Chase felt his chest tighten and he looked at Bailey again.
“Yeah. You’ve got a point,” Mitch agreed.
“I’m jealous,” Chase said. “Bailey and I can’t really do the change-of-address-U-Haul thing. I mean, she could move to DC, I suppose, but she’s happiest down here on the bayou, and I’m only in DC for a couple of years before I’ll hopefully be heading back down here anyway.”
“You think you can do the long-distance thing?” Mitch asked.
“Yeah,” he said, feeling more confident in that answer than he had in anything in a long time. “Fuck, yeah. We’ll get together as much as we can, and the future together is worth however hard it is now.”
“And with the way you two are when you’re together, it’s probably safer if the two of you are mostly together on Zoom or FaceTime,” Mitch joked.
He had a point. Chase chuckled. “Good thing I’m going to medical school, huh?”
Mitch laughed. “For sure.”
“Okay, so go tell your girl that you’re going to need to buy some warmer clothes, and I’m going to go try not to get my nose broken under the mistletoe.”
Laughing, they disconnected.
Chase shoved back from the table again.
“Aw, man,” Owen groaned. “You all get all lovey-dovey around here and Maddie’s down at the office.”
“You can’t go down to the office with her?” Chase asked.
“She says I distract her,” Owen said with an unapologetic grin.
Chase nodded. “Good. And speaking of distracting gorgeous women from the work they should be doing…” He glanced at Bailey then back to Owen. “I have a beautiful, accident-waiting-to-happen to distract.”
“Go get her,” Owen said. “I’m going to dirty text mine.”
Chase laughed. “That should be distracting.”
“Yep. And I’ll bet you ten bucks she’s back up here in ten minutes.” Owen already had his phone out.
Chase headed for Bailey.
He came up behind her, wrapping his arms around her.
Or, at least, that was his intention.
She jumped and jerked back, her head coming within centimeters of smacking him directly in the nose.
He dodged, but that resulted in him pulling her to the side with him.
The bar stool tipped, she slid off the seat, and they ended up stumbling back together.
But he stayed on his feet, and kept her upright-ish, by bracing his hand against the table behind him.
They paused, both took a breath, and then laughed. She turned in his arms…and stepped on his foot and whacked in him the chin with her head after all.
He tightened his arms around her and then lifted a hand to her face, holding her still.
Her hands came up to his face. “Sorry.”
“My fault. I didn’t warn you.”
She smiled. “Maybe someday I’ll be used to having a hot guy come up behind me and feel me up.”
“Well, only this guy.”
“Of course.”
“And just in case, we’re going to carpet our house with very thick, soft carpet. In every room.”
Her expression softened at the idea of them sharing a house. “Sounds perfect.”
“Is it too early to tell you that I’m falling in love with you?”
Her eyes went wide. She searched his face. But then she slowly shook her head. “No. I don’t think so.”
“I mean, I’ve been falling around you from the very first time I ever tried to kiss you,” he teased.
She smiled. “True.”
“So, it was probably inevitable.”
She nodded. “Probably. Which makes sense why I’m falling for you too.”
He cupped her face. “I’m coming in.”
She wrapped her hands around his wrists. “I’m ready.”
He was too. He’d never been more ready for anything ever.
Epilogue
One year later…
Chase saw Bailey before she saw him.
She was rolling a big suitcase along the tiled floor of Dulles airport and looking around. For him. His heart thumped.
It had been two months since they’d seen each other in person. They talked every day, mostly via Facetime, but it wasn’t the same. He couldn’t wait to hug her. Kiss her. Hug her. Smell her hair. He could be touchy and creepy-ish now. She was his. And she seemed to like his handsy side and didn’t mind at all that he liked to smell her. All over.
Besides the suitcase, she had a huge tote bag over her shoulder that had a toothy, smiling alligator emblazoned on the side. He’d gotten her the bag in D.C. He’d seen it in a store window and thought of her. He’d sent it along with a note that said, “How do you tell the difference between an alligator and a crocodile?” The day she’d gotten the package in the mail she’d texted him, “One will see you later and one will see you in a while.”
He’d bought a plane ticket online two minutes later and surprised her the following weekend.
It had been a very fun year.
And now he was going to have her with him in person for ten consecutive days. They hadn’t been together for that long at one stretch since she’d taken her week-long vacation to Virginia in July. Her usual trips to Virginia were longer than his to Louisiana, but were still only a few days at a time. They’d managed to see each other once a month and it would have to be like that for at least another year, but eventually he’d be able to get a residency closer to her.
For now, they just had to make the most of the few days they had each visit.
He drank in the sight of her as she made her way toward him. She was in blue jeans, red Converse tennis shoes, and under her red cardigan she was wearing a T-shirt that had a huge red crawfish in the middle and said, Well, it ain’t gonna suck itself. The shirt was only partially tucked in. The sweater was falling off one shoulder. Her hair was coming out of the ponytail she wore. She was a little bit of a mess. She also seemed oblivious to everything around her—except finding him.
He was madly freaking in love with her.
They were heading to Minneapolis together tomorrow after dinner with his parents tonight. They were then spending two days with her family before heading down to Autre for Christmas Day and to spend the following week.
He was still trying to decide which place would be the ideal setting for his proposal.
Yes, he was proposing. It had been a year. A long, but wonderful year. The long distance and length of time between their visits had made it so they really talked. They’d told each other everything. They talked about their pasts. They shared details of their daily life now. They talked about their plans for the future, their goals and dreams.
She was now his future. His dream. And it was time to get a ring on her finger.
The woman who had just walked right past him without even seeing him.
Okay, it was a busy airport and about seven people had walked between them. And she’d been looking the other way. Still.
Chase shook his head and turned to follow her, his chest filled with the mix of amusement and affection that she automatically brought up in him.
She was used to spending her days out on the bayou, mostly alone with nature. She dealt with people—locals with nuisance alligator reports, visitors camping where they weren’t supposed to—and shouldn’t—hell, locals camping where they weren’t supposed to. She received calls about injured animals and people trying to capture or keep animals they weren’t supposed to. She definitely dealt with people.