Chapter 20
Wyatt
I pulled off the main ranch road near the creek, tires crunching on gravel before finding the soft earth beneath.
The spot was muscle memory—the ancient cottonwood whose roots dipped into the water, the flat stone that caught moonlight like a mirror, the bend where the creek sang loudest. I'd parked here countless times as a teenager, but never since she'd left.
It had felt too much like visiting a grave.
The engine ticked as it cooled, the only sound besides the creek's eternal murmur and our breathing, which seemed too loud in the cab that seemed to grow smaller by the second.
"You kept our place," Ivy said softly, her voice carrying wonder and something that might have been grief for all the years we'd missed.
"Couldn't bring anyone else here. Couldn't come alone either." I turned to look at her in the dashboard's fading light. Her hair was coming loose from whatever she'd done to it for the dance, wisps framing her face like she was already coming undone. "It was always ours."
I got out, came around to open her door—old-fashioned maybe, but I needed to do this right.
When she placed her hand in mine to step down, her fingers trembled slightly.
The blue dress that had tortured me all evening rode up as she slid from the seat, revealing the smooth length of her thigh, and I had to close my eyes for a moment to maintain control.
"Wyatt?" Uncertainty colored her voice.
"Just... give me a second," I said, pressing my forehead to hers, breathing her in—perfume and sunshine and pure Ivy. "I want to remember everything about this. Do everything right this time."
Her hands came up to frame my face, thumbs stroking my cheekbones. "We have time. All the time we want."
I pulled away reluctantly and moved to the truck bed.
Dropped the tailgate with a metallic clang that echoed across the water.
The swag I kept there was worn canvas, soft from use, smelling faintly of leather and hay.
I unrolled it carefully, added the wool blanket Mom had made—navy with the Blackwood brand woven in gold thread in the corner, a wedding gift she'd been saving that I'd stolen years ago for nights when missing Ivy got too heavy.
When I turned back, she stood bathed in moonlight, the creek's reflection dancing patterns across her skin. She looked ethereal, like something from a dream I was afraid would dissolve if I reached for it.
"Just like old times?" she asked, but her voice shook with emotion.
"No," I said, helping her climb up, my hands spanning her waist. She was real, warm, solid under my palms. "We're different now. We know what we're choosing. What we're risking."
She settled on the blanket, dress pooling around her like water. I climbed up beside her, close enough to feel her warmth but not touching. Not yet. The anticipation was exquisite torture.
Above us, the constellations sprawled in their ancient patterns—Orion standing guard, the Pleiades clustered like gossips, Venus burning bright near the horizon. The same stars that had witnessed our first kiss, our first everything, our last night before she disappeared.
"Do you remember," she whispered, "what you said that last night?"
"That I'd love you until the stars burned out."
"Still true?"
I turned on my side to face her, finally letting myself touch her—just my fingertips tracing the line of her jaw, relearning the geography of her face. "The stars are still shining, aren't they?"
She turned into my touch like she was starved for it, her eyes closing as my thumb brushed across her cheekbone. "I used to dream about your hands," she admitted. "In Dallas, in my sterile apartment, I'd dream about your hands and wake up crying."
"Ivy..." Her name came out broken.
"Touch me," she whispered. "I've been waiting so long to feel you again."
My hand slid into her hair, pins scattering as I freed the honey blonde waves. They spilled over my fingers like silk, like water, like every metaphor poets had ever used because there were no words for the perfection of Ivy's hair in moonlight.
"Been thinking about this," I said roughly, "every day since you came back. Every time you walked past. Every time you smiled at someone else. Every time you existed in my space but not in my arms."
"I'm here now," she said, shifting closer until our bodies aligned, soft against hard, curves against angles. "I'm here, and I'm not running again."
When I kissed her, it was nothing like our desperate collision in the barn during the storm.
This was deliberate, a slow exploration, a reacquaintance with territory I'd once known better than my own land.
She tasted like the beer she'd been drinking, the mint she'd chewed after, and underneath it all, essentially Ivy—sweet and complex and addictive.
Her hands fisted in my shirt, pulling me closer as the kiss deepened. I rolled, bringing her with me until she straddled my hips, her dress riding up until it was just a suggestion of fabric between us. The position made her gasp into my mouth, made me grip her waist perhaps too tightly.
"Too fast?" I asked, pulling back.
"Too slow," she corrected, then proved it by unbuttoning my shirt with fingers that shook slightly. "I don't want careful. I don't want cautious. I want you."
Each button she undid felt like the snap of a fuse burning down. One by one, she traced the path she revealed—palms flat, fingers trembling, her touch somewhere between prayer and possession.
“This scar,” she murmured, her lips brushing just beneath my ribs. “Still here.”
Her breath hit my skin, hot and shaking. I closed my eyes as she kissed it, slow and deliberate, her tongue following the jagged line like she was memorizing it.
“Fence wire,” I rasped. “You remember?”
“I remember everything,” she whispered, and the sound of it went straight through me.
Her hands slid up my chest, steady now, claiming each inch like cartography—mapping the territory she’d once known by heart. When her mouth found mine again, it wasn’t soft. It was years of missing turned into motion—teeth, breath, need.
“Ivy,” I managed, half a warning, half a plea.
She pulled back just enough to look at me, her pupils blown wide, her hair a wild halo around her face. “You still taste like rain,” she said. “And I’m so goddamn tired of pretending I forgot.”
When she whispered my name again, it wasn’t an apology. It was a promise.
Her dress came off in stages—me fumbling with the zipper, her laughing at my curses, both of us breathing too hard when it finally pooled around her waist.
"God, you're beautiful," I breathed, tracing the constellation of freckles across her shoulders, the ones I used to know by heart. "More beautiful than memory."
"Memory tends to be kind," she murmured, looking away.
"Memory was a poor substitute." I sat up, bringing us face to face, her in my lap with her legs wrapped around me.
"Memory didn't include this tiny scar," I kissed her collarbone where a small white line marked some story I didn't know, "or the way your breathing catches when I do this," my mouth found that spot below her ear that always made her melt, and sure enough, her breath stuttered, "or how perfectly you fit against me, like you were carved from my missing pieces. "
"Wyatt," she gasped as my hands explored the expanse of her back, the dip of her waist, the curve of her hips. "Please..."
"Please what, darlin'? Tell me what you need."
She shifted on top of me, moving closer. Our hips now flush, I knew she could feel just how much I wanted her. Her forehead rested on mine, one hand in my hair and the other on my chest. ”You. All of you. Now."
She didn’t wait for a response, her kiss urgent and all-consuming. The summer air was cool on my skin compared to the heat building between us. Ivy’s hands were soft and sure as they slid over my pecs, slipping underneath my shirt before sending it off my shoulders.
“You’re more muscular,” she whispered, looking down between us. One of her hands glided over my sternum through my chest hair. The corners of her mouth curved in a smile. “And hairier too.” We both laughed.
“I’ll shave it.” I’d do whatever she wanted. Whatever she needed to be happy. I refused to lose her again.
“No.” She shook her head, squeezing my shoulders and down my arms. “I like it.” Her eyes met mine, dark with desire. “It’s sexy.”
“Yeah?” My voice came out rough.
Her teeth sank into her pillowy bottom lip, and she nodded, peering up at me through her lashes. God, I’d never seen anything as beautiful as her.
I wrapped an arm around her waist, and she let out a little yelp as I spun us so she was on her back. Her hair fanned out on the blankets, shining in the moonlight.
“Ivygirl,” I whispered, taking her in.
Her eyes searched mine, chest rising and falling quickly. “Yeah?”
“I love you.”
Her smile was soft, genuine. “I love you too.”
I chased her words with a kiss, wanting to see if they tasted as sweet as they sounded. Ivy’s mouth opened for me instantly, fingers threading through my hair. We kissed until we were breathless, until I was dizzy with want for her and she was tugging at me to get impossibly closer.
I slipped a hand between her legs, her hips lifting to meet me. I pulled her panties to the side. Her mouth fell open with a breathy sigh, eyes fluttering shut when I filled her with two fingers, my thumb pressing on her clit just right. “Wyatt,” she whimpered, hands curling around my arms.
“God, Ivy,” I groaned when I felt how wet she was. I’d missed how reactive she was, how her body came alive under my touch. I hadn’t done this in the barn. And didn’t savor her the way I should’ve, the way she deserved, at the campfire.
I was determined to make up for it.
“Want you to come on my fingers,” I said, curling them just right to make her gasp.“After that, I’m gonna fuck you slow, take my time with you, relearn what makes you fall apart.”