Wild Love (Rose Hill, #1)(103)

My first order of business is to pick up my niece and nephew. They make the switch at 3:00 p.m. on Saturdays, and as cool as Mia is, I’m not sure she’d appreciate knowing that West was locked up for assaulting a person.

A shitty person who deserved it, but still.

When we get back to West’s house, it’s warm enough that we have a water-gun fight and I make sure to give them freezies and ice cream. Because fuck West for pulling this shit.

I time it perfectly. We’re back inside watching cartoons when I hear Ford’s G-Wagon idling outside and the slam of the door as West hops out. When he walks in the door, the sugar is just settling into their bloodstream.

“Daddy!” Emmy shouts from the couch before barreling over the back of it and launching herself into her dad’s arms.

Me? I just stand watching him, arms crossed, wondering how the hell my parents got through raising him.

“Hi, Rosie.” West grins at me.

I scowl back, shaking my head. My brother winces, and if he were a dog, he’d do that thing where his ears droop and his eyes go wide like big guilty saucers.

Then I give both sugar demons a kiss, grab the basket of laundry I did at his place over the last couple of hours, and walk out the front door.

“Where are you going? Wanna stay for dinner? I’ll cook for you.”

Kiss ass.

“No thanks. I’m going to go drink my dinner on my dock.”

“Your dock?”

I look back at my brother, ready to be the one who assaults a person if he tries to tell me it’s his. That dock has become my favorite place to sit, so he can fuck all the way off. I point down toward the water. “Yeah, West. My dock.”

He tilts his head, brows furrowed. “Sis, that’s not your dock. That’s not even our dock. That dock is firmly on Ford’s property. I’ve seen land survey certificate.”

“No, it’s not. Ford told me it’s mine.”

West chuckles and shakes his head, leaving me standing at his door.

Dumbfounded.

Back at the old bunkhouse, I fold my laundry, unpack, and “accidentally” drop some crumbs on the floor while trying to make sense of this new development.

It irks me more than it should. Mostly because it makes it even harder to be mad at Ford.

I make my way down to the lake with a bottle of red wine in hand and my favorite Navajo blanket wrapped around my shoulders.

I know that if I can sit on the dock and watch the sun go down, maybe I’ll be able to let this day go. Let all the grains of frustration I feel dissolve into the darkness as the light slips behind the mountain peaks.

Except when I get to the spot where the wooden boards meet the green grass, I stop. There’s a small sign. A plain slab of wood with light blue paint slashed across it.

It reads Rosie’s Dock.

I stare at it for several moments before realizing there’s an envelope on the ground beneath it. My name is scrawled across it in Ford’s alarmingly perfect handwriting. I swipe it up and rip it open. Inside is a deed to a small section of Ford’s massive property. According to the map, it’s long and narrow and reaches all the way up to the back of the property. It’s a buffer between his land and my family’s, and it’s also the section that links to the dock.

All this time, this dock hasn’t been mine at all. But when has Ford ever said no to me?

The paper rattles in my shaking hand, and it’s with a swirling pit in my stomach that I walk to the end of the dock.

My dock.

I need the peace and quiet I couldn’t find earlier with West’s kids around to process the last twenty-four hours.

Quite possibly the last several months.

But when I sit down, Ford and his shredded arms are swimming in the lake. The sun hits his already-tanned back and droplets of water shimmer on his skin. His hair appears almost black while wet and plastered across his forehead as he tilts his head to breathe.

He’s so beautiful, it almost hurts to look at him.

And I must be some sort of masochist because I also can’t look away.

I don’t know how long I sit here watching him. Long enough that all my anger, all my reasons for being disappointed, feel redundant and overwrought.

He shouldn’t have told West what he did. Shouldn’t have turned it into some sort of high school vendetta.

And yet, I know him well enough to understand his chest-beating alpha bullshit was well-intentioned. He’d never hurt me. Not on purpose.

I’m sad he broke my trust the way he did. But I also know I’ll forgive him. Tomorrow.

I’ll forgive him tomorrow because I don’t want to be a total pushover where Ford Grant is concerned. The man is far too accustomed to getting what he wants.

Eventually, he stops and surfaces, facing away from me. I watch the muscles in his back and shoulders bunch and release as he treads water, staring out at the same view I’m facing.

Except I have my eyes locked on him, not on the sky or the mountains. I find myself wondering how long I’ve been staring at Ford Grant.

I’m thinking it’s been a long-ass time, but I was too oblivious to see it. Too convinced he was too cerebral for a girl like me. Too convinced he disliked me. Too convinced he was just my brother’s best friend, and I was just their annoying tagalong.

I’m thinking that Ford and I have been in love with each other for years and just rationalized it to the point it felt unlikely, made up… impossible.