Throttled (Wild Riders #1)(67)

My anxiety quickly turned to admiration and hope and every other feeling that you get when you actually start to envision the future with the person you love. Tiny versions of Reid and me running around the very property where we’d grown up was something that I used to think about, especially when I was pregnant, but after the miscarriage and when he left I thought the possibility was gone. But now, seeing him here and hearing all of the big plans he had for us, my heart melted. Reid was the reason I could never see a future with anyone else. He was my future.

“And over here,” he said, pulling me to the left. “Our bedroom. Where we go to sleep and wake up with each other as much as possible, and where a whole lot of other fun stuff happens,” he said, waggling his eyebrows, which earned a chuckle from me. He tugged me closer to him and kissed me softly. “I know my job is less than ideal for building a life together, but if we actually have a home somewhere to call ours between the traveling and training, maybe it won’t be so bad.”

“I love it,” I said, practically jumping up to kiss him again. He locked his arms around me and held my body to his as I covered his lips and the rest of his face with peppered kisses. “I love you.”

“You mean it?”

“Yes! I want to build a life with you, and the fact that you want to have at least part of it here means the world to me.”

“I’d never want to take you away from your family,” he confessed. “Besides, my parents are going to be here too, and we might need some help with all the kids, you know?”

“We might,” I laughed. Yesterday, he’d hypothetically proposed a marriage, today, we were having a brood of hypothetical children. It was terrifyingly fantastic and I loved that he wanted to do it all with me.

“I’ve been thinking a lot about what you went through back then,” he told me, his eyes dropping to my stomach for a brief moment. “I think you’re right about the timing not being right and how everything worked out the way it did for a reason. But now, it’s different. We can handle it. We can make this work and we can be parents if we want to be. We could... we can have whatever we want out of life.” His admission had left me speechless. I know I might have had concerns that he was a guy with Peter Pan Syndrome, a big kid who just liked to ride his motorcycle, but I could tell he was ready to grow up. He was ready for a life with me. I was ready for a life with him.

“That sounds amazing,” I finally said, my voice breaking through my anxiety. “I want all of that with you.” I paused. “How will all of this work with racing?”

“I’m not quite sure yet, but I know that I can train here as long as the weather allows. If I have to go back to Texas or wherever, we can go together. If you want. If not, you can stay here and design our home.”

“I like this plan, Reid Travers.”

“Good, because I love you, Nora Bennett.”



*



The week passed faster than I would have liked. Reid was set to leave for Texas in less than twenty-four hours and as much as I was looking forward to the life we were planning together, I was upset that I wasn’t going to see him every day. I’d planned on cooking dinner for him at my place tonight, but first we had to get the cabin ready for Brett.

“He’s really going to stay in Halstead?” I asked as Reid and I put clean sheets on the bed. Brett was taking the room that Hoyt had stayed in and we’d been working all morning to get it ready for him to come home from the hospital, even though I suspected he’d be sleeping downstairs on the couch more often than not. Even though his knee was repaired and he had already started physical therapy, I imagined stairs would be a pain.

“I guess so.” Reid shrugged. “Said he liked the doctors here,” he chuckled, “but I’m betting it has something more to do with a certain nursing student.” He was, of course, referring to my sister.

“She’s been by the hospital every day,” I said. “She keeps insisting that it’s purely friendship.” I shook my head. “I’m not buying it.”

“It’s hard to not fall in love with a Bennett girl.” He winked, as we tossed the pillows at the top of the bed, his words tugging at my heart strings.

“She needs someone to take care of,” I told him. “It’s kind of her thing. Now that I’ve got my life all straightened out, she’s going to channel her focus on him.”

“He needs it,” Reid said. “Brett can be a hard guy to love sometimes. He needs someone like your sister to keep him in line.”

“I don’t doubt she can keep him in line.” I sighed. “I just want her to be happy again. She hasn’t dated anyone since Jamie.” Reid offered up a sympathetic smile, and I could tell he was just as nervous about my sister getting involved with Brett as I was. He was a good guy, deep down, but he had a reputation. Not that either of us had any room to talk about what the right way to be with someone was. If my sister thought Brett was worth a chance then who were we to stand in her way.

“Time will tell, Shutterbug,” Reid said, wrapping his arm around my shoulders and pulling me toward him. He pressed a kiss to my forehead as we walked down the hallway. “Maybe they will be exactly what each other needs.”

“Maybe.”

As soon as we were down stairs, Reid’s phone started to ring. He picked it up off the coffee table and looked up at me.