Page 111 of Runaway Bride’s Husband

I blinked at him, looking into those clear blue eyes I loved so much and wishing I could feel as relaxed and confident as he looked. “I’m not trying to worry about it, but what we did was huge, Ryan. The backlash⁠—”

“Tonight is our night,” he said firmly, holding my gaze. “There will be a time for family drama, but it’s not right now. This is about us.”

My throat constricted. “I still can’t believe there is an us.”

“Neither can I, but that’s exactly why we’re going to take tonight for ourselves, and then tomorrow or maybe even the next day, we’ll get into everything else. We’re married, Maggie. After everything we’ve been through, we’re really, actually married. Let’s just allow that to sink in before we start allowing anyone to try to break us apart again.”

I slid my hand into his and gripped it tight. “That’s not happening. I won’t let them treat us like they did Viola and my grandfather. Just in case that’s what you were thinking.”

He wound his fingers around my own, bringing our joined hands to his mouth and brushing a kiss to my knuckles. “No, we definitely won’t let that happen, but that doesn’t mean they won’t try, so let’s just enjoy tonight while we’ve got it. Okay?”

“Deal,” I said, smiling until we finally had our feet on solid ground again.

Ryan’s hand didn’t leave mine for the rest of the night. The two of us moved from group to group and ride to ride for hours before we finally snuck off. I laughed as we stole away to his car like two thieves in the night.

“What about Holden and Nora? Didn’t you all drive over here together?”

“They’ll live.” He grinned as he opened the passenger door for me. “I’m pretty sure Holden would’ve already scheduled a ride of some sort. Either an Uber or with a friend. I think he knew what I was going to do before I did.”

I lowered myself into the car. As soon as he slid in behind the wheel, I turned to face him, bursting with disbelief and excitement and already looking forward to whatever came next. “Where are we going?”

“The cottage.” He turned over the engine and backed out of his parking spot, carefully turning around before gunning it down the drive. “We’ll come back to clean up our mess, but I’m not spending our first night as husband and wife in a guest room that was meant for you and Daniel.”

A shudder sped down my spine as I imagined what it would’ve been like to go up to a room with my ex-fiancé. While I was confident we wouldn’t have shared a bed, even if it meant one of us having to spend our wedding night on the floor, the future sure wouldn’t have been looking very rosy right about now.

“Yeah. The cottage is much better. I agree.”

As the lights disappeared behind us, we escaped from our own wedding down dark roads with only the tall trees on either side as witnesses. The occasional pair of headlights flashed past us, but outside of that, we didn’t see another living soul all the way to Deerfield.

My pulse started racing when we pulled up outside of the cottage and I realized my wedding night was going to look very, very different from what I’d thought it would this morning. Ryan Thayer was back here with me, at the cottage I’d rage-cleaned when I had thought I had never meant anything to him at all.

By this point, he and I had created many memories here, but this was the first time we were arriving as a couple. With no marriage to someone else looming over us and our feelings out in the open. Ryan Thayer was my freaking husband.

He’d barely gotten the door open before I caught his jacket and pulled him to me.

He laughed against my mouth, his arms automatically coming up to wrap around my hips. “Well, hello, wife.”

“Hello, husband.”

When his lips crashed into mine, all the worries about everything we still had to face fell away. The door swung shut behind us, sealing us into a place that had seen so much heartbreak, but maybe this could be a new beginning for the cottage as well.

“I cleaned up,” I murmured against his lips as I looped my arms around his neck.

His mouth stilled against mine. “What?”

“When I came here before, I cleaned up. I can’t promise there are no racoons in the attic, but the bed has clean, new sheets on and there’s no more dust.”

He grinned, then nipped my lower lip before kissing me again. “We’ll take care of the critters eventually, and get rings, and go on a proper honeymoon, but for now, clean bedding, no dust, and you sound like a dream come true.”

When we finally broke apart, I was slightly out of breath, my body humming with need and my heart fuller than it had ever been. Ryan looked at me like he felt the same. He took my hand and led me to the bedroom, sliding in at my back to undo the buttons trailing down my spine.

He cursed every so often, clearly getting frustrated with them, but once he was finally finished, he even took the time to swipe the dress up off the floor and hang it over a chair. Before he came back to me, still in that ridiculously sexy suit while I was down to only my panties, he glanced back at the dress and smiled.

“You know, I really wasn’t convinced by that thing until I saw you in it. You were stunning, Maggie. You literally took my breath away.” He closed the distance between us in a couple of long strides and wrapped me up in his arms, punctuating his words with kisses as he pressed his lips to mine. “It nearly killed me, seeing you looking like that while you were walking toward someone else.”

“It nearly killed me too, but we’ll never have to go through that again.” I hooked my fingers under his jacket and pushed it off his shoulders. “I love you, Ryan, and the dress was perfect. Don’t get me wrong, it was exactly what I’ve always wanted, but I wore it to feel closer to you. Honestly, I don’t even think Daniel noticed what I was wearing.”

Ryan chuckled and kicked off his shoes. “Well, his loss is my gain.”