Page 199 of Lost Then Found
He slides his hands higher under the shirt, fingertips brushing bare skin, and I shiver.
“You’re lucky I’m a patient man,” he says, voice rough now, but quiet, like he knows we have all night.
He tugs the blanket up around us, one arm staying wrapped around my waist. His other hand finds mine, threading our fingers together under the covers like it’s just what we do now.
It’s strange—the way time folds in on itself like this.
The way some things change so completely, you barely recognize them, and others…stay. Like the weight of his hand around mine. The sound of his laugh when it’s real. The feeling I get right now, here with him—so familiar it almost hurts.
We’re older now. Different. Bruised in places we never used to be.
But there’s a movie playing we’ve seen a hundred times before, and hisshoulder is warm against mine, and for a second—just one—it feels like we never left this. Like all the years we lost somehow brought us right back here.
Back to each other.
Chapter 21
BOONE
The first light of morning slips through the cracks in the curtains—pale and silvery, not quite enough to be called sunlight, but enough to pull me out of sleep.
Her hair’s in my face again.
Golden strands spill across my face, tangled from sleep, brushing along my chin and catching on the stubble there. I could move them. I should. But I don’t, because they smell like her.
Warm and soft and familiar in a way that sticks. The kind of scent that lingers in the sheets long after she’s gone, that settles into your skin like it belongs there.
My arm is wrapped low around her waist, palm resting against the bare skin of her stomach. Her breathing’s steady, her body tucked against mine like she’s always slept here. Like she was meant to.
The blanket’s mostly gone, bunched somewhere near the foot of the bed. Our legs are tangled. I don’t even know whose are whose anymore. And the entire room smells like her now—like something that’s lived here forever.
I press a slow kiss to the back of her shoulder. Just because I can. Just because she’s here.
And because for the first time in a long time, I don’t want the morning to start. This quiet, in-between moment?
It feels holy.
Like if I shift, it might all disappear.
Like if I open my eyes too wide, the world will rush back in and take it from me.
I’ve imagined this. More times than I’d ever admit out loud. Not as fantasy, but as memory—something my body already knew how to crave, even before I had her. The way her breath feathers across my skin. The heat of her thigh slung over mine. Her body so closely wound into me it’s hard to tell where I end and she begins.
I used to wonder what this would feel like.
Now I wonder how I ever convinced myself I could live without it.
Because this? This quiet morning with her pressed against me, sleep-warm and still soft with dreams? This feels like the only thing that’s ever made sense. The only place I’ve ever exhaled without holding something back.
But, unfortunately, the ranch doesn’t care about that.
It doesn’t care about soft mouths and slow mornings and the impossible temptation of the woman wrapped around me. Doesn’t care that I could lie in this bed for the rest of my life and still not have enough of her. The work waits. The world spins. And I’m already behind.
Six a.m. I should’ve been up by four-thirty.
Boots on. Coffee down. Out in the cold before the first light hits the hills.
That’s the thing about this place—it asks everything of you. Time. Sweat. Focus. Doesn’t matter if you’re running on no sleep or if you’re busy laying with the woman who makes you forget what the word obligation means. The land is relentless. The animals don’t pause for grief or fatigue or love.
