The Summer Deal (Wildstone #5)(75)

She shook her head. “Come on. We both know those don’t count.”

“They do.” He took her hand, brought it up to his chest, right over his heart. “I didn’t deserve you then. Still don’t, but here I am, standing in front of you, just a guy who wants to date a girl. His girl.” He paused. “And also eat her enchiladas.”

Her mouth must’ve dropped open because he used the fingers on his free hand to catch her chin and gently lift it as he smiled. “Scared? Or on board?”

That made her smile. Hell yes, she was scared. But looking into his eyes, which were filled with an easy warmth along with a much deeper emotion, made her feel . . . exhilarated. “I didn’t expect you, you know,” she said. “You sneaked up on me and somehow, when I wasn’t looking, you became the thing I didn’t know I needed, but now can’t live without. So . . . definitely on board.”

That earned her a good-bye kiss to rival all the other kisses in the land. When he’d finished, she staggered back, having zero operating brain cells left.

He flashed her a grin. “Have a nice rest of your day.”





Chapter 22


Later that day, Brynn got a group text, including Eli and Max, from Kinsey. She wanted to know if she’d be home after work. Brynn confirmed that she would, and assumed that meant a barbeque, or maybe game night.

But with Kinsey, it could be anything.

When Brynn parked and walked into the house, her boxes were no longer stacked in a corner. They were front and center in the living room, next to the huge bag of Chinese takeout on the coffee table.

And once again, Eli, Max, and Kinsey were waiting for her.

“What’s going on?” she asked, feeling a little panicky. Did they want her to leave?

“We thought it felt like a great night to unpack,” Kinsey said. “To make this place home for you.”

“It is home,” she said.

“Not until you unpack, it’s not.”

Okay, so yeah. She was still afraid to unpack. Afraid if she got too comfortable, it’d all fall apart somehow, like it always did.

“You’ve helped all of us in one way or another,” Kinsey said. “So now you’re going to let us help you.”

“You’re supposed to ask, not tell,” Max said.

“She knows what I mean.” Kinsey looked at Brynn. “You know what I mean.”

“I do,” Brynn said. “But I don’t need help.”

“But . . . you’re going to let us help anyway, right?” Kinsey asked. She slid a look to Max, like, See? I asked, not told.

Max smiled.

Eli took Brynn’s hand. “Only if you want,” he said.

All of them waited for her response. Against her better judgment, she nodded.

So . . . they unpacked her boxes. Max put her approximately one billion books on the shelves in her room. Kinsey pulled out the clothes from her duffel bag and either hung them in her closet or folded them and put them away in the dresser. Eli hung up her pictures on her walls.

At first, Brynn was . . . embarrassed. Why couldn’t she have done this for herself? But then Eli looked at her, saw everything she was feeling, understood it, clearly also understood everything behind it, and hugged her. And that’s when she got it. It was about love, about acceptance.

When Max found her CD collection and made happy love noises, she made the executive decision to let the rest of the embarrassment go.

Eli had opened a bottle of wine with the Chinese food. By the time they finished, they were on their second bottle. And at the end of the night, Brynn was fully, one hundred percent moved in. No one had pushed her to do anything she didn’t want to do. No one had judged her. Well, Kinsey had not approved of her collection of three pairs of shoes—flip-flops, sneakers, and flats—but that had been expected. No one had made her feel bad for not being able to unpack herself. They’d simply recognized she couldn’t take the final step even though she wanted to, and then come forward to help her.

They were her personal superheroes, sweeping into her life, accepting her as she was. Loving her as she was. She’d come to them, ashamed and enforcing her own helplessness. She’d felt unworthy. But they didn’t care, didn’t judge any of that. They showed up for her. Always. Without her having to ask.

She looked around at her stuff now integrated with everyone else’s. She hadn’t known where she wanted home to be, but she was starting to realize home wasn’t a place. It was a where, a where her people were. And her people were here, in Wildstone. Some of them right here in this house.

That made it home.

They’d made it home.

Even better, every last corner of the place now had a memory attached to it, a group memory with the four of them, laughing, joking, teasing . . .

This was her family, the very best kind of family.

THE NEXT MORNING, Brynn woke wrapped up tight in Eli’s arms, held against his warm, firm body in a way that gave hers some serious ideas. It was his fault, she decided. He was such an incredibly intuitive, generous lover in bed.

And out of bed . . .

He had a way of taking her outside of herself. She never knew what she was going to get with him; gentle and tender, rough and erotic, all of it intimate and seductive.

She’d never been with anyone like him. But she had to go. She did her best to slide out of his arms as stealthily as she could. Which apparently wasn’t that stealthy at all because his arms tightened around her.