But I was already attached to Asher. Had already been halfway in love with him before I’d ever stepped foot back in Havenbrook. I’d just needed a little push.
Maybe I’d had this all wrong. Who said I had to fly all over the world to experience what life had to offer? What rule said I couldn’t do that right here in my hometown? Or Memphis? Nashville, New York, Portland, or any of another dozen other cities? As long as he and the kids were there with me, I’d feel like I was on the adventure of a lifetime.
I gasped as something registered, my head snapping up to frantically search the yard, then the car, which was empty. “Oh my God, did you forget the kids at home?”
He breathed out a laugh as if he’d been holding his breath and shook his head. “First of all, the kids are safe. I dropped them off with Gran on my way here. Second, I’m really fucking glad to hear you call our place home.”
“You are?”
“Yeah.” He stepped up to me, so close I felt the heat of his body seeping into mine, and brushed my hair back from my face. “Because I don’t want you to leave, Nat.”
I sputtered, blinking at him in the blazing sun. “Well—I can’t just?—”
He pressed his thumb over my lips to stop my garbled words. “That came out wrong. I do want you to leave, to keep doin’ what you do. But only if you promise to come back to me and the kids and this life we pretended we had. It doesn’t have to be pretend, though. It wasn’t—not for me. And I don’t think for you either.” He cupped my face, his fingers delving into my hair as he swept his thumbs along my jaw. “I let you go because I thought that was what you wanted. You couldn’t wait to escape Havenbrook—it was always too small to keep you, and I didn’t want to hold you back.”
“You don’t. You wouldn’t.”
“I know that now. If you could’ve gotten that through my thick skull yesterday, I could’ve saved us a lot of unnecessary angst,” he said wryly as I breathed out a laugh. “Our jobs are both gonna take us away from here, but that doesn’t mean we can’t make this work—that we can’t makeuswork. I want our house to be your home base.Iwant to be your home base.”
My breath caught, and the tears welling in my eyes finally spilled over as he told me everything I’d wanted to hear, everything I’d been secretly hoping he’d say.
He wanted me to stay.
“How do we make that work?” I asked, heart in my throat and hope clinging on for dear life.
“I don’t know the logistics, but we don’t need to yet. We’ve got a year till June starts school, and there’s a whole stretch of highway I’m pretty sure you’ve been wantin’ to capture.” He smiled and traced the outline of my lower lip with his thumb. “I can write songs anywhere. All I know is we can figure it out…we can make anything work if you’re mine.”
I was basically a fountain now, my tears free-flowing as Asher handed me everything I never knew I wanted. But I wanted him. And I wanted those kids. And I wanted this life we’d had together. We could figure everything else out along the way.
“And you’d be mine?”
“I already am, wifey.” He leaned forward as if to kiss me, but before our lips could connect, a car door slammed, startling us apart. The two of us glanced toward the sound and found Nash strolling back from Asher’s car.
With a grin, Nash waved. “I figured I’d save y’all some time and tossed Nat’s bags in the back seat. I’d invite y’all in the house, but Rory’d lose her shit if you two boned on the couch, and I can see where this is goin’. Call me when you get back from wherever the fuck, and we’ll hang out.”
The screen door shut behind Nash as he disappeared into the house, and Asher breathed out a laugh against my smiling lips.
“Guess he told us,” I said.
“Guess so. It’s probably better he disappeared. He’d be unbearable to be around since he’s probably feelin’ pretty fucking cocky about bein’ right.”
Gazing up at him, I clutched our wedding album to my chest with one hand and tucked the fingers of my other into the pocket of his jeans. “Oh yeah? What was he right about?”
Asher hummed and brushed a lock of windblown hair away from my face. “He might’ve insinuated that we had our heads up our asses and didn’t realize we were both in love with each other.”
“We are, huh?” I asked, my head tipped to the side. “You sure it’s not just for show?”
“It might’ve started that way, but I can promise you that’s not how it’s ending.”
Closing the distance between us, he pressed his lips to mine. Tentatively at first, until I reached blindly behind me and placed the album on the truck bed and then wrapped my arms around him and clutched him to me as if I were afraid he’d slip through my fingers again. But I’d be damned if I let that happen.
How was I lucky enough to find this love? A love that wasn’t suffocating or confining. It wasn’t demanding, only accepting. Being with him had never felt like I’d been locked up tight, trapped with no way out.
The two of us together—thefourof us making a life—felt like nothing but possibilities.
EPILOGUE
NAT
