Page 175 of The Wild Card

Her forehead drops to mine. Her eyes are closed. Her lips are parted, and the small sound she makes—somewhere between a gasp and a sigh—is my favorite sound on the planet. I’ve heard it a hundred times now and it still rewires my brain every time.

“Okay?”

She opens her eyes, and they’re hazy when they meet mine. “You feel so good, Crew.”

My hands settle on her hips. Not guiding—just holding. She doesn’t need guidance. She never has.

She starts to move, and the whole world narrows to this. To her. The roll of her hips, slow and deliberate. The way she braces her hands on my chest. The flush spreading across her skin in the warm light. I watch her face—the way her eyes flutter, the way she bites her lower lip when something feels particularly good—and I think, for the thousandth time: How the hell did I get here?

A year ago, I was surviving protein shakes in a quiet apartment, arguing with a cat and dreading a transfer to Alaska. Now I’m in a cabin I built with my own hands, in a bed that smells like us, with a woman who saw every broken piece of me and decided to stay.

I pull her down and kiss her, deep and slow, matching the rhythm she’s set. She moans into my mouth and the sound lights me up from the inside.

“There,” she breathes, shifting her angle. “Right there. Don’t stop.”

“Wasn’t planning on it.”

She laughs, and it turns into a gasp when I grip her hips tighter and meet her on the next stroke. The pace builds the way it does when we’re like this—not frantic but steady, like we’re both heading toward the same place and neither of us is in a hurry to get there.

I run my hands up her sides, her ribs, the undersides of her breasts. She drops her head back, throat exposed, and I lean up to press my mouth there.

“Crew—” She’s getting close. I know the signs. Her thighs tighten around me, her breathing goes shallow, and she grabs my hand and laces her fingers through mine like she needs an anchor.

I hear the distinct crunch of tires on gravel.

We both go still.

The sound is unmistakable out here—there’s no traffic on this road, no neighbors close enough to hear. Just the long dirt drive that leads to our cabin, and now there’s the sound of a vehicle slowly rolling to a stop outside the house.

Emmie’s eyes lock on mine. Her chest is still heaving, her fingers still laced through mine. “Please tell me that’s a delivery truck.”

I’m already scanning, my brain flipping into a mode that does not pair well with what’s currently happening below my waist. I lean toward the window without pulling out—because some delusional part of me is still hoping this is a wrong turn, a lost tourist, someone who’ll see the dead-end and reverse back down the drive. Still hoping we can finish what we started.

A champagne-colored Buick Enclave rolls into view and parks behind my truck.

I know that car. I know that car the way I know my badge number, because it’s been parked in the Marshall family driveway every single Sunday for the past six months.

“Who is it?” Emmie’s voice is tight. She hasn’t moved. We’re still connected, still tangled, and the contrast between where I was ten seconds ago and where I am now is giving me emotional whiplash.

“It’s your parents.”

A beat of silence.

“No.”

“Your dad’s getting out of the car.”

“No he is not.”

“And your mom’s holding a casserole dish.”

Emmie makes a sound like a deflating balloon. She drops her forehead to my shoulder, and for two full seconds, neither of us does what we both know we need to do.

Because here’s the thing.

We are still very much together. As in physically joined. As in I am inside her right now, and she was thirty seconds from finishing, and I was right behind her, and Robert Marshall—her father—is currently stretching his legs in our driveway like he just wrapped up a casual Saturday drive.

“We have to—” Emmie starts.