He smiled. “For starters, I'm going to kiss you until you're blue in the face from more than just the cold. Then I'm going to whisk you away to a diner out here in the middle of fucking nowhere, and we're going to plan our life together.”
I shook with sobs, unable to believe what I was hearing. “Are you crazy?”
He pulled me into a hug, pressing a kiss to my temple. “Only about you, Keebler.”
“You are insane,” I muttered, cuddling close.
He chuckled. “So are you.”
“How so?” I asked, glancing up at him, my chin digging into him.
“You ran into the woods in the middle of a snowstorm,” he exclaimed. “It’s like you’ve never seen a single episode of Forensics in your life. That’s How-to-Get-Murdered 101.”
“True,” I muttered, a smile creeping to my lips. “I thought you were going to kiss me?”
“I would if I wasn’t afraid of our faces freezing together.”
He took my hand, and we trudged through the snow, following our footsteps through the trees. In retrospect, my plan was pretty damn stupid. I zigzagged a mile through the woods. I was lucky I didn’t run into a moose. Christ, I could have come across a pack of coyotes and been lunch.
By the time we got back out to the road, I was faced with the horror of snow in my socks, the icy chunks freezing my ankles to the bone. I also knew I had my own secrets to share, ones that only Lee knew. I almost preferred the ice-cold hosiery to the heat burning in my stomach.
I climbed in the passenger seat, Jason’s winter coat making up the figure I thought was a passenger. I happily climbed under it until he slid in the driver’s seat when I pushed it his way. “Put this on, doofus.”
He shoved it back on my lap. “I hate driving in it. I’ll be fine.” He did, however, crank up the heat when he started the vehicle.
I turned to him, swallowing hard. “I want to talk to you before we head back to the cabin.”
“To the cabin?” he asked, cocking his head.
“I need to tell my dad where I’m going. He’ll start looking for me.”
He nodded. “We can plan there, then. He’s a part, right?”
“Jason, I -” I began, but he cut me off with a kiss, his lips melting against mine. I burst into tears all over again, claiming him back as I did, my heart reduced to jelly at his words.
I pushed away, wiping tears from my cheeks, staring at the man I loved. “I haven’t told you the truth either,” I admitted. “I have debt still from the wedding. Debt that my dad doesn’t know about. No one knows about it except Lee and now you.”
“And Justin,” he replied. “That came up in our little chat when he told me where to find you. He’ll be cutting you a check for the full amount.”
“WHAT?!?” I screeched.
He cradled my face in his hands, his skin icy. “I don’t care about the debt, even if he refused to pay it. I don’t care about Justin. All I care about is that you’re right here in front of me. No matter what comes up, I’m here for you, Elena.”
He held my gaze, and I was lost in his eyes, the beautiful blue sparks that had me from day one. There it was. The look I was waiting for. I knew I was the icing on the cake to him, all hints of doubt gone. “I love you. I’ve loved you from the moment I saw you sitting there in a sweater in fucking July.”
My lips quivered at his words as I hovered dangerously close to ugly cry territory. “I love you too.”
He pulled me into a hug, and we held one another, crying like saps in the middle of a snowstorm, ready to live our life together, publicly.
Epilogue Elena
“The property includes two-hundred acres of forest and backs up to a lake,” Ruben explained, gesturing towards the towering Balsam fir trees. “But it’s also right off the main road and only a ten-minute drive into town, so it’s the best of both worlds.”
Jason and Dad were chattering, oblivious to everything the real estate agent was saying. The property was just off Dad’s logging trail on the main road, a prime piece of land for building our dream home. It was more expensive than I realized, out of our price range since we had to build a house too.
“So what are our energy options out here? What about the internet?” I asked, cautious about both. Jason and I both worked from home, me as a product manager at Commons Electrical, and he as a director of sales for a defense contractor. I also had graduate school starting up in the fall.
“You could opt to tie into the power lines down the road. I always recommend a back-up generator too. For the internet, rural providers have come a long way in speed. I’d say the service out here would be as fast as in town.”
I smiled, relieved he at least put those concerns to bed. I was in love with the property, and it was in the perfect location, but the price was a problem. Maybe we could talk it down a little. Okay, we would need to talk it down a lot. “And how long would it take a builder to complete the project?”
Ruben thought for a moment, bobbing his head back and forth. “Depending on the floor plan, anywhere from six to eight months.”
Jason nodded, tuning back into the conversation. “Sounds reasonable. So we’d have a house by September or November?”
Ruben counted on his fingers quickly. “That sounds about right. Hopefully September. We’d want to beat any chance of snow.”
“We have a busy summer ahead, so September would be nice,” Jason replied.
What were we doing in the summer? I was planning on relaxing before jumping into the school year, my first classes in over a decade. “Do
