Something Wilder(92)

Back down the hallway there were hoots and hollers—which weren’t wrong. Lily would tell them to shut the hell up, but secretly she liked showing it off: this ranch and this man and this bright, insatiable love she’d once thought was only for other people. Leo told her happiness was her best accessory. Security didn’t come easily—she was a work in progress, and that meant she spent just as many days wondering when it would all fall apart as she did realizing the dream was real—but tonight, she wanted to skywrite this feeling, wanted to shout her euphoria into the serpentine echo of the Maze.

Leo peeled away her clothes in the pitch black of their middle of nowhere paradise and kissed his way up her body, from knees to mouth, arriving over her with a smile he fit against hers.

“Did you give Bonnie the grain?” he asked. “I left the bag on the barrel in the tack room.”

She nodded. “As if she’d let me forget. Did you put away the leftovers?”

He laughed. “What leftovers? Nic ate everything.”

Leo asked if she’d closed the side gate—she had. Lily asked if he’d called his sister back—he had; she was coming for a visit before her first term started. Did he set the coffee maker to brew at five in the morning? Yes, Lil.

The horses wouldn’t care how hungover they were tomorrow.

And then he came back to her, focused, hands hungry and roaming, body moving over her, then into her in the darkness.

And on that night in mid-July, with their best friends down the hall and their horses fed and sleepy out in the pasture, there was nothing else they needed to do. All there was to think about was this version of their forever. Leo paused at the quiet sound of happiness that escaped her. He pulled the blankets over their heads, and they made love right there, right back where they started.





Acknowledgments


WHEN WE FINISHED The Soulmate Equation in 2020 and started to think about what we’d like to do next, we knew one thing: we wanted FUN. In a year that kept us home and away from family, friends, readers, and each other, we were ready to get out into the world—even if only through our characters—and have an adventure. We were nervous at first. The seeds for Something Wilder had been quietly taking up space in the backs of our brains for years, but it was part of a conversation with one of our heroes, Sarah MacLean, that became our mantra: be fearless and take big swings. Movies like Romancing the Stone had adrenaline, and adventure, and deep, heart-clenching swoons. We felt post-pandemic romance needed more of that.

This book was the most fun thing we’ve ever written, but as usual, it takes a lot of people to turn it into what you’re holding today.

Holly Root is our dream agent; even ten years in, we’re just as smitten. Our wish would be for every writer to have someone this brilliant, badass, loving, hilarious, and gently terrifying on their side. Kristin Dwyer is our PR rep and our Precious and we would be absolutely lost without her. Both these women started their own companies, and seeing them conquering the world makes us Mama Bear proud. Hell yes, Team Root Literary and Leo PR!

Listen, we know our acknowledgments run long, but what can we say, our love is loud: Simon & Schuster has been our publishing home since day one and we adore everyone there like family. Jen Bergstrom, not many authors have a publisher who would probably get in an actual fistfight for them, but we do! (Can we say that in acknowledgments? We want the public to know this fistfight is entirely hypothetical, but even so, Jen would win.) Enormous thanks to our fabulous editor Hannah Braaten, Rachel Brenner, Mackenzie Hickey, Lauren Carr, Eliza Hanson, Abby Zidle, Aimée Bell, Jen Long, John of the Mustache Vairo, Lisa Litwack, Andrew Nguy?n, Anabel Jimenez, Sally Marvin, Jonathan Karp, and the entire Gallery sales team. You are all stupendous humans.

To badly quote Tommy Boy, Kate Dresser could sell a ketchup popsicle to a woman in white gloves. Thank you for having a vision for us and our books and pushing us to take big swings. You are the epitome of competence porn (and we’re dying imagining your face while you read that). We are better writers because of you. We love and miss you endlessly.

Thank you, Margo Lipschultz, for diving in, for doggedly helping us find those saggy sections, and for helping make this book what it is. We’re sending Walter to you—with doughnuts in hand. Jen Prokop, you are The Closer, you are brilliantly surgical, you are a star. We are so thrilled to see your editorial brain at work. We are indebted to Philip Atkins for the canyoneering, Canyonlands, trail safety, and map guidance.

Our families have had us home for almost two years now and they are ready to push us out of the nest. (But—ha!—we pushed them out first.) Thank you to K, O, V, R, and C for being the absolute loves of our lives. By this point our two families have pretty much become one, and nothing makes our hearts happier.

To the bookish friends we look up to, we love you: Kate Clayborn, Kresley Cole, Jen Frederick, Sarah MacLean, Jen Prokop, Erin McCarthy, Sally Thorne, Sarah J. Maas, Sarah Wendell, Susan Lee, Helen Hoang, Erin Service, Katie Lee, Christopher Rice, Cassie Sanders, Tessa Bailey, Rosie Danan, Rachel Lynn Solomon, Rebekah Weatherspoon, Leslie Philips, Alexa Martin, Sonali Dev, Gretchen Schreiber, Alisha Rai, Jillian Stein, Liz Berry, Candice Montgomery, and Catherine Lu.

We’ve thanked BTS in three of our books so far, and our gratitude seems to grow daily. If you’ve never been part of a fandom—and especially if you’ve never been ARMY—it might seem impossible that people you’ve never met can mean so much. But they can be the difference between a bad day and a good one, a hard year and one full of connection and hope. Thank you Kim Namjoon, Kim Seokjin, Min Yoongi, Jung Hoseok, Park Jimin, Kim Taehyung, and Jeon Jungkook for being joy personified. ARMY will always wait for you.