Thorne
One year later…
Spring came early to Lone Mountain.
I stood on the porch at five in the morning, coffee in hand, watching the sun paint the valley gold. The wildflowers were already blooming in the meadow—the same meadow where I’d picked flowers for a wedding I’d thought was the only way to keep this land. Keep my solitude.
Turned out it was about a lot more than that.
“You’re doing it again.”
I turned. Maddie stood in the doorway wearing my flannel—the same one she’d borrowed that first morning—and nothing else as far as I could tell. Her hair was a disaster, her eyes still sleepy, and she was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.
“Doing what?” I asked.
“That brooding mountain man thing. Staring pensively at the horizon.” She moved to stand next to me, stealing my coffee and taking a sip. “What are you thinking about?”
“You. Us. The fact that we’ve been married a year and I still can’t believe you’re here.”
“Sap.” But she was smiling. “For the record, I can’t believe I’m here either. In a good way.”
A year. One year since Kate had orchestrated the most elaborate matchmaking scheme in history. One year since I’d married a stranger who’d turned into my best friend. My lover. My partner in this weird, wonderful life we were building.
We’d never gotten the marriage annulled. Never even seriously discussed it after that day Kate dropped her bombshell. Just kept going. Kept choosing each other. Every single day.
“I need to tell you something,” I said.
She looked up at me, concerned. “That sounds ominous.”
“It’s not. I just—” I set down my coffee cup. “I never thanked you.”
“For what?”
“For taking a chance on this. On me. For showing up to that courthouse even though the whole thing was insane. For staying even after you found out the truth.”
“Thorne—”
“I was hiding up here. Kate was right about that. I’d convinced myself I was healing, but really I was just... stuck. And then you walked into my life, and everything changed.”
She set down the coffee cup and took my hands. “You changed my life too. I was running. From my ex, from my family’s expectations, from every bad choice I’d made. And you gave me a place to just... be.”
“We’re quite a pair.”
“The best pair.” She grinned. “Two slightly broken people who accidentally fixed each other through a fake marriage arrangement.”
“Not so fake anymore.”
“Definitely not fake.” She pulled me down for a kiss, and I wrapped my arms around her, still amazed that I got to do this. Every day. For the rest of my life if I had anything to say about it.
We’d talked about that. About making this permanent. Real in a way that went beyond the legal paperwork Kate had forced us to sign.
I was working up to asking her properly. Ring and everything. Maybe in the meadow where I’d picked her flowers. Maybe right here on this porch where we’d share a thousand mornings just like this one.
Soon.
“Come back to bed,” she said against my mouth. “It’s too early to be awake.”
“You’re the one who came out here.”
