Page 65 of An Unfinished Memory

Did I want to?

We still had his family—my surrogate family—to consider.

“Then we take it day by day? Week by week?” He got a defeated look in his eyes. “Hell, month by month? It’s going to be winter soon, and then travel will be unpredictable. But I’m not going anywhere when it comes to you. Maybe we do some long-distance stuff?”

“Like phone sex?” My cheeks warmed. I wasn’t against what he was saying. Looking forward to seeing his name on my phone was better than not seeing it at all.

His gaze swept down my torso and back up. “Yes. And the real thing as often as we can.”

God, I liked the sound of that too much. “A long-distance relationship? What do we tell your family?”

“Do you want to tell them we’re dating?” He said it like he’d support whatever I wanted.

The urge to keep him secret stayed close to my chest. I didn’t know if we’d work. I’d asked for a divorce, and then I ended our arrangement, and while his siblings didn’t know that part, it might all come out if we attempted dating and failed to keep it a secret. Keeping our long-distance arrangement to ourselves would involve more lying.

God, I hated this. But I also missed Wilder. Twice we’d tried to be done, and here we were for a third time, talking about trying again.

How would it work anyway? “Dating seems like a stretch from fucking like rabbits when we have overlapping windows of time and are in the same zip code.”

He twisted in his seat and put his elbow on the console. “Just so happens, we’re both free and in the same zip code.”

I laughed, but a steady beat began between my thighs. I hadn’t driven away yet. We could run into the house?—

No. I was camping. I’d missed over ten years of traveling because I’d been waiting on him. Would a long-distance relationship work, or were we destined to fail no matter what we did?

Was there anything wrong with trying? My heart had been broken and hadn’t healed. Maybe I was just prolonging the pain, stretching it out until I knew for certain we were done, over, thatweweren’t possible. And if that was the case, I’d rather spare our loved ones the pain of seeing us part all over again.

“No, let’s keep this between ourselves. We don’t even know if it’s possible.”

His Adam’s apple worked, but he nodded. “I agree. Just between us. Again.”

We shared a smile. The absurdity. Long distance? Who were we kidding?

But I couldn’t not try.

I wasn’t sure I could fall out of love with this man.

Wilder

“Good thing you didn’t get a gooseneck,” I said as Sutton pulled up to her camping spot. Leafy trees clustered around each camping section. Some sections had tents and SUVs, others had campers like Sutton’s, and there were a few camper/trailer combos.

“Will you never let that go?”

“I paid about as much for the window as I paid Guy McCormick for the one I broke when I was ten.” I had told Barns I was the one who broke the rear window on the ranch pickup by jackknifing the gooseneck while backing up to load horses.

She tossed me an amused look. “I already thanked you for taking the blame.”

She’d thanked me good and hard. I’d been born backing trailers, and that day had been one of Sutton’s first times. Barns had probably known it wasn’t me, but he’d made me pay for the deductible and oversee getting it fixed and then dumped extra work on me for months until I out-stubborned him and refused to admit Sutton had broken the window.

Since then, Sutton had backed trailers hundreds of times, and she was as good as me and my siblings. But watching her expertly steer and maneuver the camperinto its spot nestled in a cluster of trees still got me hard, not gonna lie.

On the drive, she’d asked about Ray’s retirement. I had said I had to figure out all the campaign bullshit and left it at that. Best to prevent having old arguments this early in our third attempt to be together.

She stopped and put the pickup in park. “Home sweet home,” she smiled. “For the next three nights.”

I liked the sound of those words coming from her lips, aimed at me. Home sweet home.

She directed me through finishing the set up for our stay. When we were done, she propped her hands on her hips, and we faced the camper.

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