Page 74 of You, Me, and Forever

“I don’t fully know how to separate personal from business, if I’m being honest. But I can tell you that it makes me happy when my brotheris doing well. It makes me happy when my mother is not worrying about my father’s bullshit and living her life. And it made me happy when you got teary eyed that we were going to partner up on the Murphy Ranch.”

My heart pounded at his words.

I still couldn’t wrap my head around the fact that we were going to be partial owners of the place. We were still working on the specifics. He wanted to go fifty-fifty on our partnership, and that felt completely unfair and ridiculous. He was putting all the money up, so why would the Blushing Bride have that large of a percentage in the business?

Hearing that it made him happy to see me happy—I didn’t know how to process it.

I knew I was head over heels in love with Myles St. James.

I knew that I’d never loved anyone the way that I loved him, and I’d had two very serious relationships over the years, so that was saying a lot.

But I also knew that loving someone was not always enough.

He had a big, bad world that he wanted to conquer.

And he preferred to conquer things on his own.

He was the lion that he’d just glued onto his board.

And I was the girl who wanted to grow old with her partner, sitting out on a porch swing together.

We wanted different things, and that was a hard pill to swallow.

“Oh, also, it makes me super fucking happy I get to fuck you with no condom and feel you come all over my cock. That’s my personal favorite. In fact, I need a photo of that for my vision board.”

I gasped. “You have the filthiest mouth.”

“I speak the truth.”

“But you’re also much sweeter than you let on.”

“Only for you, Honey Badger.”

He focused on the photo of the porcupine he was cutting out, and I used my hand to cover my mouth to keep from laughing. “Are you putting Porky on your board?”

“That fucker has grown on me.”

“You don’t say.” I raised a brow. “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. You bought him a crate, and you feed him every day.”

“Those are table scraps.”

“It’s okay to say you like him. To say you like it here.” I reached for my glass of wine and took a sip, watching him over the rim.

“I like you. That’s all I’m admitting to.”

“I like you too.” I cleared my throat, trying to push the large lump that had settled there away.

“What makes you happy, Montana Kingsley?”

“Family. Friends. Nature and animals. Good food. Painting. Weddings. Books. Writing. Music. All the things.”

“Wow. Your answer is so much better than mine.” He shrugged. “Do you want to get married and have a family someday?”

We’d never talked about the future, because we’d known we didn’t have one.

But then he’d bought this business, which I guess was very much something that affected my future, so it was only natural to discuss these things at this point.

We’d grown to be more than a fling, and we both knew it.

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