Page 113 of Sundown Somewhere

No? No?

I wilt, my knees weakening, nausea consuming me. Tears sting at the corners of my eyes and I fight them back, right along with telling myself not to puke.

No…

Doesn’t he want this? No, of course he doesn’t. Why would he want to be with the woman who reacted so poorly when he tried to show her how he felt? The woman who walked away.

How could I have gotten this so wrong?

“Because you want all those things,” he says, cutting through my thoughts. “The big to-do. So that’s what you’ll get. Complete with the white house and everything.”

What?!

I swallow hard, tears escaping. Pretty sure I didn’t hear him right.

“Come again?”

Closing the gap between us in two steps, Hux wraps an arm around me, hauling me into him. I hit his chest with a soft thud, the warmth of him surrounding me, welcoming me home.

“I haven’t come a first time.” He winks. I giggle, rolling my eyes. Classic Hux… “But Dolly, I’ll tell you as many times as you need to hear it. What my girl wants, my girl gets.”

His girl…

“Am I still your girl after this morning?”

He tightens his grip on me, and I do the same, not wanting to let go. This is the safest I’ve felt in a long time.

“Always. I would really like an explanation though.”

I sigh. Peering around him, I nod to the chair he was sitting in before. This might take a moment, and we probably shouldn’t be standing in the middle of the kitchen for this conversation.

Understanding exactly what I’m thinking, Hux lifts me up, taking the three strides over to the chair and depositing himself in it, with me in his lap. I shake my head but settle in anyway. After all, this is my forever.

“Explain.”

“As I was standing there, looking at that treehouse, all I could think about was being a mom to Hayes boys, which means at least one of them is going to try and push another from that thing and we’re going to end up with a broken arm. So then I’m going to have to leave the diner early, or you’re going to have to try and corral the others at the paper mill…and then trying to get them all to go to sleep in our perfect white house that you built, and…it was all so perfect…” I sniffle, looking away while trying to blink back tears.

Hux turns me back to him, wiping away the first escapee with his thumb, that infamous Hayes smirk already showing through.

“And that perfection was really overwhelming. Which sounds really stupid now that I say it out loud, I realize that, so don’t you go saying it. But, a few weeks ago I thought that I was never going to get the life that I’ve always dreamed of, and here you were serving it to me on a silver platter. Add in Aunt Hattie making stupid comments about my judgment, and my doubts and worries that you’ll change your mind about wanting me crept in, and it was all too much and I freaked the fuck out. I seriously take back all the times that I looked at other people and said that they just need to be grown-up and talk it out. A lot easier said than done when you’re the one armpit deep in it.”

“What if we end up with girls?” he counters, looking smugger than he has any right to.

What if we end up with girls…is he listening to himself? Or anything else I just said?

I scoff. “There are six of you boys. Six! Clearly a certain set of Hayes swimmers wins those races. I am not having seven kids just to have a daughter…”

Hux guffaws, throwing his head back. His whole body shakes, jostling me in his lap. It wasn’t meant to be that funny, but I’m glad he thinks it was so clever. I’m sticking to these words though. We will not be adding that many extra ornaments to Miss Belle’s Christmas tree.

“I didn’t mean to scare you,” he says, turning serious. “I just wanted to find a way to show you what you mean to me. That I’m not changing my mind about anything. I meant what I said when I told you I’m in this. I want all those things too. I have for a long time. Much longer than I’ve been willing to admit.”

I lean back, searching his eyes for…something. A truth that I know that only I’ll be able to find. An unspoken entity that only exists between two people who know each other the way we do.

Sure enough, I find it.

“How long?”

“A long time.”