Once he muscled the inflated air mattress back inside and made up the makeshift bed, he kicked off his cowboy boots and flopped on his back to stare at the ceiling. He put his hands behind his head and just lay there in silence, so I took my own shoes off, grabbed a couple of beers, and went over to join him. I set the cans on the floor and sat next to his hip on the squishy bed.

“How are you going to survive not having junk to put in your hair for a couple of days?” I playfully poked at the slicked-up blond strands.

He caught my arm in his hand and brought it down to put a kiss on my fluttering pulse on the underside of my wrist. He lifted an eyebrow and tilted his chin down so he could look at me.

“I brought my cowboy hat.”

Oh, sweet baby Jesus, we needed to make up real quick, then. I reached out so I could trace the line of one of his golden eyebrows.

“I’m sorry you felt like you had to go to such an extreme just to talk about our relationship. That isn’t right and it isn’t fair to you. I was just freaking out and I know I didn’t handle it correctly.”

His chest rose and fell as he exhaled loudly. He caught my hand and used it to pull me over him so that I was lying across his broad chest.

“It’s not the freak-out or the way you handled it that worries me. It’s the fact that you felt like you had to freak out in the first place. I know the whole Poppy thing is tricky and uncomfortable, but I think I have it figured out now. But even if I didn’t, it has been you for months now, Salem. I just don’t get how you can’t know that.”

He brushed his fingers through my hair and it felt so good I wanted to purr like a cat and rub up against him.

“I don’t know. I guess it’s the same as me telling you I’m here because you’re here and that means I’m not leaving and yet you still look at me all the time like I’m going to vanish into thin air. We can know one thing, Rowdy, but our heart holds on to something else.”

“I don’t want it to hold on to that anymore. I just want it to hold on to you.”

I squeezed my eyes shut and had to swallow around how happy and terrified his words made me.

“Yeah?”

He nodded and his chin rubbed against the top of my head. “Yeah.”

“We just need to let everything go. We have to trust each other if we’re going to be together. I missed you this week and so did Jimbo.”

He yawned so loud I heard his jaw crack and he squeezed me closer. “I’m older now and a lot bigger than you. Getting away isn’t going to be as easy as it once was, Salem. I’m not going to let you run anymore.”

He sounded so sure, and for the first time since this all started between us I just believed. I believed in him. I believed in me and I believed in this thing between us having enough legs to be real and forever because that was what fate, and maybe something bigger than fate, wanted for both of us.

“I’m not looking to get away, Rowdy.”

I was expecting some kind of clever comeback, one of his off-the-cuff quips, but all I got was a steady rise and fall of that strong chest and his breath moving my hair as he breathed in and out above my head. The big jerk had fallen asleep on me.

I sighed and wiggled off of him so that I could wrestle his legs up on the air mattress so that he would be more comfortable. I couldn’t blame him. It was a challenging drive after a full day of work and I’m sure his week hadn’t been any better than mine. I was bummed out that his crashing out early shot all my visions of playing sexy cowgirl on top of him with no one around to hear me scream in pleasure all to hell.

Slightly put out, I dug around in the bag my sister packed until I found a pair of yoga pants and a tank to sleep in. I made a PB&J for dinner and tried to send Poppy a text to make sure she took Jimbo out before bed but was further disgruntled to find that this far out in the woods there was no service. I killed an hour and then decided all there was to do was curl up next to Rowdy and try to sleep, so I shut down the lanterns and curled up next to him as close as I could. His massive frame took up most of the available space.

I listened to the lulling sounds of the forest and the night. I listened to Rowdy’s rhythmic breathing and sighed when he wrapped his arm around me in his sleep and hauled me tightly to his side.

I realized it really was all about where I had ended up and not where I had been, because as long as he was there, wherever that happened to be was going to be where I was supposed to be at as well.

Even if that place was some forgotten cabin in the Colorado mountains.

CHAPTER 15

Rowdy

IT WAS THE FIRST full night of sleep that I had gotten since she walked away from me earlier in the week. I don’t know what woke me up before dawn, maybe the fact the air mattress was sagging in the middle or the call of the birds in the pine trees, but something had my eyes popping open before it was even light out. I automatically reached for the body that was supposed to be curled up alongside mine and jerked up into a sitting position when I came up empty.

The cabin was tiny, so it was easy to see I was alone and I couldn’t for the life of me figure out where my city girl would’ve gotten off to before the sun was even in the sky. I mean there was no bathroom, the place was beyond rustic, but I didn’t think Salem was the type to go tromping through the woods without letting me know where she was going or waking me up to hold the flashlight for her. So I pushed my messy hair off my face, pulled my boots on, and went to find her.

It didn’t take long. The cabin was in a clearing that sat on a crystal-clear lake that was fed from runoff from the mountains. The area was a national forest and the land that wasn’t part of it was privately owned by guys like Phil that just wanted a quiet escape from the city. This wasn’t a lake that allowed anything with a motor on the water, but there was still a weather-beaten dock for rowboats and kayaks jutting out from the rough shoreline. Salem was sitting on the end with her legs dangling over the side, a blanket wrapped around her shoulders while she watched the first rays of dawn break across the sky. When I got closer I noticed she had an open beer in her hand and a soft smile on her beautiful face. If I had had paper and something to draw with, I would have captured the moment for posterity.

I sat down behind her and trapped her between my longer legs and wrapped an arm across her chest to pull her back so that she was resting against my chest.

“Breakfast of champions.” I took the beer from her and took a swig, making a face as I did. It was too early for Coors Light, but whatever.

“I couldn’t figure out how to turn the little stove thing on.”

I’d brought a camp stove up so we could have breakfast and coffee but I hadn’t bothered to hook the propane up to it. Good thing. She probably would have blown us up messing with it. Beer was a poor substitute for coffee this early in the morning, though.

“You’re up early.” I linked our fingers together on one hand and rested my chin on the top of her head. There was nothing like sunrise and sunset in the mountains. The entire sky turned orange and red and looked like flames racing across the jagged peaks.

“It was quiet and it’s never quiet. I wanted to enjoy it for a minute. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything so pretty.”

“Me either.” Granted, I was talking about her and she knew it, because she laughed and it made her soft hair brush against my chin.

“Rowdy . . .”

“Salem . . .”

It was such a nice moment, one that had taken us so long to get to. I couldn’t think of any place on earth that was better than this. And I knew for a fact that there wasn’t any better girl.

“You make me very happy, you always did.” It was all there in her voice. The way that the past and the future were all tangled around each other but still had us standing strong and together right in the middle of it.

I blew out a deep breath and took the can of beer from her and set it down so I could turn her around in my arms so that we were facing each other. She wrapped her legs around my waist and curled her arms around my neck as we stared at each other. The blanket fell away and she shivered as the cool morning air brushed across her shoulders. I collected her ebony hair in one hand and used it to tug her head back so that she was looking up at me with sleepy and sexy eyes.

“I always thought it was the firsts that matter, but now I know that it’s the lasts that stay with you.”

Her mouth puckered into a little frown of confusion and I bent down to kiss that ruby above her lip. She shivered again and this time I knew it didn’t have anything to do with the chill in the air.

“I believed for a long time that I was never going to get past the first girl that made me feel like I was in love. I used it as an excuse to keep other women at an arm’s length because I was terrified of being hurt again. I was afraid, I still am, but I realize that the fact I want to be with you, that I care so much about you, means so much more than the fear.”

She sighed and moved one of her hands to rest in on my cheek. “I don’t want you to be afraid of me, Rowdy.”

“You were and have been the source of a lot of firsts for me, Salem. The first girl I kissed. The first girl I ever cried in front of. The first girl I ever gave a present to. The first I never forgot. You’re the first girl that has ever kept me up at night and the first girl that makes me hurt badly with the way I want you. Looking back, I think when you drove away that day you took a piece of me with you that I didn’t get back until I saw you at the shop. All of those firsts are important and made me see things more clearly without the filter of time and resentment in the way, but what really matters is the lasts.”

I bent down so I could kiss her. I just pressed my lips lightly against her parted mouth and whispered to her, “You are the last person I want to kiss. The last woman I want in my bed. I want you to be the last girl that touches any and all parts of me, Salem, and that means so much more than a first. Who cares if Poppy was there first or if there were nameless people in between? All that matters is that at the end of it all there is just you, only you, and no one else.”

She didn’t say anything for a long time. Her dark eyes were so deep and fathomless it made it hard to read what was going on inside her head. She rubbed her thumb up and down along one of my sideburns and then leaned forward to return the same kind of soft and sweet kiss I had just given her.

“It took me a long time to get here, Rowdy. It’s where I was always supposed to be. This is my final destination, so at the end there is just you and only you as well. The journey in the middle shaped both of us, there is no denying it, but I like being your last . . . just as long as I can keep surprising you with some firsts along the way.”

I laughed because that was typical Salem. Nothing could ever be just good enough. We could be together, would love each other, end up together, but she was always going to want it to be new, challenging, and surprising. That was one of the main reasons I had never been able to get past her and never would.

“I’ve been around the block. Not too many firsts left.” It was the truth but she had managed to pull one or two out in the months we had been together.

One of her jet-black eyebrows shot up and she smiled impishly at me. “Is that a challenge?”

I laughed again because I was happy. Really, truly happy for the first time since she left when I was fifteen. “It can be.”

I almost melted when her dark gaze switched to something sizzling and hot. The arm she had wrapped around my neck tightened, pulling me closer to her, and she traced her fingertip across the outside edge of my mouth.

“Have you ever had sex outside by a lake while the sun is coming up after drinking Coors Light for breakfast?”

I nudged my hands under the edge of her tank top so I could hold on to her waist as I leaned over and flattened her beneath me on the discarded blanket she had brought outside with her. She parted her legs for me and I trapped her face between my palms so I could kiss her with everything that had been missing from my life for the week we had been apart. I wasn’t ever doing that again, being apart, and she needed to be able to feel that.