She laughed and cried. “Want you? I love you with everything I am. Of course I want you. But you can’t leave Pleasant Hill. Your whole life is here.”
“You’re wrong, darlin’. Without you, I’ve got no life.”
“But your family—”
“Doesn’t need me as much as I need you.”
More sobs shook her, tears raining down her cheeks. “But Walt needs you. You can’t leave him.”
“Walt’ll be just fine. I’ll have Jax and Travis check on him. I need you, Trix, and for once in my fucking life, I’m doing what I need. What we need.”
“But I don’t want you to move to Oak Falls,” she said through her tears.
The air rushed from his lungs, painful and sharp, and his world tilted off its axis. He stumbled backward, trying to process what she’d said. “Fuck…”
She grabbed his shirt, pulling him forward. “This is your home, Nick, and it’s always felt like mine, too. This is where our life is meant to be, not in Oak Falls. Here, where we found each other. Where we came together and fell in love. Where we brought our babies home and gave them their start. Where we gave us our start.”
“But your family,” he said, shaking his head.
“Drives me batty. I adore them and their protective nature, but we’re two hours away, Nick. We can visit as often as we’d like. Lord knows I’ll always be my daddy’s little girl and my brothers’ baby sister, but I’m not a little girl anymore.”
“What about all your friends?”
“I love my friends, but I don’t want to hang out at ladies’ night dancing with guys I don’t care about, with my brothers hovering around me, when the only man I want, and the only man I need watching out for me, is you.” A spark of mischief rose in her eyes. “And even that gets to be a bit much sometimes.”
He cocked a brow.
She whispered, “Kidding,” went up on her toes, and kissed his chin.
“God, I love when you kiss me there. I love you, darlin’, everything about you, and I’m pretty sure I’ve loved you for years.”
“You have,” she said cheekily, smiling past her tears. “Just ask me. I’ll tell you.”
“Always challenging me.”
“Always loving you.”
As he lowered his lips to hers, Romeo pushed his muzzle between them. They laughed and both reached up to pet him.
“Christ, Romeo, you too? Everyone wants my girl.”
Trixie flashed her knockout smile. “Then it’s a darn good thing she only wants you.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
NICK AND TRIXIE waved as his family pulled out of the driveway later that crazy afternoon. His family was as shocked as she had been to hear Nick had offered to move to Oak Falls. They would have supported his decision, just as her parents had supported hers when she told them she was going to stay and build her life, and business, with Nick in Pleasant Hill. With her babies playing in the corral with Snickers and Nick’s strong arms around her, Trixie knew she’d made the right decision.
Nick gazed into her eyes with an all-new open-hearted smile. “I love you, Trix.”
“I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of hearing that. I love you, too.”
He lowered his mouth to hers, kissing her slow and sweet. Her phone rang, and he groaned, holding her tighter. She smiled against his lips. “Sorry.” She pulled her phone from her pocket and saw Trace’s name on the FaceTime call.
“Take it, darlin’. I’m surprised it took him this long to call.”
He gave her a quick kiss, and when she answered, Trace connected the rest of her brothers to the group video call. “Before you say a word, let me make the inquisition easy for y’all. Yes, it’s true, I’m staying in Pleasant Hill with Nick. We’ll be coming back for a day or two here and there while I meet with potential clients over the next month, and we’ll definitely be back for the next jam session.”
“And next weekend,” Nick added.
She looked over her shoulder at Nick. “We will?”
“You promised to take Amber shopping, darlin’, and we’ve got to bring Buttercup home.”
“Oh my gosh, Buttercup. I feel horrible for not thinking of her right away.”
“You’ve been a bit preoccupied.” Nick kissed her.
Shane cleared his throat, bringing her attention back to the call.
“Sorry,” Trixie said. “Before I forget, when we come for the jam session in a few weeks, I’d really appreciate it if you could help us load up the stuff from my apartment so we can move it here when we come.”
“We’ll block off our calendars,” Jeb said.
“Absolutely,” Trace said. “Trix, I didn’t want to give you an inquisition. I wanted to say, it’s about time you two figured out what we already knew.”
“You did not know,” Trixie said with a laugh.
“Come on, sis, look at the way Nick’s got his hand on your shoulder.” Trace nodded toward the screen. “That’s not the hold of a man who just tipped the scales from she’s hot to she’s mine.”
Nick was standing behind her, one hand around her middle, which her brothers couldn’t see, the other on her shoulder. He pressed a kiss to her head and said, “They’re not wrong.”
“We’re all happy for you,” JJ said. “But I hope you have extra bedrooms at your place, Braden, because we’re not going to let our sister just disappear. We’ve gotta swing by and make sure you’re treating her right.”
Nick scoffed. “You know your sister will kick my ass if I do her wrong.”
“You won’t, Nick. You love me too much. And you, JJ, are a dork.”
“That’s not what the girls say.” JJ smiled arrogantly.
“Let me make sure I’ve got this straight,” Shane said in a serious tone. “You’re going to be living in sin with Nick, and we’re supposed to be okay with that?”
“I didn’t think about it that way. Maybe we ought to come there and take that man down,” Trace teased.
“You can try, but I don’t recommend it,” Nick warned.
Trixie smirked and said, “Y’all don’t want to hear this, but your baby sister likes sinning. I like living in it, toying with it, and most of all—”
“Stop!” “Man, Trix.” “I don’t want to know this about you,” her brothers yelled over each other, making grossed-out faces and sounds.
“Love you bunches. Toodles.” She ended the call, laughing with Nick. As she pocketed her phone, she said, “Well, my big, buff cowboy, where do we go from here?”
His eyes darkened, and he swept her into his arms. “Now we go into our house and celebrate, cowboy style.”
As he strode toward the house, she said, “No, cowboy.”
“No?”
“We’re going into our home, not our house, and we’re going to celebrate cowgirl style.”
“Are you ever going to stop challenging me?”
“Not in this lifetime.”
As he lowered his lips to hers, he said, “I wouldn’t want it any other way.”