“You added one.” I blink hard against the burning behind my eyes. “Where?”
Wes goes utterly still before slowly turning around. “I did.” He rubs absently at a spot on his arm before adding, “I had it done when I was in Houston at the end of June.”
I have a surprise for you when you get here.
I hate surprises.
I think you’re going to like this one…
I gulp in air as the pieces begin to fit together. “Where?”
“I don’t want to pressure you into—”
“Wes. Where.”
“The place, the moment, I knew you were it for me.” He takes a shuddering breath and summons up a tentative smile. “Where I let myself hope, for the first time, that I could be the same for you.”
“Where?” I repeat, my voice cracking as emotion finally wins and a tear slips down my cheek. I move, not stopping until I’m close enough to tangle our fingers together and breathe in the familiar scent of his skin. “Tell me where.”
Wes gently brushes the tear aside. “The side of the road in Kansas where you put me back together.”
The enormity of it knocks the breath from my lungs. “But that was…We weren’t…”
“The thing I can’t stop thinking about,” he says, the words choked, “the thing I keep coming back to, that I should have told you months ago, is that my dad trying to take the ranch from me? All it did was prove thathomeisn’t there, or even my condo. It’s not a place at all. Not for me.”
Wes leans in to brush an achingly sweet kiss across my forehead. “You’re my home, Sloane. I love you.” His voice breaks, eyes shimmering in the low light when he pulls back, cupping my jaw in his palms. “I love you so much it’s hard to breathe without you.”
Tears slip down my cheeks. Wes is there to catch them, gently wiping away each salty drop. I let out a choked laugh, my heart brimming as I say the words we both need so desperately to hear. “I love you too.”
His mouth crashes into mine before I even finish my sentence. It’s more emotion than finesse, the kiss desperate, his hands tight on my back, crushing me close. I cling to his shoulders, just as frantic for the taste of him, the heat of his body against mine, the way we fit together. Our lips chase each other’s, too needy to be parted. Some dim part of me is aware of my back colliding with the wall, the ragged sound I make when Wes presses his weight into me, solid and so veryreal.
I relearn his textures in greedy touches. The smooth silk of his skin where his shoulder meets his throat. The flex of muscle beneath my fingertips. The delicate softness of the hair at the back of his neck, and the delicious sound he makes when I tug on his bottom lip oh so gently with my teeth.
If I’m greedy, Wes is a man at worship. The initial frenzy between us settles into slow touches, his fingers a deliciousdrag down my ribs and along the outside of my thigh. I’m left gasping as he drops kisses on my cheeks, my eyelids, my jaw, anywhere he can reach.
His chest heaves against mine when he reaches for my hands and laces our fingers together. “I was so terrified I’d lost you for good.”
“I’ve never felt this way about anyone else.” I cup his jaw and brush my thumbs under exhausted eyes that shine with relief and love. I swallow back rising tears and brush my fingers through his hair. “I’m not sure exactly when I fell in love with you. It might have been in a field under a sky full of lightning, or it might have been when you bullied me into resting when I had that migraine.” I swallow hard. “It scared me, how hard I fell for you. I’m sorry I let the fear win.”
When Wes kisses me this time, murmuring my name into each press of his lips, it’s softer, slower. “Just don’t run from me again, darlin’. Tell me if you get scared. Get mad when you need to. But don’t run. Please.”
“I promise to try. I’m not perfect either, but, Wes? If I do run…” I smile up at him through my damp lashes. “Chase me.”
Epilogue
A year after trading churchbells—but not chasing lightning—for the whisper of the wind through evergreens and wedding marches for birdsong, I have no regrets. I’m not certain I can say the same for my friends.
“You know what, I take it back. There is absolutely nothing wrong with a big wedding in a nice, comfortable, air-conditioned venue,” Tracy huffs.
At my side, Wes laughs, his headlamp bobbing in the pale blue light of the hour just before dawn. He’s barely winded.
“We’re almost there,” he says with the same good-natured cheer that made me want to turn him into bear breakfast the first ten times we did this hike.
“You said that a mile ago,” Matt protests.
“Hey, you’re not the one carrying this damn dress,” Tracy grumbles from behind me. “Jesus, Sloane, is this thing made of bricks?”
“Silk chiffon.” I glance back, wincing when I blind both her and Matt with my psychotically bright headlamp. It was agift from Wes to celebrate the first time I did this hike with a client, so it seemed fitting to wear today. Even if I have blinded our friends half a dozen times. “A good twenty yards of it.”
