Page 110 of Brewbies
“This,” he answered. Meaning it with every single part of himself.
Ethan lifted his hand and skimmed her fingers with the barest brush of his lips. “I want to be the one that holds your hand. I want to eat meals with you. I want to meet all your friends and hear all your stories. I want to go to your oncologist follow-ups, and I want to be the one who takes care of you when you need it. I want to talk with you all night. I want to sleep next to you and wake up with you—”
“I get up at, like, four thirty,” she warned around an unladylike sniff.
“I want to wake up a couple of hours after you,” he quickly amended, his heart both glowing and aching at the sight of her tears. At what else began to gather in her eyes.
Hope.
“The point is, I’ve tried for two weeks to let this town be big enough for the both of us, and I realized that was never the problem. Darby, I can’t stop picturing a life with you, and as much as I love Townsend Harbor, that life doesn’t have coordinates. I wantyou, Darby. I want to be with you. If that’s here? Fine. If that’s in Maui, well,aloha, let’s do this. If you say no…” He had to breathe through a surge of panic. “If you drive away, you’ll take all the color in my life with it.”
He thumbed away her next tear, shaping his palm to a jaw clenched tight with unspent emotion.
“But…this is your home.” It was a feeble argument on her part, meant to talk him out of it, to remind him that she was a woman who didn’t hold still, and he was a man who’d spent his entire life doing what was expected.
“My home will be where you are,” he said, and meant it.
“What about your dreams? The property?” She gestured past the tunnel opening to the corner of the vast land Ethan still loved. That he still held sacred in his heart.
He shrugged. “I have it on good authority that Rhonda and Sylvio at Townsend Title and Escrow aren’t going to be able to make things work, and the property will revert to you any day now.”
Her mouth dropped open, and she made a sound of pure surprise.
“Someday…” He gave a little side-eye to the cars building up behind where McGarvey directed traffic slowed down to one lane.
Fuck it. They could wait. His heart and soul, hell, therest of his life, was on the line here.
“Someday, I hope you let me build a brewery on the land. But if that isn’t where you’re planning on ending up, that’s fine with me. I’m just asking to be along for the ride.”
Sniffling, she stood up and regarded him with eyes gone liquid and softer than he’d ever seen them before.
Then she slammed the service window closed.
Ethan was contemplating throwing himself in front of one of Fertile Myrtle’s sanitation trucks cruising up the way when the door to the camper opened. He barely had time to brace himself before Darby launched into his arms and wrapped her limbs around him, clinging like a barnacle.
Her lips crashed against his in a searing, desperate kiss, and Ethan felt every wall he’d built around himself come crashing down. Her tongue tangled with his as her fingers dove into his hair and scored at his scalp. She tasted like salt and tears, but their teeth wouldn’t stop clashing through their wild, almost-hysterical smiles.
It was one of those moments where words weren’t needed. Where language failed to express the relief, joy, elation, bliss…
After several seconds of devouring each other—and even more honks of encouragement and/or impatience from the peanut gallery—she dragged her lips from his and frowned down at him. “Well, you’ve made me miss my ferry.” She looked back at the tree tunnel. “But I still have reservations for one of those glamping huts over a crystal-blue lagoon where women go to mend their hearts after losing a life-altering love.”
“What if I booked two first-class tickets to Maui for tomorrow?” he said. “We’ll dream of the future over froofy drinks, and I’ll take you bikini shopping, which is a win for us both.”
“Deal,” she said, wriggling like a toddler to get down.
Ethan enjoyed her sliding down his body a little too much for an audience. He saluted McGarvey and turned to adjust the havoc she’d created in his pants.
All right… Time to hit the road.
He opened the driver’s door in time for her to hop up into the cabin.
He didn’t have to look back at the tree tunnel as they drove down the Coastal Highway toward a brand-new destination.
Toward a future neither of them dreamed about, and neither of them could wait for.
Townsend Harbor would always be there to welcome them back.
But home was wherever Darby wandered.
