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I laugh and do as I’m told and take the left side of the bed, careful not to put too much weight on my ankle, although the pills they prescribed me at the hospital have been doing wonders for the pain.

Silently, I watch as Oliver strips off his pants, and I get an unobstructed view of his perfect, biteable ass. His fingers hesitate at the waistband of his boxers. He turns to me, chuckling when I avert my eyes.

“It’s okay. I don’t mind you looking. I, um . . . I usually sleep with nothing on. Is that okay with you?”

“Of course,” I say. In reality, I’m screaming inside. I know I said we were only going to sleep, but Oliver seems hellbent on testing me tonight.

I turn off the light before I can get a glimpse of any parts of him I haven’t yet discovered.

The covers rustle beside me, and a second later, I feel the warmth of his body inches from mine.

“Can I hold you?” he asks softly.

“Please.”

The weight of his arm settles on my waist as he wraps it around my belly and tugs me close.

“Sorry about that,” he says as his cock grows hard against my ass. “I can’t control or hide the effect you have on me.”

I caress his arm with my fingertips. “Don’t worry about that. I like it.”

He hums and places a kiss in my hair. “I like it too.”

It occurs to me then, before sleep sweeps me away, that we’re lying in the same position as we were a few nights before in the tent. And yet everything is so different.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

EVERMORE

Oliver

Iwake at eight o’clock to the sound of birds chirping in the trees and to Charlee at my side, her chest rising and falling in soft, sleepy sighs.

I blink, chasing sleep away from my drowsy eyelids, or possibly because I can’t believe what happened last night. What’s happening right now. It’s like living in a daydream, as if the last five years never happened, as if I didn’t spend them writing hundreds of letters that I never sent.

I wasn’t sure how she was going to react to the reason I never showed up, why I let her down. It could have gone either way, really. Sure, she’d have understood, who wouldn’t have? But my absence left scars, whether I like it or not, some too deep for even the most reasonable of explanations to heal. How many exist or whether they can be erased, I don’t know. Time might do the trick, if she gives it to us. Yet when I look at her, so peaceful, so in need of me, a glimmer of hope that all isn’t lost kindles in the depths of my soul.

She hasn’t moved all night. She’s still in my arms, her back against my chest, stark naked.

My gaze roams down her coppery hair, her ribs, her hips, uncovered by the sheets. The rest is cloaked in covers, but my mouth and tongue remember perfectly what lies beneath. Have already mapped out every detail of what she liked so I can do it all over again tonight. And the day after that. For as long as she’ll let me.

Charlee stirs, stretching like a cat before pushing her ass into my now unmistakable hard-on. “Well, good morning to you too,” she mumbles.

“Good morning, sweetheart,” I whisper into the nape of her neck.

I didn’t think she could smell even sweeter, but the warmth that radiates from this particular spot in the morning is a concentrated shot of serotonin that will run through my nervous system for the rest of the day. I could get used to this. And I don’t know if I should entertain that thought without putting my heart on the line.

“I don’t mind getting woken up like this every day.” She turns until her face is nuzzled in my chest.

I don’t think she realizes what she’s saying. What those words do to me. To my heart.

Say the word and I’m yours, Charlee.

“I’m a simple man, you know.” I stroke her hair. “Just holding you like this, I’m content.”

Her hand travels down my chest, my waist. She stops a few inches above my cock, as if asking for permission. “I wouldn’t mind spending a few more hours in bed . . .”

A chuckle bubbles in my throat. “Trust me, I’d like nothing more than to stay right here with you, but I need to take care of a few things that unfortunately can’t wait much longer.” I splay my hand on her backside, gripping the soft flesh there, and draw her snugly against me.