How About No (Bear Bottom Guardians MC 3)

I leaned forward and put my face into his, all the while whispering words that I didn’t mean—and never had.

“I don’t want to do this,” I hissed.

He laughed in my face again, causing me to recoil.

I narrowed my eyes and leaned forward to tell him off, but he responded before I could. “That’s your problem, hellcat. You don’t want me this close to you because you don’t trust yourself. You love me. You’ve loved me from the moment that you saw me just like I’ve loved you from the moment I first saw you. I knew you were the one the moment you walked through that classroom door. I knew the moment that you walked away from me that I couldn’t wait to see you again. I just knew. Because my soul recognized its soulmate. And you’re it. You’re the other half of my soul, and I can’t find a single thing wrong with being back where we were always meant to be.”

“You don’t see a problem?” I shrieked. “We’re married again! You chose someone else over me! Someone who’s always been chosen over me!”

He sobered instantly. “And you will never understand how sorry I am that I didn’t put you first. That I didn’t see what I was doing when I did it. If I had…if I had, I would’ve been able to prevent spending all these months in a perpetual state of torture because you weren’t there by my side.”

I clenched my teeth and bared them at him.

God, his face. His sexy bearded chin drove me wild. I just wanted to plant my fist into it.

He wouldn’t be hurt by it, though.

He’d love it.

He’d love anything as long as it came from me.

Which stopped me in my tracks.

All the venom and rancor, all the uneasiness and need to get away—it just vanished.

I stilled and loosened up on my hands, allowing them both to drop to my lap.

He didn’t let up a single bit as he waited for what I’d do next.

“Nothing I say will matter, will it?” I asked, feeling something inside of my chest tighten.

He shook his head.

His perfect hair shifted, causing a lock of it to fall over those green eyes that I loved so much.

“No, baby,” he answered honestly. “Because I was always going to fight for you. I was always going to make sure that you had what you wanted. What you needed. And baby, what you need is me.”

I looked away and studied the rolling hills that blanketed Porter and Minnie’s massive backyard.

“You let me leave,” I whispered brokenly.

He dropped his forehead onto my shoulder. “I was so hurt when I got the papers from that nurse. You never even gave me a chance. I wanted to fight for you, but you wouldn’t give me a chance. I also knew that if I didn’t let you go, you’d find a way to do it without my help. You were that determined. But honey, I was also determined. I knew that one day I’d be back…I was biding my time. Each day, I made sure I found a way for you to see me. For you to realize what you were missing…and it worked, didn’t it?”

It had.

I thought back to how he seemed to show up wherever I was, no matter how hard I tried to avoid him. Whether it be him dropping his uniform shirt off for me to sew a button on it while I was at work, to arriving at my dog rescue to help me unload the pallet of dog food just to turn around and leave once it was accomplished. And nary a word was ever said between us. He was just there, and I was just letting him be there. It didn’t matter that I never said a word. He wouldn’t allow that to deter him.

Little things like him pulling up to get gas while I was at the gas station and pumping it for me, to him making sure to send me flowers even though he never signed them.

He really hadn’t left me, had he? I didn’t go out of my way to see him, but he always ended up in my vicinity.

He’d made sure that he was always on my mind.

I inhaled a shaky breath, then blew it out.

Moments after that…my mouth found his.

And that was all she wrote.

I was done.

The moment my lips touched his—the moment my tongue tangled with his—I knew that what we had would be forever. That, even if we weren’t together, he was always going to be mine.

Because he was right.

He was my soulmate.

And I was fighting a losing battle.

He groaned into my mouth, and one of his hands loosened from around my waist to run up the length of my spine to bury itself in my hair.

I shivered when he gently slanted my head to get a better angle…and then I was reminded why Wade had always done it for me.