Page 96 of The Pretenders of Copper County
Reed huffed out a laugh, shook his head, grabbed my hand, and pulled me toward him for a kiss. “I love you, Chris. I really do,” he said, which was always nice to hear but not exactly an answer to my question. Then he added in a voice so low I almost missed it, “And to think I told Oak I wouldn’t upend my life forcute.”
Dolores was the one who finally answered me. “I’m suggesting that Reed could pretend he hadn’t seen Dante today, honey, and that your uncle could leave with me and Bob before Reed makes his phone call.”
“You… what?” I whispered.
“Oh, and flapper pie is my personal favorite Canadian baked good.” She patted my arm. “I’ll send you the recipe.”
“But…” I looked at Reed, jaw slack. “But your job, Reed. You can’t…” I caught the look in his eye that said maybe, possibly, for me, hecould, and a surge of hope filled my chest. I sucked in a breath. “Can you?”
“I think you should step outside the cabin with me now that the rain’s stopped,” Reed said, wrapping an arm around my shoulders. “There’s supposed to be a meteor shower later tonight, and I have it on the very best and most fact-based authority that if you make a wish on a falling star, it’s guaranteed to come true.”
“My mother used to say that,” Danny said with a frown.
“I know.” Reed grinned.
Danny’s eyes were suspiciously shiny. He said gruffly, “Take care of him.”
I wrapped my arm around Reed’s waist and smiled. “I think we’ll take care of each other.”
As the frogs around Copper Lake croaked their twilight song, Reed and I stood in the clearing by the dilapidated cabin in the woods with our arms around each other and tried very hard not to notice the sounds of two—possibly three, given Dolores’s knack for minding Bob’s business—retired criminals hustling their way to their oversized green getaway vehicle, while the other criminal still inside the cabin protested loudly the way he’d been securely tied to a bed frame.
It was absolutely not a romantic scenario—seriously, notkidding, the least romantic situation a person had ever been in, in the whole history of romance—but my love for the man in my arms bubbled up inside me anyway, sweet and pure and impossible to ignore. And since I didn’t have to hide it—didn’t have to hide anything anymore—I didn’t try.
“I love you,” I said. “I love you so much, Reed Sunday.”
He grinned. “Thank fuck. I wondered if you’d remember you hadn’t said it yet.”
“In my defense,” I argued, because I’d decided I liked arguing, especially with Reed and especially when it was important, “I’ve had a really eventful day. I was kidnapped... for the second time, which was way less enjoyable than the first?—”
“Don’t joke about it,” Reed growled, nipping at my lip. “It’s too soon. It willalwaysbe too soon.”
“—and subduing my cousin?—”
“If there’s ever a next time,” he noted as Nicky’s demands for freedom grew louder. “Subdue him harder.”
“—and confronting my uncle about decades’ worth of lies?—”
“Like a fucking badass,” he whispered. “I’m so proud of you, baby.”
“—and that’s a lot,” I concluded. “Since I’m actually an extremely boring person.”
Reed laughed so hard he startled the owls from their perches in the trees and seemed to frighten Nicky into silence.
“Chris Sunday,” he said when he could finally speak again, “there is not a single part of being with you that doesn’tthrillme. So if you want to live in New Jersey, we will. Or if you’d rather make a home in the Hollow, let’s do that. Or if you want to stay here in this tiny town you have, against my will, made me actually sort of like?—”
“Yes,please,” I whispered.
“Then we’ll be Coppertians,” he said firmly. “Whatever you want, wherever you want, I will be very happy to live thisextremely boringlife with you for as long as you’ll have me.”
“It’s going to be a very long time,” I warned. “Quite possibly forever.”
But Reed didn’t seem put off by that at all. He fixed my glasses for me so they sat just right on my face, and then he kissed me long and slow and deep, until our every gasp became a promise, our every sigh an affirmation that we were seen and known and loved. That we werehome.
And later that night, when we crawled into bed and I nestled in Reed’s embrace, I thought I might actually feel a teensy bit bad for poor John Ruffian. The man was always going around pretending to be things—doctors and oil magnates and undercover vigilantes—which might be exciting, for a little while.
But I couldn’t think of any pretend life more exciting than my own—being Christoforo Winowski (sometimes Sunday), a man who got to build his future in beautiful, tiny Copper County with the love of his life.
EPILOGUE
