I don’t know if either of us will survive this.
I’m not sure I want to…
I can’t do this to Martin and Miranda Reyes. I can’t do this totheirgranddaughter. No matter how right she feels in my arms.
I pull back. Her pupils blow wide. Cheeks flushing the color of wild roses.
“What’s wrong?” she gasps.
I shift my weight.
“I don’t know right or wrong anymore,” I confess, hand coming up to brush her jawline. “Just that this feels too big for both of us.”
She runs a hand through my hair. I tip my head back, closing my eyes and savoring the feel of her soft fingers dragging over my scalp.
“This—”
I wait, forehead furrowing.
“I’m a scientist, Ash. I’ve been trained to study numbers and data. To calculate, to measure, to record.” She exhales through her nose. “To use all five senses…”
Thunder breaks over the range now. Distant. Cold.
“And they all tell me… that I can’t explain any of this. But here with you… right now? It feels more right than anything I’ve ever done.”
“And that’s why,” I lean closer, murmuring against her lips. “We have to stop.”
Chapter
Fourteen
JOSEPHINE
“Ash,” I ask at the door to the ranch’s mudroom. “What are you thinking?”
He stands back, Carhartt collar up, pelted by rain. And his face looks haunted.
I watch rain fall in thin rivers from the brim of his hat. His eyes mirror the storm, and his jaw tightens.
“You were right before.”
My voice hitches, body trembling beneath damp clothes. “About what?”
“Impossible.”
For a second, he looks like he might say something else.
Like the word is stuck somewhere between his throat and the rain.
Then it’s gone.
He storms across the pasture like a man on a mission. For a moment, I hesitate, arms holding the sides of the doorway, body ready to spring after him.
But it hits me again. How insane this is. A fever dream Imustwake from.
“Jo?” Grandma calls from the kitchen, voice too soft for her.
“Yes,” I say, pulling my eyes from the towering cowboy, leaning into the storm. Each step tugs at my peace. Feels like something destabilizing. Breaking down.
