Page 63 of Fixing to Be Mine

We make it to the truck, beyond the edge of the lights, tucked in the soft dark, where the country music fades. I open the door for her, but she doesn’t get in right away.

Instead, she leans against the cool metal, arms crossed, eyes on me. “Is this when the curse sets in?”

“Yeah, sorry about it,” I say, heart hammering in my chest. “Twenty thousand dollars is a lot of money,” I say.

“I’d have paid double.” She shrugs, easy but not careless, as she hooks her fingers in my belt loops and tugs me closer. “You belong to me, cowboy.”

The words knock the air out of my lungs.

I don’t move at first. I stare at her mouth, her eyes and the storm still swirling behind them. I study the girl who walked into my life as if she owned it—because maybe she always did.

Fuck this.

I press her back against the truck and kiss her again, harder this time, with all the tension that’s been sitting under my skin since the moment I first saw her. I pour every emotion I haven’t known how to say out loud into it. She kisses me back like she means it, like she’s not going anywhere, but I know that’s not the truth. Her hands fist into my shirt, pulling me as close as possible. I press my palm against the truck beside her head, steadying us there, both of us breathing heavy and wrecked in the best damn way.

I pull back enough to see her.

She’s breathless. Eyes wide. Lips swollen. The night dancing in the lines of her face.

“You’re like a dream,” I whisper.

“I’d say the same about you, cowboy,” she admits.

I lean forward, capturing her lip into my mouth and sucking on it.

“Love to hear it,” I whisper, knowing the lines are already too blurred. “Now let’s go home.”

I say the word like it’s ours, and, fuck, it sure does feel like it is.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

SUNNY

By the time we get back to the house, my blood is boiling, and my skin feels like it’s carrying leftover electricity from the way he kissed me.

Colt kills the headlights, but doesn’t move to get out right away. The truck clicks and settles beneath us, the air warm and quiet in the cab. The only light comes from the porch, glowing softly across the ground, like it waited up for us.

We sit there for a second, both breathing a little harder than normal, not talking yet. I don’t know what to say. I kissed him in front of the entire town. Correction: he kissedme, but I kissed him right back like it wasn’t the most reckless thing I’d done since driving halfway across the country with a designer wedding dress stuffed in my trunk.

He glances over, and his grin is lazy.

“Are we gonna survive that?” he asks.

“I hope so,” I say, even though I’m not entirely sure, not with the invisible clock ticking down.

My heart hasn’t settled since I heard the emcee say “twenty thousand buckaroos.”

“How do you have that much money?” he asks. “You threw it away on me.”

“No, I didn’t. I have more money than I know what to do with,” I explain.

He shifts his body toward me. “Who are you?”

“I’m just a girl who’s trying to figure out her life,” I tell him, hoping that answer is enough, not wanting to scare him away.

“Okay,” he says, not pushing me—because he never does. His smile returns. “Leave a place for me in it.”

Before I can respond, Colt climbs out and comes around to open my door, offering his hand like we haven’t been dancing around this moment since the second we met.

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