Cash looks at me.
My heart starts a slow climb up to jackhammer territory.
I swallow.
I don’t want things to be awkward between us. I want things to be exactly the way they were eight hours ago, when we were snuggling under the quilts in front of the fire, whispering and touching and kissing.
“Do you want me to—” he starts as I blurt, “Stay.”
He sucks in a quick breath.
“If you want,” I add.
“Do you want?”
“I don’t know how to make a good snowball, and I don’t know when I’ll get another chance to learn.”
He studies me, those warm brown eyes searching mine. “You haven’t lived if you haven’t built a snow fort in this kind of snow.”
“I don’t know how to do that either.”
“Have you ever been sledding?”
I shake my head.
“Made snow angels?”
I shake my head again. “I need to learn how to winter. But if you want to spend the holidays with your family?—”
“Family’s what you make it. Do you want me to stay?”
Nodding is one of the scariest, but also rightest, things I’ve ever done. Idon’tdo relationships. Idon’tput myself out on a limb, begging for love.
But I don’t think Cash would ever make me beg.
Not for anything.
Everything he’s done, from our first text message through these past few days, has been freely offered with no expectations.
My eyes get hot as I nod again. “I want you to stay.”
I don’t know which one of us takes the first step, but it doesn’t matter.
What matters is that I’m throwing myself at him and he’s catching me and holding me and pressing his lips to my face.
“You’re sure?” he asks.
“Yes.”
“I wouldn’t want him without clean clothes,” Davis mutters.
“Definitely needs a shower,” Cooper agrees.
“And neither one of them are going to the store without getting mobbed.”
“I think they can figure this out,” Waverly says while Cash hugs me and I pepper his face with kisses right back.
I want this.
