Loved you since you fixed my stirrup in the rain, you stubborn, impossible man."
The sound he makes is broken and beautiful.
He surges up, mouth on mine, arms wrapping around my waist, pulling me off the bed and against his chest. I wrap my legs around him.
He holds me there, standing in the middle of a bad hotel room in East Texas, kissing me with everything he couldn't say for twelve years.
"Bed," I say against his mouth.
"Paige."
"Aiden. Bed. Now. I mean it."
He carries me the four steps. Lays me down. Follows.
His hands find the hem of the sundress and push it up my thighs while his mouth tracks down my throat. No rushing. Deliberate. He kisses the hollow below my ear, the cord of my neck, the turquoise at my collarbone. His teeth graze my skin and I arch up into him.
"Off," I tug at his flannel. He pulls back long enough to strip it over his head, and I drag my nails down his bare chest. His stomach contracts under my touch.
The sundress comes up and over. His mouth goes to my breasts, tongue circling a nipple through the thin bra before pulling the cup down and taking the bare skin between his lips. Sucking. My hips roll off the mattress.
"More."
He unclasps the bra. Pulls it free. Both hands on my breasts, thumbs working my nipples, mouth moving between them, beard scraping the sensitive skin underneath. My fingers tangle in his hair. Hold him there.
His hand slides down my stomach. Into my underwear. Two fingers press against my clit.
"Soaked," he murmurs against my skin. "Every time."
"Your fault."
He strokes. Those same deliberate circles, reading me, adjusting when I buck. Then lower. Inside me. Thick fingers curling, palm grinding my clit, and my back comes off the bed.
"Aiden. I want you. Not your hand."
"Patience."
"I don't have patience. I have never once in my life had patience."
He laughs against my ribs. Rough. Low. His fingers don't stop.
"That's true."
I come on his hand with my teeth in my bottom lip, thighs clamped around his wrist, and he works me through it until I'm shaking.
The condom comes from his wallet. Same wallet. He rolls it on while I watch, propped on my elbows, breathing hard.
"Come here."
He settles between my thighs. Presses forward. My head tips back into the pillow.
Full. Completely full. He holds there, buried to the hilt, forearms braced on either side of my head, forehead to mine.
"Look at me," he says.
My eyes find his.
He starts to move. Deep, rolling strokes that build slow. His hips grind against my clit on every push, and my legs wrap around him, pulling him deeper.
"Harder."
He braces one hand on the headboard. The bed protests. The whole frame shudders with every thrust, and the cheap hotel wall thumps, and I don't care. My nails drag down his back. He groans into my neck, picks up the pace, drives into me hard enough that my body slides on the sheets.
"Paige." Ragged. Against my throat.
"Right here." I cup his face. Pull him up to look at me. "I'm right here. I'm not going anywhere."
"Say it again."
"I love you."
He buries himself deep. Holds. His whole body shakes as he comes, and I clench around him, pulling him through it, my own orgasm cresting a breath behind his.
We breathe.
The AC hums. The parking lot lights glow through the curtain.
He doesn't pull away. Stays inside me, heavy, warm, his face pressed to my neck, one hand tangled in my hair that came loose from the braid an hour ago.
"Paige."
"Hm."
"When we get home."
"Yeah?"
"I'd like to meet your mama."
My chest goes so full it hurts.
"She already told me to bring you. She's making the good chili."
"The good chili?"
"You don't get the good chili unless she's decided you're worth feeding." I press my lips to his temple. "You're getting the good chili, Aiden."
He laughs into my neck. Low. Full. The laugh of a man who, for the first time in twelve years, woke up somewhere that isn't four in the morning.
"We fly home tomorrow," I say.
"Yeah."
"Back to the ranch. The timber. Your cabin."
"Our cabin," he says.
I go still.
"If you want." Quick. Almost shy, which is insane on a man his size. "Serenity's already used to the trail."
"You're asking me to move in."
"I'm asking you to stay."
My eyes fill. I blink them clear. Press my forehead to his.
"Ask me properly, Aiden Harrison."
He pulls back enough to see my face. Takes my hand off his chest. Brings it to his mouth.
"Stay," he says against my knuckles. "Stay with me. Wake up in my bed. Drink your coffee on my porch. Bring that horse up the mountain. Help me plant that grain field. Fight me about the thermostat. Make me eat vegetables." His mouth presses to my palm. "Stay."
"That's more words than you've said in twelve years."
"Figured I was overdue."
I pull his face to mine. Kiss him soft.
"Yes," I say. "Obviously yes."
He rolls onto his back, takes me with him, and I settle against his chest in a sagging hotel bed in Nacogdoches, Texas, a thousand miles from home, listening to a heartbeat that's finally, finally steady.
Tomorrow we fly home. Back to the firs and the creek and a cabin in the timber that's about to get a lot less quiet.
Can't wait.