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“Six weeks is way too long,” I said into his neck.

His chest shook with a quiet laugh. “Agreed.”

I lifted my head and propped my chin on his chest to look at him. His hair was a mess and his cheeks were flushed, but he looked sexy as sin.

And I knew by the way he looked back at me that he saw me the same way. No matter my scars.

FORTY-FIVE

The stadium for the Montana Thunder football team was going to be massive.

Being told it would be large enough to seat 60,000 people and seeing the bones of the structure were two completely different things. Construction crews moved across the site like ants on a mission as I drove up to the location Viv had asked me to meet her at.

Viv was waiting for me near the construction office, a temporary trailer that looked hilariously out of place next to the scale of what was being built around it. She wore a hard hat over her perfectly straight black hair and held a second one out to me as I approached.

“Safety first,” she said.

I put it on. “How do I look?”

“Like someone who’s about to get a very good job offer.”

My stomach flipped with excitement. She’d texted me two days ago asking if I wanted to come see the site and talk. I’d spent the time since debating the pros and cons before I couldn’t deny that the pros far outweighed the cons.

She led me away from the trailer, past a row of bulldozers and a crew pouring concrete, until we reached a spot on the eastern side of the site where the ground was elevated enough to give a panoramic view of the entire project. The mountains were visible on all sides, and the sky was a clear baby blue.

“This is where the main entrance will be,” Viv said, gesturing toward a gap in the steel frame. “The concourse wraps around the entire stadium. I want it to feel open when you walk in—like you’re stepping into something big but it still belongs here. It shouldn’t feel like it was dropped from another city. It should feel like Montana.”

I could picture it. The wide concourse, the views of the mountains through the glass, fans streaming in wearing jerseys for a team that didn’t exist yet but already had a home.

“It’s going to be incredible,” I said. Viv was really making her vision come to life, and that was inspiring as hell.

Viv turned to me. “I want you to help me introduce this team to the state.”

She reached into her bag and pulled out a folder, handing it to me. Inside was a pack of papers, but it was the single sheet of paper on top of all the others with the franchise’s letterhead that caught my attention. A job title was printed in clean black font.

Director of Community Relations and Brand Strategy.

I stared at it. My heart was racing so hard I could feel it in my throat.

“The role would start after you graduate,” Viv continued, her voice shifting into the same focused, commanding tone I imagined she used in boardrooms when she was working for her parents. “You’d be responsible for building the team’s relationship with Montana—community outreach, local partnerships, brand identity, fan engagement from the ground up. I need someone who can translate what this franchise means into something people feel in their gut. You’d be at the forefront of connecting this team with the state, not just the Missoula area.”

I looked up from the paper. “Viv, this is⁠—”

“Before you say anything, I want to explain why I’m offering this to you specifically.” She folded her arms and held my gaze with an intensity that reminded me so much of Harry it almost made me smile. “And I need you to actually hear me, because I think your instinct is going to be to deflect, and I’d really appreciate it if you didn’t.”

I closed my mouth.

“I didn’t choose you because you’re Harrison’s girlfriend. I told you that before and I meant it. I’ll be honest—when I first started considering candidates, I didn’t even have you on my radar. I was looking at people with five, ten years of experience. People with résumés that could wallpaper a conference room.” She paused. “But then I got to know you. And I saw your resilience and grit, which are two things that are hard to teach someone to have. Building a team from the ground up is not an easy feat, and I’ve already had plenty of people tell me they’re eager to watch me fail. I will have a team with experience, but when it comes to building the community around this team, I need someone who loves Montana as much as I do. Because at the end of the day, this team, this vision I have, is nothing if the community doesn’t support it.

“Montanans know how to be strong and resilient better than almost anyone else. They work with the land and they support each other. I don’t want to change this area in a negative way. I want to give them something we can all rally around and be proud of, which means I need someone who can guard and protect that vision and think outside the box. People with experience and mile-long résumés don’t always want to do that. They know what’s worked for them in the past and want to recreate that. But Montana is special, and I want to nurture what makes it unique instead of trying to fit into a box like everyone else.”

I wholeheartedly agreed. It was what I loved about living here and why I never wanted to leave. Montana was special. It was home, and if we were going to bring this type of large-scale attention, it needed to be handled with care and respect to the community that already lived here.

“You see people,” she said. “You connect with them in a way that can’t be manufactured or trained into someone. And this team needs that. I need that.”

I looked down at the paper in my hands. It was a big decision—life-changing—but I also already knew my answer. And it had only been solidified after hearing her talk with such passion about the project and her vision for this team and its future.

I looked up at Viv. “I’d like to accept.”