Chase Me If You Can(56)
But now, in this field in the middle of nowhere, alone with me, lightning crackling overhead, he’s calm. His posture is easy, his shoulders relaxed, and the faint trace of a smile tugs at his lips.
“What’s yours? Your lightning unicorn?” I ask, suddenly curious.
“Lightning with the Milky Way.” The sun hasn’t set, but I still instinctively glance up as Wes adds, “I’ve gotten close a few times. I did some work a few years ago for one of the desert outfitters, but the monsoon storms weren’t in the right place to make it work.”
A trickle of guilt for all my implying that he’s just a spoiled trust fund kid returns at the reminder of the various jobs I’ve known nothing about. “I’d love to see some of the photos if you have any with you. I never have time for monsoon.”
Pleasure softens Wes’s expression. “Yeah?”
I nod, pressing back into him as his arms tighten around me. “I love your work. I wish I had more time to travel. See glaciers and the northern lights and penguins.”
He hums, low and intimate against my skin. “Lightning with the northern lights would be the ultimate goal, but that’s even harder to pull off.”
“I guess they’re called unicorn shots for a reason.” I sigh wistfully, a montage of all the hard-to-get shots I’ve dreamed of flickering by. “The tornado and rainbow was your first time in Nature Shots, right?”
I remember seeing the announcement and being jealous as hell of not only the shot Wes got—in June, when I was up to my eyeballs in lace and peonies instead of dust and rain—but that he landed a spot with the magazine at twenty-five.
“Yeah. I sent it in figuring why not. I never thought they’d actually want to license it.” He shrugs and adds, “Maybe this is the year you get your unicorn.”
I shake my head with a rueful laugh. “I’ve been trying for that shot for ages. Trust me, I’d love to finally get it this year so I could submit it for the cover, but that would be a miracle. Not to mention everyone else out here would probably get a similar shot if it all lined up.”
“There’s a ton of people out today, but we’re alone here. If a tornado and rainbow were to appear, we would be the only ones who could get a shot with this foreground.”
“True.” I shrug and turn in his arms, trusting the camera to do its thing while the sky continues to put on a show. I study Wes’s expression in the flickering light. “I want to win,” I tell him, holding eye contact. “For myself. All joking aside, I just want you to know that. It’s not really about beating you. A nice perk,” I add with an affectionate squeeze of his shoulder. “But it’s not the main reason. The other chasers, they respect you. I want that.”
“They respect you.”
“You think this morning was a show of respect?” His expression darkens, but Wes doesn’t argue. “Outside of our small circle, no one comes up to me and asks for tips. No one asks my opinion on which cells to go after. And you heard what they said this morning. They think that I’m with you as some kind of maneuver for the contest.”
“They have no idea what they’re talking about.”
“You’re missing the point.” I glance back at our cameras and the storm stretched out across the sky. “I like weddings. Mostly. But I’m tired of the client drama. I want to do more landscape work, and the only way that’s happening for me at this point is if I can make a splash somewhere. Nature Shots can give me that.”
“So let’s make it happen,” Wes says, like it’s that simple. “That’s our goal the rest of the season. We’ll find you the shot.”
I blink, still not entirely used to how generous he is when it comes to supporting me and my goals. Maybe I should be by now, but it’s a hard adjustment after years of putting everyone else first. Years where every time someone let me down, my heart just added another brick to the walls steadily built up by disappointment after disappointment.
Wes is starting to make me want to build something else entirely.
“We’ve got almost a month left,” I say quietly. “At some point we’ll get close enough to my place to grab your car. You need to get your shots too.”
“If you want your space, I get it, but we could finish out the season together. Swap to my car and put the miles on my tires instead of yours whenever we end up out that way.” He curls his fingers around my hip and pulls me closer. “Ask the question you really want to ask, Sloane.”
“We might be pretty far from Colorado when it’s time for me to head home,” I hedge. “I wouldn’t want you to have to give up chase time to drive me back.”
“That’s not a question.” Wes nuzzles into my hair, his breath warm on my neck. “Ask the real question.”
“Practically speaking, it would save a bunch of money to keep chasing together,” I say tentatively, my heart beginning to hammer. Logic insists that he’s just as into what’s happening between us as I am, but I’ve never been with someone who can draw honesty—and vulnerability—out of me the way that Wes does.
“It would.” He laughs quietly, and I instantly regret my words. At least until he says in a low, affection-laced drawl, “Still not a question, darlin’.”