The name on his lips doesn't sound like an insult or a memory I'm trying to escape. It sounds like a promise.
"The cartel could come back." I move closer.
"They will." His thumb traces my lower lip.
"We could die."
"So maybe we stop wasting time." Then his mouth is on mine, and it’s not soft.
Not gentle.
Desperate and angry, needing to feel something other than betrayal and loss. His hands tighten on my face, and then he's kissing me back with the same intensity, the same need.
We shouldn't be doing this. Seven men just tried to capture me. More are probably coming. We're in an abandoned ranch with limited ammunition and no backup, and a fifty-thousand-dollar bounty on my head.
But right now I don't care.
Right now, I need this to be real.
His hands slide down to my waist, pull me closer, and I go willingly. The rifle clatters against the table as I set it down, reaching for him instead. My fingers find the hem of his shirt, slide underneath to feel warm skin, hard muscle, and the raised edges of scars.
He pulls back just enough to look at me. "Magnolia?—"
"Don't." I cut him off. "Don't tell me this is a bad idea. Don't tell me I'm not thinking straight. I know exactly what I'm doing."
"Do you?"
"I'm choosing something for me. Not for Tyler. Not for my mother's memory. Not because I'm supposed to or because someone needs me to." I meet his eyes. "For me. Because I want this. Because I want you."
Something shifts in his expression. "You're sure?"
"I've never been more sure of anything."
He kisses me again, and this time it's different. Not desperate. Deliberate. Like he's memorizing the taste of me, the feel of me, the way I fit against him.
My back hits the wall, and his body presses into mine, solid and warm and real. His hands are everywhere—my waist, my hips, sliding up under my shirt to trace the curve of my ribs. I arch into him, needing more, needing everything.
"Colt—" His name breaks on a gasp as his mouth finds the hollow of my throat.
"Say itagain."
"Colt."
His hands tighten on my hips, pulling me harder against him. I can feel the dog tags under his shirt, pressed between us, Sofia's ghost a reminder that he's done this before—chosen feeling over protocol, chosen a person over orders.
Chosen wrong and spent five years punishing himself for it.
But right now he's choosing me.
I reach up, pull his face back to mine, and kiss him with everything I have. All the fear and anger and grief I've been holding in for three days. For ten years. For however long I've been trying to be something I'm not.
His shirt comes off. Then mine. Skin against skin, his hands mapping me like terrain, finding every place that makes me gasp. I'm shaking, but not from the cold.
Not from fear, but from the sheer relief of feeling something good after days of nothing but terror.
"Magnolia." He says my full name against my neck, and it doesn't sound delicate or fragile. It sounds strong. Real. Like he's seeing all of me—Magnolia and Maggie and whoever I'm becoming—and choosing it all.
"I'm not—" I start, but he stops me with another kiss.
