Then he rumbled, “Looks like the nickname stuck. And that means we know the leak came from the recording studio, because that’s the only place we used that name. Marcus might not be as trustworthy as he said.”
That didn’t surprise me.
The music industry could be cutthroat. He probably got paid a thousand dollars to tip off the paparazzi that I’d be there.
I looked at the photographs for a moment longer.
Wedidlook like a couple. Like a couple in love.
“We look like a fine couple,” I murmured.
“Yeah,” he said quietly. “We do.”
There was something in the way he said it that settled deep in my bones. A truth I didn’t have to question.
He set the phone down and pulled me back against his chest.
I closed my eyes and felt the steady rhythm of him all around me, and thought about farmer’s markets and dirt roads and a small town with one stoplight and three hundred acres of Arkansas land where people might let me forget I was famous.
Jimmy was gone.
The life I’d been trapped in was over.
And for the first time, the future didn’t feel like something I had to survive.
It felt like something I could choose.
And then I thought about Bronson.
I turned slightly in his arms, looking up at him.
“I don’t want Tidehaven,” I said softly. “Not anymore.”
His gaze sharpened, his eyes piercing straight into my heart.
“Good,” he said. “Because I want to show you what my life looks like. We’ve already seen yours.”
“You’re going to show me Red Oak Mountain?”
That gorgeous smile of his flashed across his face, and I saw ‘Ben’ then. The man who Bronson really was when he wasn’t busy trying to save the world.
“I’d love to show it to you, but I have to warn you, once you’ve been there, you might never want to leave again.”
“And I might even play dirty to get you to stay,” he growled as he pinched the nipple he’d been playing with.
I gasped and realized Bronson had more tricks up his sleeve. It had only been a few days, and I was already addicted to his touch.
He pulled me closer, his hand sliding into my hair as he kissed me, slow and certain and nothing like a goodbye.
And for the first time in my life, I wasn’t stepping into a future someone else had built for me.
I was walking into one I’d chosen for myself.
Withhim.
Epilogue
Bronson
