"I just did."
"I know you just did." Another roll of his hips, slow and deep, and I sucked in a breath. "You did it on purpose."
"I did it because I meant it." I looked over my shoulder at him again. His eyes were dark and slightly wrecked and entirely certain, the way they always were when he'd decided something. "Five years. Then babies. Then we do this the fun way without the IUD and you give me everything you've got." I held his gaze. "That okay with you?"
He answered by pulling out slow and pushing back in deep and I gasped and grabbed the blanket with both hands.
"Yeah," he said, rough against my ear. "That's okay with me."
"How okay."
"Extremely." His hand spread flat across my stomach, low, warm and deliberate and full of intent. "Five years." His hips moved and I arched back into him. "And then I'm going to take that lasso out and I'm going to keep you right here until it takes."
"Promise?" I breathed.
"Promise." His mouth at my throat. "Every night until it takes."
"That could take a while."
"I know." I could hear the smile in it. Dark and warm and entirely Sawyer. "I'm not in a hurry."
I laughed, and it dissolved immediately into something else as his hand moved and his hips didn't slow, and I thought about five years from now—this man, this trailer, or whatever came after it—and felt something so simple and complete settle in my chest that I didn't have a word for it.
Didn't need one.
"Sawyer," I breathed.
"I've got you," he said. Like always. Like every time.
"I know," I said. Like always. Like every time.
He kept his promise.
Twice.
Epilogue
SAWYER
My girl was gonna be famous.
The Far Meridian was a huge success—a “triumphant sophomore effort from Ellis Jones”, a “return of the Western”. It was blowing up. People loved the movie.
And even more than that, they loved Daniela Morales.
Yep—not Daphne Wilder.
Daniela.
She'd walked into Ellis's office on the second week of the shoot and come back out twenty minutes later looking like she'd put something down she'd been carrying for a long time.
"How'd it go?" I'd asked.
"Good." Then, quieter: "She called me Daniela the whole meeting. Like she'd always known."
I wasn't surprised. Ellis didn't miss much.
The credit read Daniela Morales in every piece of marketing from that point forward. Mark needed forty-eight hours and a considerable amount of scotch to make peace with it. Then he called her and said it was the right move and he was sorry it had taken him that long to see it. She'd cried in the trailer bathroom for ten minutes. I'd pretended not to hear.
