Total pages in book: 80
Estimated words: 75547 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 378(@200wpm)___ 302(@250wpm)___ 252(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75547 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 378(@200wpm)___ 302(@250wpm)___ 252(@300wpm)
“Kristen,” he says, and my name in his mouth turns everything soft. “ Months ago you walked into a mess and made it a home. You put quiet in my head where there was chaos. You let me learn how to say always and find comfort in it. You chose me. Over and over. I don’t take that for granted. I never will.”
My throat is gone. I nod anyway.
He drops his hands, steps back, and for one staggering heartbeat my body thinks he’s leaving. He isn’t. He’s bending.
The ground tilts because he does—big man, big love, dropping to one knee on a turnout at the end of the road that is a test of a man and his machine. His hand goes to his back pocket. He pulls out a small black box that has no business looking right in this place, and yet somehow it does.
“Oh,” I say as words have failed me. The sun warms the top of my helmet; the knit warms my neck; his love warms everything else.
He flips the lid. The ring inside is not loud. It’s not timid either. A band of white gold, a center stone clear and round, flanked by two tiny triangles that look like arrowheads or biker wings depending on the light. It’s not fancy. It’s perfect. It’s us.
“Marry me, darlin’,” he says. No speech. No tricks. Just that. “Be my wife. Be my always.”
I laugh and cry in the same breath, the sound ridiculous and yet fitting to us. “Yes,” I say, because of course it’s yes
His relief is a visible thing—shoulders loosening, mouth breaking wide. He slides the ring onto my finger with careful hands, then stands and I launch at him like he was a magnet I couldn’t resist. He catches me, laughs into my mouth, spins me once the way he did the night we said it the first time. Somewhere, someone whoops. Somewhere, a camera clicks. Somewhere, the mountain doesn’t move but it feels like it does.
When he sets me down, he holds my face like he did when he started. “You sure?” he asks, gentle formality, last exit offered like a man who knows love because he knows choice.
“Yes,” I say again, steadier, firmer, the ring cool against his stubble when I cradle his jaw. “I want your mornings and your nights. Your shop and your porch. Your maps and your help with lists. Your brothers and your mother and your Hellion family. I want your quiet. Your loud. I want your last name if you’ll share it and your life if you’ll keep choosing me to stand in it.”
He closes his eyes like I just gave him the world. “Done,” he manages, rough.
And then we make our way back. Another ride together and a lifetime more to go.
* * *
The End
Until the next ride …