I pound on the front door of the ranch house.
“Easton Wilder, get the hell away from my front door,” a voice rings out. It’s Hanna’s grandfather, and he’s pissed.
“I’ve got a shotgun, and I’ve been waiting for a chance to use it on one of Hanna’s deadbeats. You’d look great as a piece of Swiss cheese.”
His voice is muffled by the door. Chances are, that gun—if it exists at all—is loaded with either rock salt or bird shot. Still, if he fires, he’ll bust up the door and probably cut himself, and the last thing I want is to compound my sins with Hanna by hurting her granddad. And damaging the front door.
But.
I’m also not leaving without talking to Hanna.
“Is Hanna in there?”
“Pretty sure I made my position on that crystal clear,” he bellows. “You stay the fuck away from her. She didn’t come out of her room for three days, and when she did, her eyes were so red it looked like she’d been into the Willistons’ weed harvest. Had to pry out of her what happened. I knew it had to be either you or the other asshole. Bear Nekkid or whatever his name is.”
Bear Nekkid. As dire as the situation feels on all fronts right now, I have to smile.
“Mr. Hott? Any chance I could get you to open the door? And not shoot me? I have something to say to Hanna.”
“Not a chance in this world.”
“What if I said I love your granddaughter?”
There’s a long silence. Then he says, “Don’t ask me what if. You either love her or you don’t.”
“I love Hanna.”
The door slowly swings open. “You have a shitty way of showing it.” He lowers his Winchester and glowers at me.
“In fairness, she broke up with me,” I tell him. “Could I convince you to put that thing down?”
He looks from it to me and back again. “Not loaded,” he says finally, and clutches it tighter.
A gun’s always loaded unless you’ve pulled the shells out of it yourself, but I’m not going to argue with him. Not while he’s holding the possibly loaded gun.
“Can I talk to Hanna?”
He scowls. “She’s not home.”
“Please, Mr. Hott. Not sure if you ever did something stupid on your way to figuring out who you were, but I’ve done plenty of it. One of those stupid things was not figuring out faster exactly what my feelings for Hanna were. And then not doing everything in my power to tell her. But now I know, and I’ll tell her.”
The grizzled rancher in front of me gives me a long, jaded look. “Words,” he says, and spits past me so it lands on the welcome mat. “Hanna doesn’t need pretty words. She needs someone to take care of her and be her family when I’m gone. And at the moment, it doesn’t look like those deadbeat brothers of hers are planning to step up to the job.”
“With all due respect,” I say, “I don’t think Hanna needs anyone to take care of her. She’s one of the most capable women I’ve ever met. But as for being her family, I already am. I always have been. I always will be. And so will my whole family, for as long as she needs us. Hanna may be a Hott by birth, but she’s a Wilder for life.”
If she wants to be. If there’s a human being more stubborn than the one standing in front of me, it’s Hanna, and I still have to convince her to let me love her.
He gives a long, slow nod. “All right, then,” he says. “You’ll find her down by the river.”
“Shoulda gone there first,” I mutter.
“Maybe,” he says. “But then we wouldn’t-a had this nice chat.”
“Glad you enjoyed it,” I say.
I meet his eyes to discover a nearly imperceptible flash of amusement in them.
I know Fox Hott’s a hard man. I know he was hard on his grandkids, hard enough that when it came time for Hanna’s brothers to decide where they wanted to be in the world, Rush Creek and the Hott ranch weren’t on the short list. But at the same time, he has been the one constant in Hanna’s life. The one person who’s always been there for her, through thick and thin.
I guess that means Fox is family, too.
I stick my hand out. He eyes it.
“You’re pushing your luck,” he warns.
“I’m a Wilder,” I remind him. “That’s what we do.”
We shake.
The last thing I hear as I head for the river is him calling after me, “I’ll kill you if you hurt her.”
I find her down by the river, skipping stones.
I hunt around on the bank. I’ve stripped so many good skipping stones from the ground, I’m afraid one day I won’t be able to find one.
But today’s not that day. I press a stone into her palm. She skips it. I hand her another.
I take a deep breath.
“I’m not taking the job,” I tell her. “I turned it down. I negotiated something better with Gabe. I’m staying in Rush Creek.”
She turns swiftly, sharply, the way you turn right before you yell at someone, but she doesn’t. She just stares at me.
“I don’t have a grand gesture,” I tell her. “But I have a promise. This is how it’s going to be.” I take a deep breath. “Every time. I will always show up. I will always be there. I will never leave. Because I love you. I think I always have.”
She turns away from me, and I don’t know what that means. It hurts under my ribs, but I keep going, because Gabe and Brody were right: I can’t expect her to know how I feel if I don’t tell her.
“I definitely already loved you the day your mom died. I didn’t know it in words. It took me a long time to know it in words. Mostly I just knew I needed to be where you were. I needed to give you something to hold onto. And I needed to give you a reason to laugh. That’s what I knew. But now I know all those things are love. I’m not going to stop loving you. This isn’t a lark, it isn’t temporary, it isn’t going to end.”
Her shoulders shake—she’s crying, I realize, with a sudden bolt of pain.
She sinks down onto the ground, shoulders heaving.
I’ve never seen Hanna cry, but I feel like I know exactly what to do. I sink down next to her and gather her into my arms.
“You shouldn’t turn down the job because of me.”
Hanna is not a pretty crier, but I don’t give a shit, because having this woman be her worst—and therefore best—self in my arms is far and away the peak, most amazing thing that has ever happened to me.
I tell her, “Because of you is the best reason I know.”
This sends her into fresh sobs.
“I’m not leaving,” I say.
“You can’t promise that,” she says.
I know exactly what she means. She’s been left all kinds of ways. Her mother couldn’t promise she’d stay. My father couldn’t either. There’s nothing I can do to take the sting out of that. But I can hold her. So I do. Tight.
Finally, she takes a deep, shuddering breath and says, “I’m scared.”
I wonder if Hanna has ever said those words before in her life. I think probably not. They’re like a gift. Like a stone she pressed into my palm.
“I know,” I tell her.
We’re both quiet for a long time.
“How do I know you won’t get tired of me? Bored? You’re very pretty, and a lot of women want to lick you.”
I laugh, pressing my face into her hair. The soft strands are a feather tease on my skin, and the floral scent of her twines itself around my senses. “Not nearly as many as you think.”
“Even my grandfather knows you’re a panty melter and warned me to stay away from you.”
“Your panties are the only ones I want to melt.”
“Do you understand what I’m saying, Easton? I’m saying, I’m so scared you aren’t serious about this.”
I’m not hurt, because I know exactly how serious I am. And how hard it is for her to trust that—or anything. “This is the thing I am most serious about in the whole entire world.”
“Everyone leaves,” she says. “Everyone fucking leaves.”
“I know, Han.”
“I kept you at a distance all these years because that didn’t scare the shit out of me. Now you’re in here”—she taps her chest—“and I just feel so utterly fucked.”
The only possible answer to that is the truth. “Me too.”
I pick up one more stone and press it into her hand. She draws a deep, shuddering breath.
It’s the first time I feel like I can breathe, too.
She looks at me, tearstained, snotty, the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.
“I want to show you something,” she says.