I nodded emphatically. “Of course I do.”
She grinned, letting go of me as Lane wrapped one of his heavily muscled and tattooed arms around her neck and kissed the top of her head.
“Killed it as usual, my girl.”
Aria glanced up at her brother, eyes shining with joy. “Thanks.”
“There’s our girl!” West shouted, having just come back fromthe bar. While I was entranced by Aria and her performance, it seemed West was getting turned up.
I’d been so focused on the Lawless family that I was caught entirely off guard when a hand slipped around my waist from behind, sprawling possessively over my abdomen and pulling me back against his body.
“Hey baby,” Liam said low in my ear.
“Hey, handsome. Having fun?”
“Not really my scene,” he admitted. “I’d much rather make good on my threat to strip you out of that dress.”
I turned in his arms and looped mine around his neck. “You think that was a threat? Baby, I’d strip myself out of this dress if you asked nicely.”
“That’s all it takes, huh?” He took his hat off so he could nuzzle my neck. In one smooth move, I grabbed it from him and stepped back, running my finger along the brim.
“Remember the cowboy hat rule?” I asked him, peeking up at him through my lashes.
Liam’s eyes flared. “You gonna ride me later, Wildflower?”
I lifted the hat over his head and set it back atop his dark hair. “Only one way to find out.”
Liam grinned, remembering the scene I’d painted for us as we left Wyoming.
The song changed, and it seemed the entire female population of the bar let out a simultaneous squeal of excitement. Before I could react, to search out the source of the fuss, Aria rushed up to my side, threw an apology at Liam, and towed me out to the dance floor.
“Do you know how to line dance?” she shouted at me assomeone cranked the tune louder, filling my very soul with the sounds of “Shiver” by Ed Sheeran.
I winked at her. “I think I can keep up.”
Aria’s brows raised in surprise, but she didn’t get a chance to say anything else because the crowd began to move, us right along with it.
Losing myself in the beat, in the steps, in the sense of camaraderie I’d found with this family that wasn’t mine butfeltlike it on the other side of the country—it was the most free I’d been in a long time.
Liam had a lot to do with it too, and I couldn’t help the girlish giggle that escaped me every time our eyes connected across the room. He wasn’t even pretending to converse with the guys, wasn’t pretending to let me have my fun until he got to have his later. He simply stood there at the edge of the dance floor, arms crossed, beer bottle dangling carelessly from one of the beautiful tattooed hands, watching me. Anyone who looked at him, looked at me, looked atus…they justknew. Knew we were together. That I belonged to him, and he to me.
When the song ended, I bent over, hands on my knees, to catch my breath. A hand landed between my shoulder blades, and Aria’s face appeared in my periphery.
“You weren’t lying!” she said excitedly. “You can more than keep up.”
I straightened with a laugh. “Delia is crazy popular on TikTok, right? And she got this bug up her ass a few summers ago about us learning the dance to that song. That’s literally the only one I could’ve pulled that off for.”
Aria’s glee morphed to melancholy in a heartbeat. “I wish welived closer. I could use some sisters.”
“You’ve always got us, Aria,” I told her. “We’re only a phone call away.”
“All of you?”
I nodded, confident in speaking for my sisters in this moment. “All of us.”
She grinned, squeezing my hands, then pulling me to the center of the floor as another song kicked up—a Morgan Wallen banger that had us swaying our hips and screaming the lyrics at the top of our lungs.
Halfway through, a set of hands found their way to my hips, and I stiffened, knowing instantly they didn’t belong to my boyfriend.
