“But like you said, you handled my family.”
“Yeah. At least I tried. I’m not about to isolate you. I swear that.” He looked ahead, at the road. “I’m just trying to do a little bit better. And I made a mistake. But I can see all the ways my dad failed, and I don’t want to fail you. I don’t want to fail our kid.”
“Wolf,” she said. “I... I was really afraid of hurting my parents. Of them being disappointed in me. But that’s not who they are. And I know that. I know it’s not who they are. And so I’m left with the question of what I actually thought I was doing. And I just think I was trying to protect myself. You want to know why I was a virgin? I told myself a whole lot of stories about how I wanted to be good. And yeah, I knew that... I’m sure that if pressed, if forced to think about it, my dad would’ve thought that I’d already been with somebody. It’s not even that. It’s just that I... I... I was afraid.”
“For good reason, it turned out. Your taste in men is shit.”
She laughed. “Yeah, it turns out. I didn’t really think I was the type to go for brooding bad boys.”
“Everyone goes through that phase, I hear.”
“You’re not a phase, though, are you?”
No. She was having his baby. And for some reason, that made her want to...connect with him. She reached across the truck seat and put her hand on his. Then she curled her fingers around the edge of his hand. He didn’t move away. And she just sat. Like that. She heard him take a breath. Deep. Steady. But they didn’t say anything else as they drove to the house.
She let go of his hand when he parked the truck, and they got out, walking up to the front, and he opened the door for her. And for the space of a moment, she wondered if she would kiss him. And she genuinely didn’t know if she would. She didn’t know what she would do. But then he moved away from her, and the decision was made.
“You know, I’m going to want my bed back.”
“Well, if I leave, you can have it back. If I end up staying...” Fire arced between them. Because if they got married... Well, presumably they wouldn’t be keeping separate rooms.
“Good night,” he said.
She didn’t follow him down the hall; she sat on the couch until he was no longer moving around. And then she took a shower and went into her room. She lay across the bed that still smelled like him, and she tried to ignore the cascade of images moving through her mind.
The what-ifs. The potential future. The one where everything changed. Where she married Wolf, and spent the rest of her life trying to navigate this relationship that had never been intended to be permanent. But the alternative, in the current arrangement, meant going back to a life without him.
She didn’t want that. That was it.
So what did that mean?
It meant making a decision. Not waiting for nature to take its course or not. It meant deciding what she wanted. Because her dad was right. She didn’t want to be stuck.
Violet Donnelly had been a coward for an awfully long time.
It wasn’t kissing that had made her brave. It wasn’t sex.
It was this moment.
And she had to seize it.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“WELL, ILIKEyour woman,” Hunter said.
Wolf’s hackles rose. “Do you consider it your solemn duty to hit on every woman Sawyer and I bring home?”
“I didn’t hit on Evelyn,” Hunter said.
“You did,” Sawyer said.
He lifted his beer to his lips and shot Hunter a sidelong glare.
They had finished up a particularly rough workday early, and were sitting on Hunter’s porch at his cabin over at McCloud’s Landing, marinating in the hurt they’d put on their bodies. The echo of labor ran down straight to his bones.
Hunter’s cabin was right on the river, easy access to fishing, which they often enjoyed. Elsie had gone over to the Sullivans’ after work, because she and Alaina had plans for an endurance ride, and they were getting all of their gear together and making plans for what route they would take.
Elsie had been working with Hunter today, getting familiarized with the ranch. It was strange; no one from the families had ever crossed over to working at one of the different branches. But Elsie was invested in horses. And while it might ultimately end up that she brought more of an equine spin to Garrett’s Watch, it was going to be linked to the McClouds. So she was starting with work there.