Page 231

The wind catches my hair. The sun warms my shoulders. The sea appears and disappears between houses as we follow the coast, and I find myself laughing against Jude's back.

God, I missed this.

Jude

This was a fucking terrible idea.

Nora’s arms are wrapped around my waist, her body pressed against my back, and every time I take a curve, she holds me tighter.

Fuck.

Football. Think about football. The Broncos. Work. Fences. Joe probably hasn’t fixed that fucking gate yet. Hades needs—

Nora shifts behind me.

Jesus Christ.

Her cheek brushes my shoulder for a second and the scent of coconut hits me. That fucking shampoo. I’ve smelled it every morning since we got here, and apparently my brain has decided it belongs to her now.

Coconut. Nora.

Fucking fantastic.

I tighten my hands around the handlebars and stare at the road, desperately trying to think about work instead. Indigo. The new training schedule. Football. Taxes. Fuck, I’ll think about taxes if I have to.

Anything except how fucking right she feels like this, with her arms around me, holding on to me.

“Jude!”

Her voice comes from behind me.

“What?”

“Slow down!”

I immediately ease off the throttle, and then I see why.

“Wow.”

The word leaves me before I can stop it.

The road has opened up ahead of us, and the entire coastline seems to change. Mountains rise behind the town, green and rugged, dropping toward a sea so fucking blue it doesn’t look real. The water near the shore is almost transparent, shifting from pale turquoise into deeper blue as it stretches toward the horizon.

And sitting right in the middle of it is an island.

Not far from shore, a massive chunk of rock rises straight out of the crystalline water, its cliffs pale beneath the sun and its top covered in deep green vegetation.

“Isola di Dino!” Nora shouts behind me.

I slow down even more.

Off to one side, an old stone tower rises from a rocky outcrop above the sea, looking like it’s been standing guard over the coast for centuries.

Jesus.

Wyoming has views that can stop me in my tracks. Mountains that make a man feel small. Endless sky. Land that seems to go on forever.

But this?