I WAKE up surrounded by warmth, and it’s not from the sun that beats through the bedroom window.
It’s because Cade lays next to me, his arms firm around my middle. I look up, shocked to find him awake.
He smiles, reaching to cup my cheek. “Good morning,” he says, his voice gravelly.
“I like waking up with you.” I snuggle deeper into his chest.
Cade trails his fingers through my hair. “I was just thinking the same thing.”
“You sleep okay?”
His chest shakes from his deep, throaty laugh. “Do you even have to ask that?”
I run my hand over his chest, loving the feel of the warmth and the way the light splatter of dark chest hair feels against my palm. “It wouldn’t hurt for you to tell me…”
Cade pulls me into his chest. My chin hits his sternum as he holds me in place. “Goldie,” he starts, letting his thumb brush over my cheekbone. “I’ve laid awake so many nights remembering what it felt like to wake up with your body against mine. There’s something about you being next to me that just calms my head. Last night was one of the only nights since Mom left that I wasn’t haunted by the last time I saw her.”
“I always found it harder to sleep without you,” I confess. “It’s probably why I was in your bed more than I was in mine.”
“I preferred it that way.”
I stare into Cade’s copper eyes, relishing in the moment with him. It seems like the easiest decision to wake up every day in his arms. There’s nothing that feels better than having him look at me like this as the early morning rays illuminate the room.
Absentmindedly, I begin to trace the tattoo on his chest. I still remember when he first got it at eighteen. He thought Linda would be so mad about it, but she actually thought the details were cool. I vividly remember her making some remark like maybe now he’ll wear sunscreen to protect the fresh ink or something like that. She’d always been on him to wear sunscreen when working long days outside.
“What are you thinking?” Cade asks, allowing me to trace every curve of the ink.
“That you’ve added some new tattoos since I was here last.”
“Want to see my favorite?”
I push off his chest, my interest piqued. The knowing smirk on his lips only fuels my curiosity. He bites his lip playfully. I watch closely as he hooks his fingers into the waistband of his boxer briefs.
I gasp, my eyes catching the small tattoo permanently etched low on his hips.
“Cade,” I whisper, reaching out to trace the delicate lines. “It’s…”
“A marigold,” he finishes.
I can’t look away. It’s the size of my thumb and nestled so far down his hip that it wouldn’t be noticeable unless he points it out or he’s naked. It must’ve been too dark for me to see last night, and there was too much heated passion happening in the tack room for me to pay any attention.
“When?”
He tucks a stray strand of my hair behind my ear. The look on his face is so loving that it takes my breath away. Everything about this moment has me reeling. The longer I spend in Sutten and the more time I spend with Cade, the more I realize how different things really were from what I believed at nineteen.
“I got it about a month after you left. To be honest, I wasn’t in a good place. I kept telling myself I did what was best for you, but I was so fucking lost after you left. For the first time in my life, I didn’t have you. It hit me hard and all at once that I didn’t know how to live without you.”
My eyes burn with unshed tears from the reminder of how unbelievably hard that time of my life was. It felt like everything was going wrong and I couldn’t tell a soul—not even Pippa—what was happening. Nobody knew that I’d had my heart broken by a man who was my entire world.
“I thought I was alone with my pain,” I confess, feeling the need to be vulnerable with him. I still have no idea what we’re going to do now, but I’m tired of the lies between us. If Cade and I have any shot at a future, we both have to be honest.
“You were never alone,” he says. “I was so fucked up over losing you. I truly didn’t know how to go on without you with me.”
“If only you would’ve told me. We could’ve saved us both years of pain.” An overwhelming sense of sadness washes over me. I was so angry at him that I never imagined him being hurt. I thought he’d been honest when he told me he didn’t love me. But now, I realize that maybe everything I felt, he felt too. I ache from thinking about how hard it must’ve been for him because I know how hard it was for me.
I was able to move on—at least partially—because I was out of Sutten. But Cade didn’t have the luxury of leaving, and now I can’t help but wonder about the toll it took on him to have to live in a place full of some of our best and worst memories.
“The marigold was my own way of keeping you close to me. I know I did some things that really hurt you, and I hate that I did that, but I never stopped loving you, Goldie. Not for a single second.”
I drape a leg over him, adjusting my body until I’m straddling him. I lean down, letting my hair create a little barrier from the world around us. “I tried so hard not to love you. I was in denial for a long time before I finally accepted that there would always be a part of me that loved you. And there was nothing that was going to change that, even though that drove me crazy at times.”
“Sometimes I wonder what would’ve happened if we’d waited until we were a little older,” he says, grabbing either side of my neck.
“I don’t want to dwell on it. Let’s focus on us. Right here. Right now.”
I trail kisses along his neck, my hips grinding against him of their own accord.
Cade grips either side of my hips, pinning me so I’m lined up perfect with his eager, long, thick cock. “I want to focus on you right now, on the way your hips move against me in a way that has my cock eager to feel you. But…”
“But?” I push, trying to sway my hips.
“But I don’t want to just focus on right here and right now, Goldie. I want to focus on forever.”
My desperate need for him overtakes my body. Before I can really think about the impact of his words on my heart, I lean down and kiss him. It seems like I’ve wasted so many mornings not kissing him during the time we’ve spent apart. I want to make up for lost time.
Cade kisses me back with matched passion. His tongue claims me, plunging deep into my mouth as if he’s staking his claim.
His fingers thread through my hair as he gives me free rein to move my body against his however I please. I’m lost in kissing him, in the dream of keeping him forever, when the door flies open.
