He shifted under her. “What do you mean you don’t know?”
“I bought an open-ended ticket,” she said. “I didn’t want to come out here with a timer counting down in the back of my mind. I wanted to see how things went without any external pressure.”
He rolled over her and settled between her legs. “So you could stay forever.”
“I have a job and an apartment in Colorado.” She ran her hands on the outside of his upper arms.
“You could have a job here and you already have a house,” he said with a smirk.
“IfI moved back here, I would want my own place to begin with.”
“No.Whenyou move back here, you’re moving in with me. This is it—you and me. It always has been and I’m not wasting any more time pretending otherwise.”
A surge of adrenaline coursed through her veins.
“What if I want to stay in Denver?” she asked.
“Then I’ll move to Denver.”
She cocked her head. “You’d do that?”
“Rowan, you’re not getting it. I will do whatever it takes if it means we’re together—I thought I had already proved that.”
Her heart thudded in her chest and she teetered on a precipice. She’d known when she made the decision to come out here that this moment would happen. This or they would figure out they shouldn’t be together. But she hadn’t really prepared herself for either. Fear was a powerful thing and her fear of being hurt again was as great as her fear of never having Luke in her life again.
The question was—which possibility was worse?’Tis better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all.
“Okay,” she said.
A wide, slow smile split his face. “Okay? Really?”
“Yes. We need to talk about some things. I really like Colorado and I’m not sure I want to move back to Tennessee, so if you weren’t serious about that say something now so I can resign myself to the idea, but I want to be with you.”
His kiss was hard. “That’s all I want. I like Colorado. I can record anywhere. I might have to find a new band, but if I can convince the label to pay for their moving expenses some of them might be willing to move. Or I can come here to record. I can afford to fly back and forth. We can keep this house and buy another one in Colorado, maybe not as big though.”
She laughed. “Luke, slow down. We don’t have to figure everything out right this minute. We have time.”
“Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.” He peppered her cheeks with kisses between eachthank you. “I thought I was going to have to tickle you into agreeing with me.”
“That’s not even funny,” she said.
“What? You don’t like being tickled?”
She jerked when his fingers found the sensitive spot between her ribs. “Don’t, Luke. I’m not kidding.”
“Don’t what?” He got her again.
That was it. He seemed to have forgotten she knew his spots, too. Reaching between them, she dug her thumb into his hip joint at the top of his thigh.
“Whoa! Hey now.” He tried to get away.
“What?” she asked. “Something wrong?”
“Okay, you’re right. No tickle torture.”
“That’s what I thought,” she said.
“For me!” He grabbed her hands in one of his and tickled her ribs with the other.
