My mouth opened, but no words came out as I stared into his sincere gray eyes. I believed he wasn’t the type of guy to normally do this, and if he said he was all in, then there wasn’t a part of me that worried he was lying to me about leaving Olivia. I still didn’t want to be the person who broke up someone’s marriage, but I had to agree wholeheartedly with what he’d said earlier this week . . . I would be insane to walk away from this.

The old Kamryn would have run in the opposite direction as fast as she could, and I knew Barbara and Kinlee would never approve, but I also knew that going through life and never again feeling the way he made me feel would be the opposite of living. No matter how happy I’d been here in Jeston before I met him, I could never go back to the way I’d been.

“I can’t believe I’m about to say this,” I whispered and lowered his head so his forehead was pressed against mine. “If it’s with you, Brody, then I want it all. I agree we need to be quiet about it. I don’t want to be seen as the girl who ruined your marriage to anyone. Your family, friends, Olivia, her family . . . I don’t want to be that person.”

“You’re not, and you won’t. I wouldn’t do that to you, and I’ll protect you from any fallout from leaving her, all right?”

“This is crazy,” I breathed.

“I’ll be right there with you through all the crazy.”

I worried my bottom lip, and it felt like we both stopped breathing in those few seconds before I nodded my head and said, “Okay, Brody.”

His eyebrows shot up, and his grip on my waist tightened. “Okay?”

“Okay.”

He pressed his lips against my forehead, then moved back to look me in the eye. “That word has never sounded so good.”

WE STAYED LIKE that before eventually making our way to the couch, where we talked for hours into the morning. Now that we knew what we were doing, we were trying to make up for all the getting-to-know-each-other time we had lost. He told me all about his childhood and time in the Army, and I shared stories of Barb and what made me want to open the bakery. Not once did our hands leave some part of each other, and never once did we go past that. And when I rested my head on the back of the couch and rubbed my eyes under my glasses, he stood up and pulled me up with him.

“I’ve kept you up way too long, I’ll let you get some sleep.”

I grunted my dislike for that idea. “No, it’s all right. I’m not ready for you to go.”

He pulled me into his arms, and I felt more than heard his chuckle. “Your accent gets thicker the more tired you get.” When my body stiffened, he ran his hand over my back and leaned away to look at me. “Why is that a bad thing? I love it, you have no idea how sexy your drawl is.”

“Because it’s a part of home,” I answered after a while. “And I don’t like or want anything from there.”

Brody’s eyebrows pinched together, but he nodded instead of prying. “Maybe one day you’ll tell me why?”

A yawn interrupted my answer, and I was thankful for its timing. I buried my head in his chest, and he rubbed at my back.

“Come on, you need sleep.” Following him over to the table in the kitchen, I watched as he put the rest of his uniform back on, then walked with him to the garage. “Can I come see you tomorrow night?”

“I was hoping you would.”

He smiled and pulled me back into his arms, one hand going up to cup my neck, his thumb brushing along my jaw. “Then I’ll be here after work. Thank you for tonight.”

His breath washed over my mouth, and my lips parted in anticipation. I watched his eyes darken as the movement caught his eye. His chest rose and fell heavily as the air thickened around us, and I was close to begging him to kiss me. The hand at the small of my back pushed me closer to his body and the thumb at my jaw stopped moving—and I swear I stopped breathing until his eyes snapped back up to mine and realization hit them.

“Sweet dreams, Kamryn.”

I suppressed my whimper when his arms released me and told myself that we needed to keep this slow.

Offering him a small smile, I leaned up against the doorjamb as I watched him walk to his Tahoe. “Drive safe, Brody. I’ll see you later tonight.”

It shouldn’t have been that hard to watch him walk away. It shouldn’t have felt that wrong for him to leave at the end of the night. But it did, and I just had to hold out until I saw him again later. Already the hours separating our time together felt like they’d never pass.

6

Brody

May 19, 2015

RAKING MY HANDS over my face, I groaned and tried to focus on the cars passing in front of me. I was running radar at a little speed trap for the last thirty minutes of my shift since it had been quiet for the past few hours, but I wasn’t seeing the cars driving by me. I was seeing Kamryn. Flashes of the past three nights had been torturing me all day, but God, I didn’t want the torture to stop.

Her full lips parting in anticipation, my mouth claiming hers, her heated eyes locked on my own as we tried to stay away from each other, the way her body felt pressed against mine, that sound she made when I bit down on the soft skin of her neck—all of it played over and over again in my mind. The memories had me straining against my pants, and I hoped like hell I didn’t have to pull anyone over because, if I did, it was gonna be f**king awkward.

The second night I’d gone to her house, we hadn’t been able to keep ourselves from kissing each other. But even through the agonizing hours of trying to keep ourselves away from each other, we’d managed to only kiss when we were away from any surface either of us could’ve been pushed down on or up against. And even though we’d both kept repeating that was as far as we would let it go, last night had been a different story.