Page 59 of Riff

As if sensing the direction of my thoughts, Riff took a deep breath. “All I could think about was you,” he admitted.

“Yeah?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he said, leaning over to press his lips to the top of my head. “Listen, I am not here to pressure you about anything. But I feel like I need to tell you that there’s… interest on my part. And that if you feel the same way, I’m in. No matter how long it takes for you to feel comfortable with the idea of dating again.”

“There’s interest,” I told him, belly wobbling a bit at the admission. “I talked to my therapist about it, actually.”

“Yeah? That’s good. I’m glad you have someone to talk to about it. I know things might be… really complicated for you.”

“She said that there’s no wrong time to date again, that it’s really just up to me and how things feel to me.”

“I know that it might be a long time before you feel comfortable with more than this,” he said, tightening his hold on me. “But that’s okay with me. I’m fine with waiting. I don’t want you to feel any pressure.”

“I don’t. You feel safe,” I admitted. It was the one constant in my life since the shed. Riff was safe. And I wanted to be with him. “I know you would never push me.”

His head tilted to rest on mine for a moment, both of us just enjoying the moment, coming to terms with this new reality of ours.

Then, “Oh, I have pictures to show you,” he declared, reaching for his phone. “I got a picture of a beaver,” he declared, voice excited. “A fucking beaver,” he added, shaking his head as he scrolled his pictures to find the ones he was looking for to show me. “These aren’t as exciting to me, since I’ve been to wildlife reserves in Florida a few times now, but I figure you have probably never seen a flamingo. So I got pictures and videos.”

He had lots of wildlife pictures to show me. An alligator walking down the sidewalk like some pedestrian. A giant iguana sunning itself on top of someone’s car. And an adorably strange armadillo.

“I think I would like to go on another road trip one day,” I decided when I was finished looking at all of his pictures.

“Yeah,” I said, nodding. “It was nice seeing all the different states and the bison.”

“We could plan a bookstore road trip,” he suggested. “Map out a path where we hit all of the best bookstores in each state.”

“That might be the best idea I’ve ever heard,” I decided.

“We could do it for your birthday in May,” he suggested.

There was a second there where my belly flipped, feeling like I hadn’t ever told him my birthdate. But, I mean, clearly, I must have if he knew it. We talked a lot.

“That’s a great idea. I… didn’t get to celebrate my last birthday,” I admitted.

“Yeah,” he agreed, giving me a squeeze. “We should plan the trip before your birthday, then be back here on the actual day, so we can have a big party with our people.”

Our people.

I realized at that moment that these men and women and kids who I’d gotten to know over the past few months truly were that. Ours. His, of course. But also mine.

I’d gone from being so alone in the world after my grandmother passed to having a whole group of people around who cared about me and who I was really starting to love. Each and every one of them. Even the standoffish Slash and the often-absent Rook.

Since I set foot in Shady Valley, I had a feeling that I was never going to leave. And each day that I spent here, I got more and more sure of that. I couldn’t leave these people. I couldn’t imagine Christmases and New Years without them. My stomach hurt at the idea of not being able to see these sweet little kids grow up.

Maybe alongside my own kids.

I’d always wanted them. Several, in fact. And I didn’t want to imagine a future where I didn’t get to have that because of something that had happened to me.

I would get there some day.

And if there is ever a man who would be there for me on that journey, it was Riff.

“Did you—what was that?” I asked, hearing a slam below, then a raised male voice.

Riff was off the bed and across the room in a blink, whipping open the door, and listening.

“Rook,” he said, giving me an apologetic look. “I’m gonna go see what’s going on,” he said, disappearing out into the hallway.

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