“Would you like that?” He turned to look at me, his hazel eyes soft in the fading light. “If we run Bookish together?”
I bounced up in my lounge chair, unable to contain the joy surging through me. “Are you serious?”
“I am.” His thumb traced circles on my palm. “And it’s up to you what kind of partners you want us to be. Partners in business. Partners in life,” he paused, his voice dropping lower. “Or maybe partners inboth.”
My heart did a tiny flip inside my chest. “Flint, but we hardly know each other.”
“I know it’s sudden,” he growled, “But I’ve been wild about you since I first walked through that door and saw you all primand buttoned up in Bookish.” A rough laugh escaped him. “All I wanted to do was get that skirt of yours hiked up around your thighs.”
“Flint,” I started to say, but words failed me. Everything was happening so fast. Was I just caught up in a whirlwind? But if it was a whirlwind, there was no one else I’d want to be experiencing it with.
Sawyer was far from my mind now.
All I could see was the man in front of me.
Strong. Patient. Capable of anything he put his mind to.
“What do you say, Avery? Would you be willing to have a real-life mountain man in your life? I can’t move to town. I’m just not a townie. So you’d have to be comfortable out here with me. And I have some money put aside from my dad’s inheritance, but I’ll never live a fancy life. Ilikethis world. This cabin and the land mean everything to me. Could you see yourself here with me? I know you said your lease is coming up soon. What if you moved here instead of signing on for another year?”
I looked at him in the gathering dusk, this gruff, sexy man who’d turned my safe little world upside down in the best possible way.
He’d seen through my walls and pushed past them, anyway.
“Yes,” I whispered.
Then louder, because he deserved to hear it clearly, “Yes. Toallof it. The business and the life and you. Especiallyyou.”
Flint’s face transformed.
That rare, beautiful smile broke across his features, and he pulled me from my chair onto his lap in one smooth motion. I settled against his chest, feeling the steady thump of his heart beneath my cheek.
“You’re sure?” he murmured against my hair. “Because once I have you, I’m not letting go,” his hand slid to the back of my neck, warm and heavy, “Ever.”
I tilted my head back to look at him. “Promise?”
He growled out a promise.
And then he kissed me, slow and deep, while the first stars emerged overhead and the owl called again from the darkening woods.
I thought about Bookish waiting for us in town.
And the life we’d build together between these mountains and those bookshelves.
About all the future mornings I’d wake up in this cabin with this perfect man beside me.
I’d spent so long being afraid. Afraid of loving someone who might not love me back.
But Flint had chosenme.
And for the first time in years, I wasn’t afraid at all.
Epilogue
Avery
One Year Later
“Avery!” Shelly’s voice cut through the cheerful chaos of theBooklovers Ball, the romantasy event we were hosting.
