Page 85 of Wild Heart

“And then you came back and gave me one night with you.”

I licked my lips. “It was the best night of my life. Hands down.”

“So far.”

My brows shot up in surprise. “Is that so?”

Tate dipped his chin. “I’d say tonight is bound to be even better.”

“Oh?”

“Unless, well, tonight is supposed to be your first night in your new place. If you’d rather not spend the night here with me, I can understand that.”

I pressed my palm into his chest and sat up straight. “What?”

“I’m saying I was thinking about having you spend the night with me tonight, but I just realized tonight is supposed to be the first night in your apartment.”

“Tate Westwood, donotmake assumptions about what I want. Ask me what you want to ask me,” I demanded.

He seemed to be a bit shocked by my tone, but his lips twitched. “Will you spend the night with me tonight?”

Tears filled my eyes, a whimper escaping. “I feel like I’ve waited my whole life for you to ask me that.”

Guilt and remorse filtered into his features. “I’m sorry. I should have done so many things differently.”

“Yeah. Me, too. But at least we can make up for them now.”

Tate sighed. “I don’t know. You just told me I missed out on a year of naked video chats and phone sex. It’s going to take a lot to make up for that.”

Laughing lightly, I wrapped my arms around his neck and hugged him tightly. Tate’s arms circled my torso and held me close. I felt so safe and protected in his hold. “Please tell me we’re going to be okay now.”

“We’re going to be okay, Ava. Tours or no tours, I’m never letting you go. Whatever happens, whatever it’s going to take, we’ll figure it out.”

I loosened my hold on him, pulled back slightly to look in his eyes, and said, “I hope you know it’s the same for me with you.”

“What do you mean?”

“The night at the mountain, when you came into the room and thought I was sleeping,” I started. “You told me you loved me. I think you should know, I love you, too. I’ve loved you since I was fifteen.”

Tate held my gaze for several beats in silence. Then he lifted me in his arms and said, “We’re done talking for now. We’ll talk more later.”

“Where are we going?”

A mischievous grin spread across his face. “I’ve waited years to have you in my bed, wild one. I’m not waiting another minute to get you there.”

I’d wanted the same thing for as long as I could remember, so I didn’t put up a fight. And when Tate got me to bed, I made sure to start trying to make up for missed video chats and phone sex.

22

TATE

Now that Avaand I had worked things out, there were several things I didn’t want to do. The first of those was possibly screwing this up with her. No matter what happened, no matter what hardships I was to face in my life, I needed her by my side.

Beyond that, I didn’t want to live my life constantly worrying about when or if she might take off and run. The problem was that Ava wasn’t exactly making that task easy for me just yet.

Because she’d just spent her first night ever in my bed, and when my eyes popped open mere moments ago, she wasn’t sleeping peacefully beside me, nor was she awake somewhere in my bedroom.

Immediately, something twisted in my gut, and my mind went right back to the morning after Wyatt’s wedding. Had she done exactly what she’d considered doing then, which was to leave without saying goodbye? Why would she run?