Chapter 14
Wyatt
Sunlight filters through the curtains, effectively blinding me when I attempt to open my eyes.
I turn away from the bright beams and reach for Everleigh to tug her warm, naked body back against me.
It’s no surprise I’m hard again. Claiming her once is not enough.
It’ll never be enough. I decide I no longer want to spend another night without her in the bed beside me.
I grin, deciding I’ll add it to the list of breakfast discussion topics.
But when my hand reaches out for her soft body, it grazes…fur.
“Thor?”
The Great Dane rolls on his back, all fours stuck straight up in the air as he turns his giant head at me and licks me across the face.
“I should’ve known you’d sneak back in here and try to hog her for yourself,” I mutter, lifting on my elbow to look over top of the big lug. But on the other side of Thor, the bed is empty.
Panic clutches my chest as I remember confessing that I loved her last night. Fuck, did I scare her away? I knew I came on too fucking strong. Leave it to me to be patient for months only to blow it in hours. Everleigh’s like a wild animal. She’s slow to build trust and easily startled away.
But she kissed me—in front of half the town.
That had to mean something, right?
Although, most everyone had evacuated the ballpark before that kiss.
Dammit, I hate the uncertainty I feel. I need to find her and straighten all this out.
I roll out of bed, pulling on a pair of sweatpants before leaving my room. Flynn should be gone for a few weeks, but he’s too unpredictable for me to feel comfortable strutting around naked. Not with the hard on I’m currently sporting, anyway.
But if my brother is gone and Everleigh’s still here, I’m bending her over the second I find her and claiming her again to reinforce my confession of love. God there’s nothing better than watching her come apart at my doing.
“Everleigh?” I call out as I check the bathrooms, the living room, and finally the kitchen. A pile of clothes sits on the floor where we left them last night. Except, the clothes are mine, and mine alone.
Fuck.
Thor nudges my hand with his nose, giving it a lick.
“Did she tell you anything, buddy?” I want to believe that she didn’t sneak out in the middle of the night without so much as a goodbye, but considering how hard she avoids conversations she doesn’t want to have, I can’t rule it out. “Fuck, I knew we should’ve talked first.”
I search the kitchen for my phone to check for missed texts, but I find the note first.
Thanks for the orgasms! XOXO
I yank the page from the fridge to read the rest of it.
P.S. Please don’t be mad at me for what I’m about to do.
“Fuck,” I growl, crushing the paper in my fist.
Thor whines.
“Sorry, bud,” I say scrubbing a hand behind his ears. “And don’t worry. We’re going to find her before she gets too far.”
I drive by the ball field first, verifying the car she left behind in the storm last night is no longer parked there.
Next, I drive by her house, but there’s no sign of her there either.
I consider peering in the window for signs of Stormy, but I don’t want to explain why some well-intended but nosy neighbor called the cops on the sheriff.
So I head for the diner, hoping Jean might be able to provide some clarity on her granddaughter’s behavior.
“Good morning, Sheriff,” Jean says, her smile too bright to indicate Everleigh skipped town. No way she’d leave without telling her grandma, right? But she left her crew without saying goodbye.
“Have you seen Everleigh?”
Her cheerful expression falters. It’s a brief shift before the earlier smile returns, but I catch it all the same. “I’m afraid I’m not supposed to say.”
Pain assaults my chest, as though my heart is being run through a meat grinder.
My greatest fear seems to be coming true.
Now that Everleigh’s conquered her fears, she has no reason to keep hiding in Montana where we only have two tornados or less a year.
Fuck, how far down the road has she made it?
“Do you want some coffee?” Jean asks.
“I can’t stay.”
“To go then?”
I scrub a hand over my face, trying to conceal my frustration. Coffee might help me think a little straighter. “Sure, Jean. Thank you.”
“I heard your ball game got rained out last night,” Jean says, pouring steaming coffee into her largest to go cup.
“It did.”
“That’s not all I heard.”
She seals the lid to the cup and slides it across the counter.
I refuse to take the bait, though. Either the storm sheltered us from gossip, or the entire town now knows Everleigh James kissed me after hitting a homerun.
I really don’t feel like explaining the part where she and I ran back to my house, hand in hand.
Not to her grandmother this early in the morning, anyway.
Jean looks up at me, her lips stretched into a straight line. They bend into the faintest smile as she adds, “Would you hate me if I told you to be patient a little while longer?”
“I’d wait a lifetime if I had to,” I say to her, really fucking hoping I don’t have to.
“Let’s hope it doesn’t take that long.”
“Hey Sheriff,” Ester Thompson says, touching me on the arm. “I heard you saw Walter.”
“I did.” As I’m briefly filling her in about Shady Pines and the pleasant surprise of new ownership, it hits me.
Birdie.
Everleigh might sneak out of town without saying goodbye to me, but she would not leave without saying goodbye to Birdie.