Laughing, I lean in and press a kiss to her forehead, lingering there. It’s only when she shivers that I realize we’re still standing on the porch, and she’s not wearing a jacket. “Shit, we should go inside. Wait.” I check my watch. “Not inside. My car. We’ve got somewhere to be.”
“Do we?” she asks with a grin. Her face lights up the night, her eyes dancing with excitement, and I’m in so deep that looking at her makes every thought fall straight out of my head.
“We do.” I tuck a piece of hair behind her ear, skimming my fingers lightly over her jaw. “I promised you a date, and I always keep my promises.”
Maddy leans into her front door and grabs a coat and bag from the coat rack and then takes a big gift bag off the floor. I take all three from her, setting the bags on the porch and holding out the coat so she can slip her arms into the sleeves. I pull the coat up onto her shoulders then lift her hair out of the collar and turn her around, bending a little to take care of the zipper.
“Where are we going?” she asks as I pick up the bags from the ground and take her hand, lacing our fingers together. I get arush of warmth when she looks down at our joined hands and back up at me with a grin.
I wink at her. “Surprise, but you’ll love it. I promise.”
“I think I already do.”
“The drive-in?” she asks, voice full of excitement. When I turn to her, her eyes are wide and her smile is huge. “I didn’t even know this was open in the winter.”
“It’s not,” I say with a smile, driving onto the property, bypassing the ticket booth and heading straight for the big, open field with the massive screen soaring up in the distance.
“Then how…” Her voice trails off, and I see the second she realizes we’re the only car in the field. That the ticket booth is empty and all the concession stands and outer buildings are dark and quiet, dusted with a thin layer of snow. She turns back to me, tilting her head in contemplation. “Did you bring me here to kill me? Is this one of those things where I’ll disappear, hacked up and buried in twelve different locations, and all the neighbors will say things like,I can’t even believe he did this; he was always such a nice, unassuming gentleman?”
I shift the car into park and unclick Maddy’s seatbelt and then my own. Turning to face her, I take her hand and bring it to my mouth to kiss her knuckles. “Been listening to more of those true crime podcasts lately, Wildcat?”
She shrugs. “Sophie’s aunt Amelia was here for a few days between Christmas and New Year’s with her family. She’s obsessed with true crime and got me hooked on this one that’s all about husbands who kill their wives. I binged the whole thing in two days, so it’s possible I have murder on the brain.”
I laugh, running my thumb over the soft skin on the back of her hand, settling into the feel of her next to me, us being together. Just the way it’s supposed to be. “If one day I’m everlucky enough to be your husband, I solemnly swear never, ever to kill you. I like you far too much for that.”
I mean for the husband thing to be a joke. Sort of. But she’s silent for a beat, studying me. My heart pounds, waiting for her response that suddenly seems like the most important thing she’ll ever say. “You would want that? To get married again?”
I pause, weighing my words carefully. “I got married young. Really young. People thought we were crazy, and then even crazier when we had Riley so quickly. But…” I smile, letting my mind drift back to those wild, early days. “It was good. It was so, so good, and then Lainey was gone and I was raising kids on my own, and I honestly never thought about getting married again.”
“You said thought, like past tense. What changed?”
Smiling, I lay a hand on her cheek, stroking my thumb along her bottom lip. “I met a gorgeous redhead in a bar, and she made me think about all kinds of things I hadn’t considered in years. Things I thought were in my past. Except maybe they aren’t because when I look at you, all I see is the future. Our future. The way you fit with me, with my kids? Seeing you with them?” I pause, shaking my head and trying to clear the emotion that tightens my throat. “It healed a piece of me that I didn’t realize was still broken. I want it all. You and me and my kids. Your family and mine. Ours.”
Maddy takes my hand, squeezing lightly. “Is a bigger family something you would want? Losing Lainey the way you did, it can’t be easy to think about having more kids.” She speaks slowly, like she’s considering every word. “Sorry.” She shakes her head. “You don’t have to answer if that’s too much. Too personal, I mean.”
I lean over the center console and kiss her, even as I’m gripped by a swell of emotion that she would understand me enough to ask the question. “There’s no such thing as too much or too personal. I want you to know me. All of me.” Sitting back, I keep my hand tangled with hers. “I wish I could tell you that the idea of having more kids doesn’t scare me to death. That I’mnot terrified of losing someone else the way I lost Lainey.” I look away, swallowing hard, but Maddy cups my cheek with her free hand, turning me back to face her. When we lock eyes, the understanding in hers gives me the courage to keep going. “But I think…” I trail off, trying to order my chaotic thoughts. “I think I would want to work through that, if it was with you.” I turn my head and press a kiss to the inside of her palm. “With you, I want it all, and I think maybe I don’t have to be so scared.”
When Maddy lifts our joined hands and presses a soft kiss to the back of mine, my heart stutters. And when she looks at me, green eyes blazing with emotion and says, “I think I want it all with you too,” my breath backs up in my lungs and my eyes burn as my brain serves me a montage of images of what, exactly,it allcould look like between the two of us. Even through the fear, I want it. Her. All. Everything.
“So do you want to tell me what we’re doing here at this creepy, abandoned drive-in in the middle of the winter?”
I chuckle, squeezing her thigh, as I push my deep thoughts away to examine later because we have time. Forever, I hope. “You love drive-ins.”
She narrows her eyes at me. “How do you know that?”
“You told me, the first night we were together. You said one of your most vivid memories as a kid was going to the drive-in with your family in the summer. That your parents would put all the seats in the car down and you would watch the movie from the trunk with blankets and pillows and snacks.”
“You remember that?” she asks a little incredulously. “We had that conversation almost six months ago when you didn’t even know my name.”
I smile, covering our joined hands with my free one. “I remember everything about you.”
Maddy’s hand tightens around mine as she shakes her head. “Fuck, Cameron, you’re like a man written by a woman. How are you even real?”
I glide my thumb along her palm and grin when she shivers. “I told you I was crazy about you. I meant it. I have been since that very first night, even when I didn’t know your name.”
“Shit,” she mutters. “Okay, subject change before I maul you in the middle of this abandoned field.”
“I would be fine with that. These seats go back pretty far, and no one is around.” Well, almost no one, but I don’t tell her that yet. I give her a wink and love the way she immediately flushes.
