Page 18 of Serenity & the Hermit
Turning quickly, I wince slightly when my shoulder pulls, then change my angle so I'm sitting to look at him instead. “You don’t have to wait.”
A slow grin curves his mouth. “My girl sounds impatient.”
“Well,” I start, feeling the heat rising in my cheeks as I lift my eyes to meet his. “We are sitting together,nakedin my bathtub. And you’re…” My eyes lower to the obvious hard-on poking up through the water. “Don’t you want to do something about that?”
“It’ll go down on its own,” he says, reaching for me. “What’s most important to me is getting you so you don’t wince every time you turn your arm the wrong way—don’t think I didn’t see that. And when you’re fully healed, we’ll get everyone we love and care about to gather at my cousin’s bar, the local minister will come and officiate, and you and I will become husband and wife.”
“You paint a lovely picture, Nelson,” I say as I smile from thinking about it.
“Guys like to think about their wedding day too.”
“This might sound odd, but I don’t think I’ve ever planned out my wedding like a lot of other girls did. I thought about meeting my husband and wearing a pretty dress, but there was never a step-by-step plan.”
“Sounds like together, our hopes align perfectly.”
My smile grows even wider. “You know, I think they do,” I say, scooching a little closer so I’m encompassed in his long arms. “But there’s one thing we’ll have to decide outside that.”
“What’s that?”
“Where will we live? I can’t ask you to move down here with me when I know your heart is in the mountain.”
“Baby, I would live absolutely anywhere on this earth as long as it’s with you.”
“Well, I’ll let you in on a little secret,” I whisper, leaning in nice and close. “I kind of have a quiet dream of living in log cabin, high up in a mountain with a big mountain man husband to spend my days with.”
His brow shoots up. “Yeah?”
I nod. “Yeah. You think you could make that work with me?”
I’ve never seen his smile bigger. “I’d fucking love to,” he says, pulling me onto his lap and kissing me like he never has before. “I love you, Serenity.”
“I love you too.”
NELSON
Hanging by my fingers on the rockface, I swing a leg up to hook my toes in a crevice and heft myself a little closer to where my brother, Rafe, is waiting with his feet dangling over the ledge.
“I thought you were good at this, Nelly,” Rafe says, tossing some trail mix into his mouth as he kicks his feet like traversing this rockface was the easiest thing he’s ever done. Something I know is bullshit because I’m the guy who spotted him and talked him through when he got stuck.
“Fuck I hate it when you call me that,” I grumble, reaching up to the next fingerhold before I heft myself up and over the ledge, dropping my weight on the rocky ground next to him.
“But it’s such a cute name,” he says, moving the pack of trail mix out of my reach as soon I try to take some.
“Share,” I grump, leaning across and snatching the bag from him.
“Maybe we should tell your bride how cute Nelly is for a nickname?” he muses, and I look at him with a quirked brow.
“Were you born obnoxious, or is it just a talent you have?”
“Bit of both, I think,” he says, sniping the trail mix back as he gets up and steps away from the ledge just as our other brother, Ajax, emerges from climbing up the rock face.
“God damn,” he says, flopping on the dirt ground with a pant. “What kind of man decides that climbing rock walls on the morning of his wedding is a fun use of time? Shouldn’t we be sitting around and drinking or something?”
“That’s exactly what we’re gonna be doing up here,” the eldest of us, Dylan, booms as he emerges from the trail, an ice box in his hand and a pack on his back. While he doesn’t mind climbing occasionally, Dylan generally prefers to hike to our destination after an on-the-job injury left him with a slight limp in his gait.
“That’s what today should be about,” Rafe says, jumping up to help Dylan. “Letting go and having fun.”
“I happen to think climbingisfun,” I say, accepting the can of beer Ajax hands me. “When you guys get married, we can spend the morning doing anything you like.”
