Wyatt
Twelve Years Earlier
Wyatt read the text for the fifth time.
Gigi: I want to visit my mom, but I don’t want to go alone.
He answered the only possible response.
Wyatt: When?
Not once in the months since her mother had passed had Gigi expressed the slightest interest in visiting her mother’s grave. Her grandmother practically lived there, going every day and spending at least three hours with her only child, even in the bitter cold of February. Wyatt suspected that was a factor in Gigi’s decision to ignore the entire concept.
But what did he know? He’d led a charmed, damn near perfect life compared to the agony his Dark Angel dealt with for far too many years. The closest loss of his life had been an uncle, three years earlier, from a tragic accident. Shock had settled into grief that dipped into an awkward ache at the sight of his mother cradling his aunt closely, offering comfort despite her own pain of losing her only brother.
His alert dinged again, pulling him back to the reality of helping his girlfriend navigate the choppy water of grief as best she could.
Gigi: Today. Now. Will you go with me?
The last thing she needed to do was ask. There was zero chance he’d be anywhere other than holding her hand, holding her, as she took this momentous step toward finding a new normal in the wake of the overwhelming loss.
Wyatt blinked slowly three times when Georgia opened the front door, her face stripped of the pale foundation and dark kohl eyeliner. The black lipstick traded for a pale gloss. Her clothing of choice still a nod to the goth girl that owned his heart with black sweatpants and a gray sweatshirt with a glittering black skull on the front.
“You sure about this, Angel?”
A single tear tracked down her cheek, and she shook her head. “Not in the slightest, but it’s now or never. We graduate in three and a half months, and then we’re going off to chase a dream.” Her smile was small and didn’t quite reach her eyes. “It’s now or never.”
She slipped a chilled hand in his and pulled the door behind her closed. The walk from her house to the cemetery was largely in silence. Several times his eyes landed on her bent auburn head, and he struggled to catch his breath. Her petite five-foot four-inch frame housed a level of strength he couldn’t imagine.
He squeezed her hand because…he couldn’t not. His body, his heart…it couldn’t help but respond to the call of his Gigi.
At the brick entryway, she hesitated. Wyatt tightened his grip. “We don’t have to do this today. We can come back tomorrow. Or next week.” Images of how shattered Gigi had been in the days and weeks following her mother’s funeral added a note of desperation to his voice that he struggled to bank.
She squared her shoulders and looked up at him. “I can do this, just…”
His fingertips grazed her jaw as her words died on her lips. “Just what, Angel?”
Vulnerability reflected back at him in her wide-eyed gaze. “Just don’t leave me.”
Her words sliced through his heart with precision. He moved to stand in front of her and cradled her face between his palms. “I’m not going anywhere, Angel. I told you before, you and I are a forever thing. Most couples that fall in love in high school break up, but not us. We were meant to be different and break every stereotype.”
Gigi’s lips twitched. “Except for that whole rhinestone cowboy thing, right? Because you seem hell bent on fulfilling that role.”
He grinned and joined his lips with hers because…what else could he do when his Dark Angel stole his ability to form words?
She gripped his wrists where he held her face and stroked her thumbs along his pulse point. It was wrong and he almost hated himself, but even with the weight of where they were surrounding him, his body responded to her feather-light touch. With more strength than he knew he possessed, he brushed his lips across hers one final time before breaking the kiss.
If he had any hope of being the support she needed without his hormones making him look like a total jackass, he had to focus. There was no chance that could happen when she was melting his brain with her lips.
They walked along the path winding between headstones and footplates. Even though she’d never made the trek here before, Gigi walked resolutely toward her mother’s resting place like she’d done it every day. Each step purposeful and determined. Wyatt was helpless to do more than keep the tight grip on her hand and pray she’d let him hold her if she fell apart.
Her cadence slowed when they were less than ten feet away. The fingers laced with his began to tremble seconds before the vibration consumed her entire body. He dropped her hand and wound his arms around her waist, tugging her close to his side.
Wyatt pressed his lips to her temple as they stood a short distance from the blue marble etched with her mother’s name and a brief dedication.
Unaccounted for minutes ticked past in silence before her soft voice cut through the cold winter air. “Did I tell you I wrote that?”
He blinked down at her upturned face, surprisingly free of tears. “Wrote what?”
She nodded to the headstone. “That poem. I wrote it for her for Mother’s Day and…” Her head dropped. “And she told Dad that she wanted that verse put there. I-I was mad at first. When he told me. I wrote that to tell her how much I loved her and would always love her. It didn’t belong in an empty soulless place like this.”
His brain struggled to find words, to make words. What the hell was he supposed to say to that? “And now?”
Gigi tilted her head and fixed her gaze straight ahead for a moment before turning back to him. “Now I’m glad a part of me will be there to honor her forever.”
Once again they were cocooned in a blanket of silence, but unlike before, this was a calm, peaceful quiet. He moved to stand behind her, pulling her close to his chest.
“Thanks for coming with me, Cowboy.”
Shock radiated out to consume his entire being. Did she really just thank him? Didn’t she know there was nowhere else he could imagine being if she needed him other than right by her side?
But he swallowed down every word and, instead, dropped a kiss on her auburn crown. “Thanks for wanting me to come with you.”
***
Georgia
“Whatcha lookin’ at there, Gigi?”
She squinted up into the bright late spring sun as Wyatt approached and grinned. “I printed out some information on different colleges offering distance learning options.”
Wyatt thumbed through the papers she had spread out across the picnic table as he straddled the bench seat beside her. “I don’t see USF here.”
The wave of regret that washed over her every time she thought about parting with her dream college hit once again, and her smile faltered slightly. “They don’t offer online classes for marketing, so I am looking at some other options.”
He tilted her head and regarded her in silence so long she looked away and began shuffling the papers, trying to fit them in the folder. Heat inched up the back of her neck completely unrelated to the warm sun and completed related to the intent stare from the cowboy on her left.
“But USF is your dream.”
She swallowed down the disappointment surfacing at the accuracy of his words and smiled. “Dreams can change.”
His brows knitted together, concern etching into his features. Georgia had come to terms, as much as she could, with the knowledge that she had to choose between Wyatt and the college she always intended to make her alma mater. The decision hadn’t been as easy as she let him think, but in the end she believed more in the power of their relationship, and every promise he’d ever uttered, than she did in anything else.
Georgia pushed the folder away and turned on the bench, angling her leg up in front of her. She leaned forward and brushed her lips across his a couple of times before he groaned, tangled his fingers in her hair, and pulled her close for the deep, soul-rendering kiss she’d come to expect from him. The o
ne she knew would never be found in another.
She slid her palms up the front of his shirt and laced them behind his neck. His tongue snaked inside her mouth, and she was helpless to silence the whimper. Or prevent her body from scooting closer to his.
The boisterous voice of one of the football players several yards away was enough to bring them both back to their reality and the knowledge they were very much in public. And very much at risk of being caught by one of the faculty members.
Her cheeks warmed as they broke the kiss. “And besides,” she continued as though her brain hadn’t been turned to mush by the rhinestone cowboy that commanded her heart as much as he did her body, “I’ve managed to log enough AP classes I will basically start as a sophomore almost anywhere I go.”
They discussed a few options, but the slight V that had formed between Wyatt’s brows when she first mentioned picking a different college never fully disappeared. The bell rang, summoning them in opposite directions. With a much briefer parting kiss than their earlier one, and promises to meet at the end of the school day to go to his training session, she headed to her fourth period class, falling in step beside Paige easily.
“You two make me nauseous.” Paige stuck her finger in her mouth and pretended to gag.
Georgia laughed and bumped her shoulder against her friend. “Don’t blame us because Evan turned out to be a grade A asshole. I’m still willing to knee him in the b—”
Paige clapped a hand over her mouth. “If I take you up on that, you need to make sure it looks like an accident. No discussions ahead of time.”
They were laughing as they found their seats in the classroom. Georgia reached into her backpack to pull out her binder and managed to deposit the folder containing all the college research onto the floor.
Paige began gathering the papers and handing them back to her. “What’s all this?”
Georgia shrugged and concentrated on neatly stacking all the papers, giving her a very good reason to avoid eye contact with her best friend. “Just some of the best colleges for a marketing degree.”
“Why are you college shopping? I thought that was a done deal, written in stone. It has always been USF or bust for you.”
Every time she revisited the decision, she felt less and less sure she was making the right one. “Yeah, but things change. If I want to be with Wyatt, I need to be able to travel. USF doesn’t offer marketing as an option for distance education.”
Just as Paige began to protest, Mr. Martin called the class to order and began to drone in his monotone voice about literature at the turn of the century.
Throughout the class, she fought the same gnawing at her gut that questioned the path she’d chosen.
Chapter
Thirty-One
Wyatt
Present Day
Her silence made the granola bar he’d managed to devour moments before she walked through the door pitch and roll in his stomach. He wanted to believe she’d say yes—or preferably “hell, yes”—but nothing was a guarantee. And Gigi was nothing if not stubborn.
She also had every damn reason under the sun to shoot him down and make him spend a dozen years groveling to make up for the past twelve he’d been a complete idiot. It was bad enough to leave the way he did, but when his yellow-bellied ass didn’t call for days, then weeks, then months, then years, it became too late.
If she gave him the chance, he’d happily spend the next fifty years making it up to her, but hopefully with his ring firmly in place on her left hand.
She pressed her fingers against her mouth and her shoulders shook with sobs, propelling him to his feet. “Hell, Angel, I’m sorry if this is too soon—” What he thought were sobs were giggles that turned into peals of laughter. His brows drew together and lips turned down. “Okay, I am officially confused.”
“Oh, yes, of course I’ll marry you, but…how in the hell did you manage to find a black engagement ring?”
Wyatt blinked once. Twice. And a third time for good measure. He held up the hand with the ring still pinched between his thumb and forefinger. “Wait, did you…say yes?”
She held his face between her palms and smiled the same radiant smile that bowled his heart over when he was sixteen and hadn’t failed to do it every time he’d seen it since then. “Yes, I said yes.”
He slid the ring on her finger moments before he locked his arm around her waist and picked her up, spinning her in a circle.
She said yes.
He set her down and sealed his lips with hers, desperate for the taste of Gigi once again. She softly moaned against his mouth, and his knees nearly buckled from the impact. He didn’t regret keeping a small distance from her while he focused on rebuilding the part of them he’d damaged so deeply, but he damn sure wasn’t going to waste the gift he was being given now.
His hands dropped to grip each of her hips, and he pulled her against him. The barely perceptible groan gave him the entrance he needed, and his tongue snaked along the length of hers, taunting and teasing the way they always did.
Gigi fingers dug into the back of his neck, keeping his mouth joined firmly with hers and not allowing an atom of space between them. Not that he had a single complaint.
“The house…” he managed to gasp out when the need for oxygen required them to break apart. “The house is done. I have furniture, well, some anyway. But I have a bed. One I think you’ll like. It’s just like yours—”
“And how do you know what my bed looks like? I’ve upgraded since high school, you know.”
He winked and pressed against her with a grin. “I know and I may have taken a peek or two while Gram napped in the afternoons.” He trailed his mouth along her jaw, nipped at her earlobe, and ran down the column of her neck. “I needed to make sure I got something my Dark Angel would like.”
She moaned and arched into his touch. “But your house is damn near a mile away.”
Wyatt leaned back. “So what do you propose instead?” He gestured toward the sand. “No offense, Gigi, but I don’t think I’d like to get sand in certain crevices, if you know what I mean.”
A saucy smile curled her lips. “How about a roll in the hay instead?”
He smirked and reached into the front pocket where he always kept the same coin he’d flipped more than a dozen years ago on the front step of her house. “Flip ya for it.”
Gigi’s eyes followed the silver disc as it flew into the air, his hand caught it, and he smacked it down onto the back of the opposite hand. “Heads we break in that soft, comfortable, four hundred thread count covered bed at my place.”
“Tails I won’t have to wait that freaking long.”
Wyatt laughed and slid his palm away, revealing the back side of the coin. Gigi gloated as she scurried up the ladder, and Wyatt scrambled to follow behind her, still holding the piece of silver in his hand.
One more secret he had to reveal.
***
Georgia
He held the coin between his thumb and forefinger. “Do you know what this is?”
Georgia rolled her eyes. “Are we really going to do an elementary school math class here, Cowboy?”
The cocky smirk slid easily into place along with every ounce of his excessive Rhinestone Cowboy persona. And Georgia fell a little more in love.
“This, Gigi, is the same one I flipped the first night we kissed.” He sauntered closer until he stood right in front of her, tossing the coin in the air before grabbing it and repeating the action.
Everything melted away other than the all-consuming love burning inside her chest. She reached up and gripped the back of his neck. “I love you, Wyatt Carlisle.”
His eyes widened, pupils dilating to the size of saucers. “That’s the first time you said it. This time around.” He chuckled a little and dropped his forehead to hers.
She grinned up at him, allowing every emotion she’d vainly tried to withhold to shine through. “I figured I told you enough times when we were kids, and since nothing chan
ged, you’d know it was still in effect.”
The hand that had been stroking up and down her spine stilled. “Nothing changed? You…you never stopped loving me? Not even when what’s-his-name was hanging around?”
“His name is Bruce—”
“Yeah, we don’t need to ever utter that name again.”
She laughed, one hand sliding from around his neck to stroke the front of his shirt. Right above the spot where the tattoo she very much intended to lick along every line branded his body. “Never, Cowboy. I never stopped loving you.”
Georgia had barely finished speaking the words when he captured her mouth with his. Passion and desire fueled the lusty kiss that slowly softened into something more. He lifted her against his body and gently lowered her into a pile of hay.
“I love you, Angel, and I know this is basically every cowboy’s wet dream, but are you sure this is where you want to do this?” His lips moved along her jaw to her neck, nipping at the sensitive flesh. “I have a ridiculously comfortable bed at my house.”
“Later, Cowboy, later.” She gasped as his tongue licked the space behind her ear, and he lightly bit her lobe. Her legs wrapped around his waist, and she pushed into him, annoyed at the barriers of clothing separating them. “Right now we have a hell of a lot of time to make up for, and I don’t want to waste that driving.”
He sat back on his heels, took off his hat, and whipped his shirt over his head. “I never argue with a lady.”
She grabbed his belt buckle, unfastened it, and slid it through the loops, tossing it across the room. “Then put the damn hat back on your head and get a move on.”
Wyatt groaned as he plopped the hat back on his head. He reached down and tugged the camisole free from her slacks, hissing as her white lace strapless bra was exposed. “Am I gonna have to wear this hat every time we have sex?”
Georgia flicked open the button on her pants and slid the zipper down with a muted hiss. “Maybe not every time, but let’s hold off on making that decision for a while, hmm?”
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