“Wishful thinking. It’s definitely an old man thing, and there’s a Hopelessly in Love waiver, too.”
He coughed and Sean rolled his eyes. “Come on, you can’t even say the L-word, can you?”
“I can. I do. I…I love you guys.”
“Sure. But you don’t say it.”
“I just did.”
“That might be the first time ever.”
“Well, I love you. There. Not a big deal, right?”
He thought about that exchange as he followed Jake down Dixie Road to a restaurant Matt had picked out. As the waitress took their orders and his brother teased him about Liana and the nickname and the ridiculous number of images of him now on Google, all some variation of the one where he was mooning over her just a few weeks earlier.
That was it. No time at all, really.
And in that short window, everything had changed.
His brothers weren’t the only ones who deserved to hear all that was in his heart. It might be too soon to expect her to feel the same way back, but Liana had done this to him. Somehow, she’d cracked through his decades-old crusty exterior and let loose the guy-with-feelings trapped inside.
Chapter Twenty-Five
THE IDAHO FALLS Super Eightwasn’t the nicest hotel Liana had ever stayed in, by a long shot, but after two days on the road and a muddy-ass, rainy day at an outdoor festival outside of Mountain Home, it felt like paradise. She was beyond thrilled to have a hot shower and a warm bed that didn’t sway beneath her as she tried to sleep.
Liana didn’t care if it was uncool. She was ready for bed at nine at night. She braided her hair, put on her jammies, and curled up with a paperback Dean had left on the tour bus. She was tired, so she pulled out her writing glasses to make it easier to focus on the pages, yellowed from age, and worn from a fair bit of re-reading. She rubbed a dog-eared fold and wondered how his trip was going.
She hadn’t talked to him since his stopover in Chicago. He’d texted when he arrived and said he was with his brothers. That had been just before she’d gone on stage the night before in Bozeman.
Idaho and Montana were two of her favourite states—mud not withstanding—and she was a bit sad she wasn’t sharing this with Dean. One of the realizations she’d come to over her first few sessions with Howard was that while she loved performing for large crowds, she was also quickly coming to hate it.
That had taken her by surprise and thrown her for a loop.
Hate might be too strong a word, but it definitely wasn’t a sure-thing positive experience. And the more anxious she got about who might be watching her and what they might be thinking, the worse her odds got for a show going well.
It was time, once this tour came to a close, for her to take a break.
She’d write and sing and still be a musician in every other sense of the word, but it would be a while before she got back on a large stage again. And that decision brought her just as much relief as running to Pine Harbour had the month before. Maybe more, because it gave her a bit of space to think about maybe visiting that little town again, without any need to leave for a while.
Maybe convince an emotionally-reluctant ex-cop to keep dating, and see where they might end up if they just didn’t stop.
She flipped back to the page before the one she was trying to read.
She hadn’t absorbed any of what she’d just skimmed over. Her thoughts were too all over the place and what she really wanted to do was call Dean, but she didn’t want to be needy or interrupt his family visit.
A quiet knock at the door made her roll over, but not get out of bed. She really didn’t want to be social. It came again, and she looked up. A curious prickle skated over her skin and she swung her legs out of bed.
She was mid-yawn as she swung open the door, but any fatigue she’d been feeling flew away when Dean leaned into the open doorway, a tired grin on his handsome face. “Can I come in?”
“Can you…” Relief and shock and pure, unadulterated excitement coursed through her. She leapt into his arms as he tossed his bag against the wall and kicked the door shut behind him. “What are you doing here?”
“I came back,” he said with a low chuckle, burying his face in her neck.
“But your brother…”
He groaned and carried her to the bed, sitting with her in his lap. He gave her a rueful look as he tugged on her braid. “I went to Toronto. He met me there. They all did, actually. And all I could talk about was you. All I could think about was…you. I had to go and see him, and then I had to come back. To you.”
“Oh.” She was pretty sure she was going to cry, and she wasn’t sure why. She pressed her lips together and blinked her eyes, big and wide, refusing to let tears fall.
