Total pages in book: 168
Estimated words: 159420 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 797(@200wpm)___ 638(@250wpm)___ 531(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 159420 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 797(@200wpm)___ 638(@250wpm)___ 531(@300wpm)
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
I’M BACK OUTSIDE because I couldn’t sleep.
I tossed and turned in my bed, stared at the white walls, did some breathing exercises. Or rather simply followed what he taught me over the last few weeks, how to breathe in through the nose, fill my belly with a large breath instead of my chest, and how to let it go with an open mouth. Nothing really helped, so I’m back to watching the horizon, the rolling plains, the mountains in the distance, the night sky.
Which is when I feel it. The prickle in the back of my neck. And my mouth falls open. My lungs expand with the first easy breath I’ve taken since I left that barn, his ranch. God, I’m an idiot. I’m also an idiot for letting my heart race the way it’s doing as I brace myself, prepare myself, to face him.
For the last time ever.
Pressing a hand to my belly, I spin around and there he is. Standing only a few feet away in his usual plaid shirt, rolled-up sleeves, washed-out jeans, and big boots. His Stetson is missing, though. Something about that tugs at my heart, his dark hair mussed up, the ends curling over his ears, his collar. I don’t think I mention it enough, mostly because I love him in the Stetson, but I love his hair. I love how thick it is and how messy it gets, standing up in clumps when he wakes up first thing in the morning. How it falls over his forehead when he dips his face to look down at me. Or when I fist it because he’s dousing me in pleasure and I don’t know what else to do other than claw his skin or pull at his hair, which feels so smooth and rich. So mine.
Anyway, there’s something boyish about his hair, other than being sexy I mean; it’s so adorable, so open. So lovely and vulnerable. So much so that I wish he had his Stetson on. I wish I didn’t have to see something that he usually lets people see only rarely, when he’s done with the world for the day. I also wish the moon wasn’t so strong tonight that I can see the glint in his green eyes. That are, as always, locked on mine.
Watching, staring, taking me in.
And now that he’s here, looking at me, I can admit to myself that I put on this nightie, pink and lacy, for him because I know pink is his favorite color. Not to mention, I braided my hair for him too. Which is fucked up. Because first, I knew he’d come for me—he has a better code of morals than all the men I know combined—but I didn’t know it was going to be tonight. But I knew when he did come for me, it would be for a goodbye. Our final goodbye to each other.
In my head, I thought we’d do this somewhere else. Maybe in town since I was going to be here for the summer; on the street with people passing by while we stood still, looking into each other’s eyes. But now that he’s here, so big and broad, so beautiful that he takes my breath away, I realize there was no way we could’ve done this anywhere else. Definitely not on a street like other conventional people. We met in the shadows, didn’t we? He watched me from the dark and I reveled in his spotlight of a stare like the world was my stage. So this is where we’d do this, too, in the middle of the night, when everyone is sleeping and on a ranch he technically shouldn’t be on. Plus, I know he can be patient, but I also know he wouldn’t be patient for this. For paying his dues or whatever it is he thinks he has to do.
“That’s not north, is it?” I ask without context and point behind me, where I was looking at the horizon.
His strong brow furrows in question.
And with my heart in my throat it’s hard for me to swallow. I will miss that. I will miss reading his silences. But like everything else, it will get easier. It will. Then, “Everyone says Rawhide is the north of Wildfire. I don’t think that’s it, though, right? Those mountains.”
He stares at me a beat before shaking his head. “That’s east.”
“Oh,” I say, frowning, before it occurs to me. “Right, makes sense. Another one of the reasons why I hated my room growing up. The sun would be right there in my face every morning.”
Like an idiot, I kept staring in the wrong direction, thinking that’s where he’d come from. But of course he caught me off guard once again. I seriously need to learn directions if I’m going to stay on a ranch. Maybe I can ask Breck to teach me that too.