Page 156 of Your Place or Mine

I pulled back just enough to look at her, reallylookat her.

Her cheeks were flushed, her lips swollen, her eyes full of something that twisted my chest in ways I wasn’t ready for but didn’t want to fight anymore.

“You’re trouble,” I murmured.

Her fingers slid through the hair at the back of my neck. “You like trouble.”

I nodded. “Only when it looks like you.”

The washer finally finished its cycle, jerking once and going still.

We stood there, catching our breath, the silence settling like a warm blanket over our heads.

She looked at me and tilted her head. “So, was that your version of romantic?”

I leaned in and kissed her again, slow this time, letting it sink in. “No.”

She arched a brow. “No?”

“That,” I said, brushing her hair back from her face, “was my version of inevitable.”

She blinked. “What does that even mean?”

“It means… I’m already yours.”

Her eyes went glassy, and she bit her bottom lip, nodding like maybe she’d been waiting to hear that all along.

“I guess,” she said softly, “that makes us both doomed.”

“Good,” I smirked. “I like a little doom.”

She laughed and wrapped her arms around me, pulling me in again.

And for once, the world outside that laundromat didn’t exist.

There was just the woman on the washer.

And me, falling deeper every damn second.

Chapter Thirty-Six

Lydia

I couldn’t believe how quickly Reckless River had started to feel like home.

It had been months since I first rolled into town in Melanie’s car, my life packed into a suitcase, and an optimistic-to-the-point-of-naïve plan toreimaginean old building. I hadn’t expected much. A little personal growth. A lot of paint. Maybe a decent cup of coffee and a friendly face or two.

What I hadn’t expected wasCallum Benedict.

Or that I’d spend more nights in his bed than in my own.

Or that I’d fall for this small town, and thisman, so fast, so completely, and somessily.

But here I was. Waking up in flannel sheets more mornings than not, my clothes slowly multiplying in his drawers like they had every intention of never leaving.

It was the kind of relationship that crept up on you, even when it was standing six-foot-something tall with a beard, green eyes, and a perpetual scowl. One day, I was challenging him in his bar over mismatched barstools, and the next, he was teaching me how to shoot tin cans off a fence with a rusted old rifle and kissing the side of my head like it was the most natural thing in the world.

The man might still grunt more than he spoke, but I’d cracked the code.

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