“May have broken a couple of ribs.”
It flashes through me again, the way he shielded my body from rock and signal. “What about…” I pause. “The nifty trick you did in the barn with the healed skin?”
“Last night took too much from me,” he says. “Have to heal the old way. Use some of your Grandma’s salve.”
“Grandma’s salve.” Harvested from local bushes. Haven’t thought about it since I was a kid. But I can smell the strange mixture of herbs even now.
He eyes me with a bashful grin. “In this light, every part of you glows, golden like the high desert when the sun hits its zenith. You’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever laid eyes on.”
His words thrum through me like a pulse, mind relaxing, letting me seep back into him. Emotions bleed. Fierce love. Fiercer devotion. Deep-rooted fear… not for himself but for me, for our future.
“Your grandparents… They gave me acceptance, peace,” the thought drifts, aching. “I wasn’t supposed to take it away by wanting you.”
My breath catches. “You didn’t take anything away,” I whisper. “You brought it back.”
His eyes lift to mine, and the guilt that’s lived there finally breaks open.
“I’m sorry, Josephine,” he whispers, voice raw and haunted.
“Sorry for what?”
“For needing you more than I could bear. For not being able to let you go when I should have.”
My heart sinks at the sound of his pain. I stir in his arms, turning to straddle him, palming his square-cut cheeks. I force him to look at me, my gaze defiant, unmoving. “There is no you or me anymore—just us. You never had a choice. Neither did I.”
Sunshine snickers a distance away. Winnie’s tail flicks as she steps forward to drink from the cool stream.
“But even if I did,” he says, eyes overflowing. “I would still wait for you, Josephine. Still chooseyou. Whether right or wrong.”
“That’s why you left the brown Carhartt on the porch rail?”
The corners of his mouth turn up. “Left that for you, just in case.”
“A test?”
“To see how much rebel flows through those veins of yours.”
“Satisfied?” I ask.
“Satisfied.” His turquoise eyes burn into me.
“But where do we go from here?”
“You stay with me. We make a life together.”
His words rush through me like warmth, the first rays of sunlight piercing through dark storm clouds. His big hands slide down my waist, gripping the tops of my hips.
My throat tightens.
“You keep studying the petroglyphs… and we start sharing secrets.”
My breath hitches.
His head drops to my shoulder, feathering slow kisses up my neck.
“Need you,” he whispers, leaning close.
“But your ribs?—”
