“Boxes,” Abel says, and his voice is clipped, rushed. “To-go boxes. And our check. Please.”
The waitress blinks, clearly caught off guard by the sudden shift from lingering over dinner to getting us out of here. But she recovers quickly, nodding and disappearing toward the kitchen.
I’m still laughing, a breathless, giddy sound that I don’t recognize as my own. “Abel. What is wrong with you?”
He turns back to me, and the look on his face, one of pure, undiluted want, steals the air from my lungs.
“Nothing’s wrong with me,” he says, and his voice is low, intimate, meant only for me. “I just got the woman of my dreams to say she wants to be mine. I want to take her home and celebrate.”
Celebrate? Something like this means that much to him?
The word lands somewhere deep in my belly and settles there, warm and heavy.
The waitress returns with our boxes and the check. Abel doesn’t even look at the total—just pulls enough cash to leave her a decent tip from his wallet and hands it over, his eyes never leaving mine. She takes it with a knowing smile that I’m too far gone to feel embarrassed about.
“You’re ridiculous,” I whisper as I start transferring the remains of my burger into a box.
He watches my hands move, watches every small motion like it’s the most fascinating thing he’s ever seen. “I’m motivated.”
Then he’s standing, gathering our boxes, holding his hand out to me.
I take it without hesitation, my mind made up.
He pulls me up, and for a moment we’re just standing there in the middle of the diner, surrounded by people and noise and the smell of grease and coffee, and none of it matters. All I see is him.
“Ready to go home?” he asks.
Home.Like it’s ours already.
I squeeze his hand. “Yeah. Let’s go celebrate.”
8
Abel
I can barely make it inside our cabin before I’m on the attack. Tatum only giggles as she almost drops our leftovers just so I can get my hands on her, but her amusement doesn’t last for long.
As soon as we’ve kicked our shoes off, set down the aftermath of a shopping spree, and I find the nearest flat surface to abandon our food on, I’ve got her body hooked beneath my arms as I carry her to the only place that sounds reasonable.
The bed that I’m now going to call ours.
Tatum is mine. She said it herself. If she’s willing to leave the city behind, then I’m going to give her a reason to love the mountain. To love being here with me. Hell, to loveme.
While I’m walking, she goes out of her way to make everything hard by cupping my face and kissing me like she can’t help herself. The way she’s sighing against my lips, I’m tempted to believe she needs these brief moments of contact more than I do.
Now that’s a bet I’m willing to take. I’m fuckingdyinghere.
The door to our room pushes open with my shoulder, and she laughs against my mouth, a breathless, beautiful sound that I want to bottle up and keep forever.
I don’t bother with finesse. I cross to the bed in three strides and drop her.
She bounces on the mattress, her hair fanning out across pillows that suddenly look too plain, too boring to be touching her. But she’s smiling up at me, all flushed cheeks and bright eyes, and I need to be on her.Now.
My hands go to my shirt, and I’m tearing at the buttons as if they’ve personally offended me. One pops off, skittering across the floor, and I don’t dare pull my gaze from her for even a minute. The fabric parts, and I shrug it off my shoulders, letting it fall somewhere behind me.
The town. All those people. The noise, the stares, the press of bodies in shops and on sidewalks—it’s been crawling under my skin for hours. Making me itch. Making me want to retreat, to hide, to go back to my quiet mountain and never leave.
But now? Standing here, watching Tatum do the same, her chest rising and falling beneath that thin shirt?
