Page 14 of Bolt To Me
A few minutes later, the screen door whispered open on its hinges. “Hey,” Cory said, his voice husky from sleep. “Didn’t mean to sleep in.”
She didn’t turn to look at him. “You don’t have to explain.”
He came to stand beside her, barefoot, shirtless, his hair rumpled into soft disarray. In each hand, he carried a steaming mug, one already made exactly how she liked it. “I wasn’t going to explain,” he said, pressing one into her hands. “I was going to ask how you’re feeling.”
That made her glance at him, and the sight of him in the low, slanting light did something dangerous to her chest. He looked at her like the question wasn’t just polite. Like he actually cared what her answer might be.
“I don’t know,” she admitted, curling her fingers around the mug. “I feel… raw.”
He nodded, a shadow of something unreadable passing over his expression. “Me too.”
They settled into the swing together, the chains creaking faintly with each slow shift of weight. Steam curled up from their mugs, winding between them like something alive. Neither of them spoke for a long while, the only sounds the hum of distant cicadas and the soft clinking of ceramic when they set their mugs down.
“I should go home,” she said finally. “Grab more clothes. A toothbrush. Maybe the rest of my life while I’m at it.”
Cory shot her a sideways glance. “You moving in?”
“Well, according to half the town, I’ve already moved in and am living with you.” Her lips curved faintly. “But yeah, at least temporarily.”
“Temporarily,” he echoed, the word tasting skeptical in his mouth.
“Until the dust settles.”
“You really think that’s what this is? Dust?”
Her smile faltered, and she looked at him, her eyes narrowing slightly as she studied him. “I don’t know. I just know that last night… felt like something I wasn’t ready for.”
He leaned back, running a hand through his hair. “That’s fair.”
“You’re not mad?” she asked quietly.
“Mad?” Cory smiled then, slow and sure. “Carli, I’ve been in love with the idea of you since I was seventeen. You think one night with the real thing is gonna scare me off?”
Her chest tightened painfully. “You… what?”
Cory kissed her forehead, a brush of lips so gentle it made her want to cry. “Come on. I’ll drive you back to your house. Pack your stuff, jump in your truck, and come on back. I’ll keep the coffee warm. Maybe saddle two horses. Be domestic.”
She watched him walk back inside, barefoot, the morning light painting his shoulders in gold. Too real. Too close.
A few hours later, she was in her truck, bags and totes of her stuff in the back seat, keys in her hand. She still wasn’t sure what she was doing as she texted Cory to let him know she was on the way back. But for the first time in a long time, she wasn’t running.
Maybe, just maybe, she was finally moving toward something instead of away.
The Ex Returns
Carli was halfway through the quiet, mindless rhythm of organizing the guesthouse closet when the unmistakable crunch of tires on gravel reached her. It was a crisp, late-morning sound, sharp in the stillness, the kind that instantly told her someone had driven far enough onto the property to mean business. She froze with one of Cory’s flannel shirts still hanging from her hand, head tilted, listening. The faint whine of brakes followed, then the engine cut off. The ranch settled into silence again, except for the distant sound of a meadowlark calling from somewhere near the fence line.
Slowly, she set the shirt down and crossed to the nearest window. The guesthouse blinds, bent slightly from years of uneven raising, allowed her just enough of a slatted view to see the long silver hood of a Mercedes in the driveway. It gleamed with the kind of smug, expensive shine that didn’t belong here. It was a machine built for city streets and valet drop-offs, not for the dust and grit of Willow Creek.
Her stomach sank even before she saw him. “Oh hell no,” she muttered under her breath, the words tasting like equal parts disbelief and dread.
The driver’s door swung open with a smoothness that suggested the car had never once been slammed in frustration. And then he was there, stepping out as though the gravel beneath him had been rolled out in red carpet form. Thomas Whitmore the Third, in all his pressed, preened glory. His navy button-down was so perfectly starched it might as well have been armor. His hair was combed within an inch of its life, every strand loyal to the mission. Even his cowboy boots, polished to a high shine, looked more decorative than functional, the kind that wouldn’t last five minutes in the mud but would survive a boardroom just fine.
And because the universe clearly enjoyed torturing her, he was holding flowers.
She let her forehead rest briefly against the cool glass of the window, resisting the urge to groan out loud. “Oh, for God’s sake.”
By the time she opened the front door, he was already halfway up the short porch steps, wearing the smile of a man who had rehearsed it in mirrors and magazine covers. “Hi,” he greeted, voice warm in the way only calculated warmth could be. “You look... radiant.”
