Total pages in book: 91
Estimated words: 87367 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 437(@200wpm)___ 349(@250wpm)___ 291(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 87367 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 437(@200wpm)___ 349(@250wpm)___ 291(@300wpm)
“I would have if it had just been about that, but I’d been feeling bad all day anyway. I was out at the distillery looking around. I found an old box under the floorboards. It had a letter from…from my great-grandpa to yours. He was in love with him, and he admitted to stealing the recipe. As soon as I finished reading it, Big Daddy showed up, and all I could think was that he was right about us Mitchells. We were no good. He deserved to be angry with me. Mitchell Creek shouldn’t even be ours. How could I come between you and your family after that?”
“I—”
“I need to get this out,” Cohen cut me off, then said, “It was more than that. I just… I don’t know if I deserve you. Even though I’ve started to fall in love with Buckridge, I had this feeling that I just didn’t belong here. That I’d come between you and your family and that you deserved better than that, than me. I know it sounds crazy, but I’m still all twisted up about losing my biological mom, and my dad never coming for me. As much as I love the parents who raised me, I never felt like I belonged, until I was with you. I was scared you would walk away from that, or I’d drive you away, or you’d resent me for losing your family. I think a part of me thought it would hurt less if I did it now.”
“You do belong here. I’ve seen how you’ve taken to this. I never thought someone could pick up something so fast.” And wait, had he said he felt like he belonged with me? My heart raced at the thought.
“It’s more than the Mitchell legacy.” He hesitated. “It seems like I got close to that exit and then…got nervous…backed up on the interstate.”
That made me laugh. Leave it to us to have this conversation with silly metaphors. “That’s a shit idea if I ever heard one.”
“It’s all right. Now that I’m a country boy, I drive a tractor.”
He winked, and I laughed again.
It was nice—not only settling back into the way we usually talked with one another, letting our guards down, but to hear him say I wasn’t the only one who felt like we had something special.
“I’ve had boyfriends in the past,” he went on.
“This seems like a strange confession to make now,” I joked.
“Shut the hell up, O’Ralley.” He couldn’t keep from chuckling, though, as he continued, “What I’m trying to say is, I thought I knew what it felt like to be with someone…the only way it could feel. Then you came along, and it was like waking up one day and finding out magic’s real. Oh God, now I’m just sounding ridiculous.”
“Well, you can say a lot more ridiculous things to butter me up to make me feel better about your having left,” I teased.
He moved closer, his body pushing against mine, his nose grazing mine as he took my hand. “I didn’t know touching someone could feel like this…or that looking into someone’s eyes could feel like this. It’s just like walking into the Mitchell distillery for the first time. It was different and scary, but even when I thought I might be having a nervous breakdown, there was this deep feeling that it was right.”
“God, this is such a mess,” I said, which clearly confused him. As his brows tugged closer, I added, “I warned you you’d go and fall in love with me.”
A tear escaped my eye as he threw his head back for a laugh.
“It’s about time, though. Because I love you, and I love that I can say it without feeling like some lovestruck kid who got in over his head too soon.”
“Well, we did that, but we did it pretty damn well. I love you too, Brody O’Ralley.”
We leaned into each other, kissing—a kiss that reminded me of what he’d nearly taken from me. I allowed myself to really breathe him all in. It was as good as ever, but so much more now that I knew I hadn’t been totally wrong about how he felt and where we were heading.
I growled softly as we pulled away from one another. “God, we’re gonna have to sort out some details to make this work.”
“Isaac will be here, so he can sort that stuff out.”
“Isaac will be here?”
“Yeah, I think we have some things to catch up on.”
“More interested in the future,” I confessed.
“Like talking about how maybe I can start putting some babies in you,” he joked, his eyes sparkling in the porch light, so full of life again, the way I’d come to know him best.
“Certainly worth a couple thousand tries.”
“Thousands? I thought you knew better than to underestimate me.”
We laughed together, moving closer, our expressions turning serious as we both seemed to accept that things were right again.