“Why the hell would I be mad at you?” he growled.
She shook her head as his gaze bounced around her face as the pad of his thumb came up to hold her chin.
“What if I can’t have kids? What if it was my fault that I lost it?”
His thumb brushed her lips, his eyes hard on hers as his head began to shake back and forth, his face tightening in such a feral way, he looked angry, and yet she knew that brooding intensity, a trait Harold Dixon had passed onto all three of his sons when they were deep in thought.
“Naw, baby, it was as much your fault as Boss’s death was mine.”
Her eyes darted back and forth between his as she clenched his forearms alongside her face, as he held her with such conviction. His eyes were red rimmed. It was silent, but she could feel emotion was pouring out of him. She gripped him hard now. Gripped him the way she’d held someone when their dog needed to be put out of their pain. Gripped him with the strength he’d always given to her when life had been hard, when Rhett had been unpredictable and hurtful.
His phone chimed. Not letting go, he fished it out and glanced at the message. A broad smile lifted his mouth. “Lopez says Alpine’s a go. He loves it.”
She nearly squealed, clasping him as he dragged her off the hood and spun her around.
“We’ve squandered so many years,” he murmured, a guttural, harsh sound, unwilling to stop kissing as his lips pressed to hers, as if everything in the world was falling back into place.
“We aren’t going to waste any more,” she replied.
Hungrily, her hand roved up his front and gripped his neck, the back of his head, holding him to her, unable to get close enough, her tongue mingling with his as it thrust into her mouth with such demand, such desire to taste each other, the newness of their love made real again—
Love? Of course it was.
It still felt so foreign after so many years alone, but like this, with him, she felt raw hope for their future.
He pulled up from her, brushed his thumbs across her cheek as their lips devoured each other’s, then held forth the string of ultrasound photos between them. There, on the grainy triangular black image, sat the little merging of genes. She watched him reverently trace a finger over the image with wonder, listened to the nighttime crickets as he pressed random kisses to her forehead.
His jaw pumped hard, the muscles popping beneath each ear, then he cinched her to his pectoral, kissing the top of her head.
“I love you so much,” he whispered, voice thickened with emotion.
She was nodding, nestling harder into him, letting the tears run freely. “I love you, too.”
“I just want a life with you, however that life ends up looking,” he murmured against her head. “Kids, no kids. Foster kids… That’s never what really mattered. What mattered was that I’d be chasing those horizons with you.” He rested his forehead to hers now, his eyes closed and his eyelashes splayed across his skin.
Relief flooded through her.
“All those dreams, they were old,” he said. “Everything now is new. We can cross any bridge when we come to it if we’re in it together. Or jump in a boat and say to hell with the bridge. I don’t care. All we gotta do now is figure out how to keep Brandon here—”
The faint sound of that vehicle, at first distant like a far-off plane, grew louder. She craned over her shoulder, looking toward the long gravel drive that forked off of Tyson’s main paved one. No one had mentioned bringing a surrender. Travis looked up, too. Tiny headlights blinked through the desert scrub. Her brow furrowed, and slowly, she slipped off the hood of the truck, a dreadful feeling coming over her. It couldn’t be who she thought it was…
With the departure of the sun, the vehicle was only a silhouette of black gray. An SUV. Anita drove an SUV.
“Who do you think’s coming? One of your patients?” he asked, taking the newspaper clipping and ultrasound photos, refolding them and slipping them back in the envelope.
She shook her head. God no. Anita wouldn’t be driving out here at this time of night unless she had one reason.
“It’s Anita,” she whispered as the sound rolled closer and closer, the headlights transforming from tiny glowing specks to bright round eyes.
“Why’s she coming out here so late?” Travis said, alarm sharp on his words.
Skylar whirled over her shoulder and jogged across the gravel, up the steps on the porch, and winged through the screen door without even taking off her boots. She clopped up the stairs two at a time, dashed down the hallway and skidded to a stop outside of Brandon’s door. She knocked, hard.
“What?” Brandon groused groggily.
Fingers crossed he was decent, she shoved open the door. He bolted to his feet, Courage jumping with him.
“What?” he asked again, but this time, wide awake with alarm.