“Delivery!” I call, as I start walking towards him.
He looks up, a slow grin breaking across his face, and my heart does that soft flip it’s learned since he let me in. He wipes his hands on a rag, meets me halfway, and kisses me before taking the glass I hold out. Lemonade and engine grease—oddly perfect together.
“Thanks, Sunshine,” he says, drinking deep. “Exactly what I needed.”
I lean against the fender, watching the way the light catches the silver flecks in his hair. “You planning to work all afternoon?”
“Not if you’ve got a better idea before dinner tonight.”
I feign casual, though my heart is doing cartwheels.
This morning, while putting away laundry, I’d overheard him out on the porch, talking to himself in that low rumble—practicing words about rings and forever. He doesn’t know I heard. He doesn’t know I understand exactly what dinner in town means.
“I think dinner in town tonight would be a perfect time to celebrate making it through my first winter on the mountain.” I suggest.
His eyes soften.
“Yeah,” he says, voice quiet, sure. “A celebration sounds good.”
He turns back to the engine, but his hand slides along my hip as he passes, a warm brush that lingers even after he’s focused again on bolts and belts.
I sip my lemonade, taking in the view—the cabin, the truck, the man who once swore off company and somehow became my everything.
Like the season shifting around us, Wade has changed. My stone-cold mountain man has thawed—not just the surface, but all the way through. And as I stand here, spring sunlight spilling over both of us, I know I’m exactly where I’m meant to be.
With him. Always.
