Dirty Rowdy Thing
: Chapter 16

“SHE DIDN’T EXACTLY look happy when she left,” Levi notes, leaning back against the wall of the wheelhouse and studying me as I climb up the ladder.

I let out a little noncommittal grunt and hop over the railing. My stomach feels like it’s been pumped full of battery acid. What the fuck just happened back there? Did I really let Harlow walk away?

Did I really forget she could have been pregnant? Even at the time it didn’t seem like a real possibility, maybe because that fear was quickly overshadowed by our declarations, the party, and then the fights that followed.

I am the biggest, most self-absorbed asshole of all time. And just the memory of that night, of her climbing over me, my hands pushing aside her tiny scrap of lace and how easily I slid into her, how quickly we both unraveled . . . it rocks me. We hadn’t been just fucking in the car. Already I loved that girl so much it made me reckless.

My little brother grabs his sweatshirt and keys from the deck. “You got everything you need done?”

I nearly laugh. Every day feels like it just creates more things on my list of worries. I’m still reeling from Harlow’s appearance at my boat and now she’s gone. The boat’s getting fixed, Levi, Colton, and Dad are all thrilled with our plan, but do they have any idea how our lives are going to look in four months when the film crew descends and starts taking stock footage of the area, of us? When they start following us into our favorite haunts? What happens when they set me up on dates with women and the only woman I want has just disappeared down the dock?

I’m the only one who hasn’t signed every page of the contract. I’ve agreed to the show, sure. I signed my name on every page but one: I didn’t agree to the relationship clause. I owe Salvatore for that one, too. Apparently it wasn’t enough to break the deal, because after talking with him the network was happy to send the press release to Variety without it.

Tomorrow, the repair crews begin their full-boat makeover. I could leave town, leave them to it, and take another mental breather, but I won’t. I’ll be here every day, backseat driving, driving the crew crazy. A lot of the guys they’ve hired are local guys, guys I would have called myself if I had the money to fix the boat.

“Finn?”

I look up at Levi as he reaches the ladder.

“Don’t be a fucking idiot. That woman was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen, and she came here looking for you.”

I scrub my face, waving him away with my other hand. She did look beautiful, but Harlow’s beauty isn’t the only thing that knocks me sideways. It’s her ferocity, her emotional honesty, it’s that she’s ten years younger than I am—younger even than Levi—and although I always scoff at what she considers life experience, she’s still better at fixing her shit than I am.

I SIT DOWN on my bed, the water from the shower still dripping out of my hair and onto my comforter. It’s nearly midnight, but I don’t think I’ll be able to calm down until I fix this. A phone rings somewhere in San Diego and after an eternity, Lorelei answers.

“This is a Canadian number,” she says by way of greeting.

If she’s cutting to the chase, then so am I. “Harlow’s even more pissed at me now, isn’t she?”

After a little pause, she says, “The short answer is yes.”

Hope spreads thick and warm beneath my ribs. “What’s the long answer?”

“The long answer? Yes, she is.”

Laughing dryly, I say, “Thanks, Lola. That’s helpful.”

“You want me to be helpful? It took a lot for her to come see you today. Harlow doesn’t stick her neck out for people she doesn’t love—some people think she’s selfish, but it’s the opposite of that. She’ll go to the end of the earth for you if she loves you. I’m pretty sure she loves you, and from what she said, you spoke about five words to her.”

“That’s pretty accurate.”

Letting out a little huff, she growls, “You’re a prick.”

I laugh again, moving my phone to my other ear to drag my towel down my chest. “Yeah, that’s probably accurate, too. It’s a bad habit.”

“I think she enjoys it, usually. But not when she’s putting herself out there. I’ve literally never seen Harlow spend more than five minutes thinking about a guy. And I also don’t think I’ve ever seen her so sad.”

My stomach clenches and I feel nauseous. “Where’s she staying?”

“No way. She’s sleeping.”

“I’m not going tonight. I’m going tomorrow.” Somehow, I don’t expect our business lunch with Sal will be the time for Harlow and me to kiss and make up.

“If you go there, and make this worse, you know I will cut your balls off when you sleep.”

“Lola.”

Silence rings through the line for ten seconds. Twenty.

“Lola, I swear I’m not going to make this worse. I fucking love her.”

“The Magnolia Hotel in Victoria. Room 408.”

SALVATORE AND HARLOW have already been seated when the hostess leads me back to the table. I’ve never eaten at the Mark at the Hotel Grand Pacific, but I should have known it would look just like this: like something out of a glossy catalog for the beautiful tourist stops in Victoria.

I can immediately sense Harlow isn’t going to look at me much during lunch. When he sees me behind the hostess, Sal stands to greet me, and Harlow follows reluctantly. I shake his hand and we all sit. Apparently not even Sal expects Harlow and I to greet each other.

Her notepad is out and she’s ready to play the role of the assistant. Maybe with anyone else she could fade into the background . . . though she’s physically stunning and hard to ignore, so I doubt it. And with me, it would be impossible. She looks so unbelievably beautiful it constricts my throat, ropes something tightly in my chest. Her hair is down, she’s wearing a sweater as green as an emerald, and tight black pants with these sexy little strappy heels. Jesus fuck, I want a picture of her in this outfit glued to my ceiling.

But I’m here for business and I really do want to be a consultant for the film. My noncompete clause with the Adventure Channel doesn’t apply to film consulting, and I’m still so terrified of this unknown future that I’m grasping at any footing, any new contact. Besides, in our first conversation, Sal said he needed someone who could “talk fish from A to Z” and I don’t know anyone better qualified to do that around here than me.

“How’s the boat?” Sal says by way of official opener, and it actually makes me laugh. Seeing it myself once I was home . . . it was depressing.

“It’s busted.”

He laughs, this genuine, warm laugh I wasn’t expecting. He looks slick but he speaks real, and I glance over at Harlow, seeing her in a new way. This guy is the real thing—a decent man in Hollywood—and he’s plucked my girl up to be his right-hand man because he knows she’s the real deal, too.

“Congratulations are in order,” he says. “The show sounds great, Finn.”

“We’ll see,” I hedge. “It’ll be different, that’s for sure.”

For a beat, my eyes meet Harlow’s and I wonder if she knows what I’m thinking, that I don’t give a fuck about the relationship clause. I’m spoken for, whether the producers know it or not. But she blinks away, looking out the window, and I see her jaw flex. It’s possible I fucked it up so much yesterday that even when I replace her later, it won’t matter.

I hope I’m wrong.

The waitress fills our water glasses, gives us time to look at the menu, and Sal and I chat casually about the area: the weather, the sports, why I follow the Mariners over the Blue Jays (they were my mother’s favorite team), how often I make it down to Mariners games (as often as I can, which is hardly ever).

Harlow remains quiet—making note of useful information but otherwise aloof—and Sal doesn’t push her to engage. I wonder how much he knows about what’s happened between us. I want to catch her eye, tell her with my expression that we aren’t finished here, that I have my shit together and my words have bubbled to the surface, but she hardly looks up.

The waitress returns to take our order and she’s standing so close to me I feel her skirt brush against my arm. I slide over in my chair to give her more space, and Sal gestures to Harlow to begin.

“I’ll order for the table, actually,” she says and out of the corner of my eye I can see Sal look up in surprise and delight.

Pointing to him, Harlow says, “He’ll start with a Caesar, have the chicken caprese for his main course, and iced tea, no sugar.”

His eyes twinkle. “I was gonna get a steak, kid.”

“Nope.” She looks at him and winks. “Mila told me no red meat.”

“Well, shit.”

Pointing to me, she says, “He’ll have the bisque to start—”

The fuck? She’s not even going to ask me? “Actually—” I begin.

“The halibut for his main.” She gives me a knowing look and my heart hurts remembering that perfect fucking day on the water with her. “And a glass of Chardonnay.”

I blink. Chardonnay?

Beside her, Sal barks out a laugh.

Harlow hands her menu to the waitress, saying, “I’ll have the filet, bloody, and a huge plate of fries.” Glancing at me, she says, “Also a Stone IPA to wash it all down.”

The waitress smiles, her eyes sliding over to me again as she collects the menu and leaves.

Harlow glances up, her lips twitching at my expression.

“Chardonnay?” I ask.

She licks her lips, giving me a sweet, wet smile. “You look a little parched.”

“I was going to order the steak, too,” I tell her, fighting a grin.

“Well, you can covet mine while enjoying your freshly caught halibut.”

Sal is watching us with open amusement, his chin perched on his fist. “The audience is going to love watching you two.”

“Not happening, Salvatore,” Harlow says, still staring right at me.

“It might happen,” I say back, unable to fight my smile anymore. “Seeing as how there was one particular page in that contract I didn’t sign.”

Her face registers surprise but she quickly hides it. So okay, I guess Salvatore left out a few details of our conversation, like where I made a fool of myself and told him I couldn’t imagine being with anyone else. Ever. Harlow is it for me; I’ll shout it from the top of Mount Fairweather if I have to.

“Well, relationship clause or not, we won’t be interacting much in any form until you admit you were a complete dick yesterday.”

Sal chuckles, and lifts his water to take a sip. If Harlow is comfortable doing this here, well, fuck it.

I lean my elbows on the table, saying, “I was a complete dick yesterday.”

Harlow studies my face for a long moment, looking at my mouth, my forehead, my eyes. She blinks down to the table, drawing her finger around the rim of her water glass as she thinks. And then, lifting one shoulder in a little shrug, she ends this perfect moment: “I think you and Sal should probably get started.”

CAREER-WISE, LUNCH IS a huge success. Sal has a million questions and I’m able to answer them all and give him some information it’s clear he didn’t even think to ask for. I signed an official consultant agreement—paying me a hefty five-figure consulting fee—so I can help immediately with set design and certain aspects of the film. I’m a little stunned over the complete one-eighty my life has done in the past three weeks.

Harlow-wise, the lunch was a bust. She took pages of notes, seemed to keep up with everything I said, and even asked a few good questions of her own, but after our brief back-and-forth toward the beginning of the meeting, she didn’t really look at me again.

But it was more than I expected. To be honest, I expected her to ignore me entirely or at the very least for the conversation to never veer into personal territory in front of Sal. The fact that she couldn’t help flirting with me gives me the confidence I need to drive to her hotel after dinner.

When the door to her room swings open, I think I’ve knocked on the wrong door and Lola was totally messing with me. But then I realize the mystery woman who has answered is Harlow in a huge bulky robe, a towel on her head and with her face covered in some white, cracking . . .

“Is that the kind of masque that ends in a q-u-e?” I ask.

She tilts her head, eyes narrowing. It causes the entire facial concoction to crack.

“What do you want, Finn?”

What do I want? I want her. I want her to open the door wider, let me in. I want to pull the tie open at her waist, pull off her robe, kiss her. I want to get back together and make it last longer than twelve hours.

But first . . . “I want you to wash the mask off so it doesn’t look like your face is breaking.”

With a sigh, she slams the door in my face.

The hall extends down for what feels like a mile and I wonder how many men have had doors slammed in their faces here. It’s a pretty fancy fucking hotel. I’m going to guess a lot.

I lift my fist, knocking again.

It takes a long time for her to answer, as if she’s walked away, and is considering leaving the door closed.

But then it swings open, and Harlow is immediately walking away toward the bathroom.

“Come in. Sit anywhere but on the bed. Don’t look cute, don’t get undressed, and don’t touch my underwear.”

I move to the chair in the corner, biting back a laugh.

“I’m rinsing it off because it’s time, not because you told me to. If it didn’t feel like it was breaking my face I would leave it on for the extent of your short visit just to piss you off, you enormous fuckwit.” She walks into the bathroom, closes the door, and I hear the sound of running water as she starts the shower.

Holy shit.

I think she’s going to forgive me.

Harlow emerges about ten minutes later, again wrapped in the robe but her hair is wet and loose and her face is scrubbed clean of the mask. I feel like I can’t properly inhale, like the sight of her has short-circuited my most basic instincts: breathing, blinking, swallowing. She looks unbelievable.

“Did you touch my underwear?” she asks, walking to her suitcase.

With effort, I close my mouth, inhale, and swallow so I can speak. “Yeah. Rubbed it all over my sweaty chest.”

She snorts and throws me a dirty look. “Don’t flirt. I’m mad at you.”

My smile vanishes without effort. “I know.”

Reaching for a brush in her bag, she pulls it through her hair, watching me. “It’s hard to stay mad at you when you come in here looking like that, though.”

“That’s . . . good, right?” I look down at my faded UW T-shirt, my old 501s, my favorite old red Chucks. I don’t see anything special, but the way she’s looking at me makes me feel like I’m wearing a tux. The knot in my chest loosens.

“Is this easier?” she asks quietly, adding, “Seeing me here in a fancy restaurant, or fancy hotel wearing a masque with a q-u-e, rather than trying to fit in down by your boat?”

The knot tightens again. “I was mad, Harlow. It made me act like a dick.”

“I know. I’m just an insta-forgiver. If someone I care about says they’re sorry, it’s done.”

“I’m not like that,” I admit. “You’d already left by the time I decided you were forgiven.”

She pulls her bottom lip into her mouth and sucks it, eyes wide and vulnerable. I know she has no idea she’s looking at me this way, and it makes me want to open up my chest, let her see how fast my heart is beating.

I lean forward, looking around the room. “You know I’ve never stayed overnight in a hotel except for that Vegas trip?”

She stills, breath catching. “Not even for Bike and Build?”

“No. Some people did, but we stayed with host families or camped.”

“Wow . . . that’s . . .”

“That’s been my life. Aside from the two years I spent in college, I was always here. I sounded like a dick when I said you looked out of place, but I didn’t mean to imply that I don’t like seeing you there. I just meant my world doesn’t look like this. Doesn’t look like you.”

She puts the brush down and turns to rest back against the desk.

“I don’t go out drinking every Thursday night and buy Starbucks every morning,” I tell her. “I don’t go on vacations and I couldn’t call up a producer friend to come drop a ton of money on fixing my boat.”

“You could now, probably,” she says. “Your life is going to change completely.”

“I know,” I say, bending to rest my elbows on my knees. “I guess that’s what I’m saying.”

“That you’re scared?”

I laugh, turning my attention down to the carpet. “Maybe not scared, really, just stepping into an unknown. It takes trust.”

“You don’t have to navigate this all on your own. I know I screwed up with you and Sal, but do you trust me?”

I look up at her and nod. “I do.” She watches me, eyes softening and I repeat, “I absolutely do.”

“All right. Then I’m getting dressed and you’re taking me to a lumberjack bar.”

My heart stalls, and then revs back to life as I sit up straight. “Just like that we’re done fixing this?”

She nods. “Just like that.” Swallowing, she adds, “I love you. We don’t need to rehash. I messed up, you messed up. I’m sure we’ll mess up again, it will just look different next time.”

She grabs jeans and a sweater, underwear, and a bra from her bag and turns as if she’s going to leave to change in the bathroom. Before I know it, I’m on my feet and moving across the room.

“Don’t get dressed.”

Harlow stops, backing into the wall. I slow a little, taking the last few steps to her over the span of what feels like a million rapid-fire heartbeats. I can see her pulse in her throat.

“Finn.” She leans her head back against the wall, looking up at me as I step so close I’m only a few inches away from her.

“You love me?” I reach forward, finger the tie at her waist.

“Yeah, you idiot.” She licks her lips, and then bites the lower one because, fuck, she knows it makes me hard. “I told you that already. You think it goes away after a few days, like a temporary tattoo?”

Laughing, I bend, pushing the heavy terry cloth aside to kiss her collarbone. She smells like shampoo and the soft smell I couldn’t forget in a million years: honeysuckle and warm stone, Harlow and mine.

I loosen the knot at her waist and pull her robe open, groaning at the sight of her bare skin, golden and smooth.

Her eyes close and she moans hoarsely when I run my palms from her hips to her breasts and back again, pulling her forward into me.

“I’m sorry,” I say into the warm skin of her neck. “I’m glad we’re not rehashing, but I want to say it anyway. I’m sorry I split town, I’m sorry I didn’t talk to you yesterday. And I’m so fucking sorry I didn’t call to replace out if we were pregnant.”

She pushes me away so that she can look up at my face. “ ‘We’?”

“Fuck, Harlow, you didn’t do it alone.”

Laughing, she agrees with a nod. “I’m sorry, too.”

“Baby, that was two weeks of fucking miserable.”

She falls silent, pressing her face into my neck. After a few seconds, she hiccups and nods wordlessly and I realize . . . she’s crying.

I pull back to look at her, cupping her face. “Hey . . . no, don’t. I—”

“I thought it was done,” she says. I wipe my thumbs over her cheeks. “At the boat? I thought you were done with me. I wasn’t sure how I was going to get over you. I’ve never had to get over someone before.”

“I wouldn’t have let it be done.”

“You left, though.” She looks up at me and two more tears run down her cheeks. “You just left and then wouldn’t talk to me and it was terrifying because with you I realized I’m that person who replaces their guy and that’s it.”

My chest twists and I tug my shirt over my head in a rush before pulling her against me. I need her skin on mine, need to get my heart as close to hers as possible, and she shrugs out of her robe, pressing into my heat, her arms going around my neck.

The Harlow everyone sees is a force to be reckoned with. This vulnerable Harlow is rare. She’s just told me she feels what I feel—this is it, I’ve found my girl and that’s it—and I don’t want to fuck it up with her.

“We talk about everything,” she promises into my shoulder. “And you don’t ever leave me like that again. Promise me.”

“I promise.” I pull back and kiss her, a glancing touch across her lips. I mean it to be small, a seal on a promise, but her mouth opens and the sound that escapes is a sob mixed with a moan and fuck me, it’s the sexiest sound I’ve ever heard her make because it’s so raw.

In an instant her tongue is sliding over my lips, my teeth, my tongue and her pleading little noises are filling my head. She slides her hands down my body and presses her palm to the front of my jeans and I was already quickly getting there but under her touch I harden, needing her so much it feels like a match has been lit beneath my skin.

She slips free the buttons and digs her hand in, under my boxers, and, with a tight gasp, curls her hand around my shaft. I need my fucking jeans down at my ankles and her legs up around my waist.

I need her skin and her sounds and the sharp burst of her breath on my neck. I need her taste on my tongue and—

“I’m on the pill now,” she says between her wild, sucking kisses. “I started it the day I got my period.”

“Jesus fuck,” I groan. “There is no better combination of words in the history of time.”

She laughs, shoving my jeans down, and I kick them off with my shoes, stumbling against her and pressing her into the wall.

“I’ll be slow later,” I tell her, reaching between her legs. My fingers slide across her clit, down into the unbelievable slickness. Fuck me. “Later, I’ll take my time but I just—”

“Stop talking,” she says on a tight exhale. “I know.”

Lifting her, I pull her legs around my waist and she holds herself there, watching me reach between us, rub the head of my cock over her. Up and down, barely in—fuck, fuck—barely out again.

“Look at that.”

She sucks in a tight breath. “I’m looking.”

The slight give of her body as I ease just in and out is a torture of bliss. My arms are shaking with how much I want to pound into her but she mistakes restraint for strain: “I realize this hotel thing is a novelty, but this one does come with a bed.”

Laughing, I walk the two steps over to it and lower her onto her back, following closely so I don’t lose the feel of her for one single second.

Her legs come around my hips and she pulls me down and in, guiding me inside her so fucking slow and hot, I have to stop when my hips meet her thighs because honest to God I could come right this fucking second.

She’s staring right at my face, straight into my eyes; our faces are close enough that we’re sharing a breath, back and forth. I lift my chin just slightly and I’m kissing her, and it’s too intense somehow but I can’t look away. I’ve never felt this. I want to tell her that but it sounds clichéd and plain. This feeling is so much larger than some trite words like never before and no one else.

“You’re it for me,” I tell her.

“Yeah.” She nods, her upper lip glistening in the warm room and maybe also under the strain of this shared tension, this need to move and dig deeper and feel. I’m just terrified if I pull back even once, I’m coming.

Harlow writhes beneath me, rubbing and fucking up into me and I’m holding still, trying to keep my shit together but it’s a losing battle. It’s not going to take long for either of us. I’m so hard I’m nearly busting in her. She’s swollen, hot and so fucking wet and I can tell by the flush of her chest that she could get off in under a minute rubbing on me like this.

She plants her heels into the bed and arches as I slide my hands beneath her shoulders, digging my hands into her hair, pressing my face into the damp strands. And then, under me, covered by me and filled full of me, Harlow fucks me like nothing I’ve ever had in my life. With her nails digging into my ass to hold me still, she circles and rocks up and grips me so tight—her body sucking all around me so wet, so good, holy fuck—gasping into my neck as she moves and growls and rubs herself right where she needs it, squeezing and tugging my cock while she gets herself off on me. She’s grinding, I’m shoved in deep, and her mouth is pressed right to my ear like she’s pushing every word in there, giving them only to me.

“So good,” she gasps. “God, it’s so good.”

I’m barely hanging on; just waiting to hear the sound of her quick breaths and hungry little gasps that will tell me she’s coming. “Get there,” I manage.

She hiccups, and moans, nails digging into my skin, and with a relieved exhale, she comes so hard she shakes in my arms, pulling me over the edge with her. I can’t be still anymore. I pull back and stab back in, fucking her hard now in long, urgent strokes as I start to come and she cries out into my neck.

I don’t want it to be over. I don’t want to move off her but for as long as her legs are, she easily weighs eighty pounds less than I do and so I roll to the side, falling beside her on the mattress.

“You know how gross hotel comforters are, right?” she says, breathless.

I close my eyes, still feeling warm and liquid beneath my skin. “What?”

“People who have sex in hotels—”

I reach over; press my palm over her mouth. “Shh.”

She giggles under my cupped hand and licks me and fuck, I’m over her again, tickling and pulling her arms over her head and sucking at her jaw and her neck and her breasts. The relief hits me in a burst, like the wind has knocked open the window and blown across the bed: I’m here with her. The business may not have been saved in the way I wanted, but we won’t lose our boats. My life is moving forward and I have the love of my life naked beneath me and everything will be okay.

But then I halt my mental uncoiling, because there’s one thing we haven’t discussed at all. “How’s your mom?”

She stills under me, giving me a look that tells me the best time to ask this was maybe not when I was nuzzling my face between her breasts.

“Sorry, I swear I wasn’t thinking about your mom’s chest. I was thinking about how relieved I am and how everything seems to be sorting out, and then I thought about what you’re going through. We haven’t talked about it yet.”

Harlow pulls my face up to hers and kisses me so thoroughly I have to pull away to get some air. “Thanks for asking me that.”

“Well?”

“Let’s get dressed,” she says. “We can talk about it over beers.”

She stands, and I follow her into the bathroom, sitting on the lowered toilet seat and running my hands up her legs, resting my head on her navel while she rubs some lotion on her face, ties her hair up in a messy bun. Now she smells like she did before, but also like the clean smell of her sweat and sex.

“You’re thinking about how much you love me right now, aren’t you?” she asks.

“Yep.” I run my palm over her hip and between her legs. She shivers when I slip my middle finger into her, stroking slowly. Kissing her stomach, I mumble, “Fuck. Fuck that’s hot.”

“What?”

I look up at her. “I can feel my come in you.”

This makes her laugh. “You’re a dirty, dirty man.” But she doesn’t step away. And she can’t hide the way her chest flushes and nipples grow tight.

“I like it,” I admit. I want to see it. I don’t admit that yet, though I don’t know why. Maybe because if I give voice to the thought, I know we’ll never leave this room tonight.

Her hands slide into my hair. “I like it, too. I like a lot of things I didn’t know before.”

There’s a moment where I wonder if she’s talking about the sex, or the rope, or something else, something bigger. Stepping away, she reaches for a washcloth and holds it under the faucet. “But don’t get any ideas. You’re taking me out.”

IT’S A HALF-HOUR drive from her hotel to my neighborhood bar but the trip seems to fly by in only a matter of minutes. What Harlow is going through with her mother is nearly identical to what I went through twenty years ago. Except she has the emotional maturity to deal with it far better than I did, and treatment is better now. Mom was diagnosed when I was ten, and I was alternately terrified of losing my mother and irritated by the responsibility I was left with because of her illness: Levi was only four, and when Mom died two years later, I was left to run the household for the two years it took my father to get his words back, to stop burying himself in sixteen-hour shifts on the boats.

If I could go back and do it all over again, I would do exactly what Harlow does, and I can tell by the doubt in her voice—Is she going over there enough or too much? What will her mother need when this second round of chemo starts? How long can her dad be the sole caregiver before he burns out?—that she needs to hear me say it out loud.

“You’re doing it just right, Snap. If I could do it all over, I’d want to handle it just like you.”

Her head whips to me. “Really?” she whispers.

“Really.”

“I’m scared it’s going to get worse.”

I pull into the small parking lot behind Dockside and shut off the engine. “It probably will for a while. But you don’t have to navigate this all on your own,” I say, repeating her words back to her. “I know I screwed up with you when I left town, but do you trust me?”

Harlow leans over and kisses me once, full on the mouth. “I do.”

For a Tuesday night, the bar is pretty busy, and I know it’s because the weather has been unbelievable. Nothing makes for a thirstier town than warm weather in October, no rain, and a day of big fish.

We enter Dockside to a burst of cheers and shouts, congratulating me on the show. Fuck, I really hadn’t considered this. I’d been so wrapped up in Harlow, I’d forgotten for a second that no one here would ever look at me the same. Leading her to the bar, I pretend I don’t see every fucking head turn as she walks by.

The questions everyone wants to ask come from the bartender, Nick, who graduated a year before me in high school, went to Harvard, and returned here because he couldn’t replace a more beautiful place in the world to live. “Finn, who’s the guest?”

“I’m Harlow,” she answers before I get the chance.

“You Finn’s long-lost sister?” says Kenyon at the end of the bar. “Please say yes.”

Harlow winces with a playful apology. “I’m the mail-­order bride. He told me he has a castle. Does he have a castle?”

“Sorry, kid,” Kenyon says, laughing. “Just a fancy television show and a lot of groupies.”

“Groupies?” Harlow asks, looking at me.

I order two beers and a basket of peanuts. “Come on.” I guide her to two empty seats at the quieter end of the bar.

She sits down and turns to face me. “You have groupies already?”

“Kenyon is a shit stirrer.”

“Because there were groupies?”

Laughing, I tell her, “There were some girls down at the docks today when the announcement came out.”

“You mean the girls who are over there playing darts and staring at you?” She lifts her chin and looks across the bar.

I tilt my beer to my lips, surreptitiously looking at where she’s indicating. There are a half dozen college-aged girls staring directly at us. “Yeah. That’s them.”

“Pretty sure they read between the lines on that Variety article.” She lifts her beer and drains half of it. “Bet this bar is about to get a lot more business. Bet every place in this town is about to get more business. And I bet those girls are all over Twitter talking about you being here.”

I hadn’t considered any of this, that by doing the show we might be helping more than just ourselves. But I can’t really focus on any of that with the way she’s looking at me. I take another sip of beer, studying her. “You jealous?”

She laughs. “Nope. You just blew your wad inside me in under two minutes, about an hour ago. I think I have you locked down pretty tight.”

“Gross. I fucking love you.”

Harlow leans on the bar, gazing up at me. “Let’s go get matching tattoos.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Mermaids or skulls. Your choice.”

“Mermaids?”

“Yeah,” she says. “Think of all the great conversation starters about your huge trident.”

I rub my jaw, staring at her perfect fucking lips. The only marks on her skin will be from me. “I don’t think so.”

“You could get a hook.”

A laugh bursts from my throat. “I’m not getting a fucking hook tattoo.”

She falls quiet with a little smile pulling her lips up into a kissable curve. I bend, kissing it.

“You make me happy,” she says.

Fuck. This girl. “You make me happy, too.”

She straightens, eyes narrowing. “There will literally not be one other girl kissing you on this show or otherwise. Dates? Okay. But they have to be hilariously miserable to make good television and then you sneak out and come see me and put bite marks all over my thighs.”

I blink, nearly choking on a peanut.

“Harlow, I told you I didn’t sign that clause. I’m not dating other women on the show.” I kiss her again. I’m hungry for it now, for the silk of her thighs on my teeth, for the way my teeth marks would look on that soft, delicate skin. Pulling back, I blink away, down the bar to clear my head.

“Won’t you have to?”

“I think they’re happy to have us signed on. I don’t think Matt or Giles is going to push for me to stay single, actually. I think they’re focusing the business story on me, and the romance angle on Colt and Levi.”

“Well, yeah, look at them.”

I growl. “Harlow.”

She smiles, licking her lips. “You mean we don’t have to be sneaky?”

Shaking my head, I ask, “Am I crazy to do this? I’m going to be a D-list celebrity auditioning for Survivor when I’m forty.”

“Oh, come on, that’s next year. Isn’t it a two-year contract?”

“Ha.”

“At least you’ll have a hot wife.”

“Wife?” My heart takes off, too fast. She reads my deepest thoughts, the ones that want to be settled, spoken for, sharing a bed and a home and a life.

“Yeah.”

“You’ve already been my wife, remember?” Despite everything that happened in Vegas, there’s very little I take more seriously than family. I step off my bar stool and she pulls me between her bent legs. “So you’re actually proposing this time?”

“Just predicting.” She leans her chin on my chest to look up at me. “I want kids.”

Kissing the tip of her nose, I tell her, “I’m okay with that. But not for a little while yet.”

“Three,” she says.

I shake my head. “Two.”

“Then they have to be the best two possible, so we should practice.”

“Nightly.”

“And daily.”

I nod. “Vegas again?”

She lifts my arm, checks my watch. “I don’t have anywhere to be until tomorrow at ten.”

“I don’t even have to work tomorrow,” I tell her.

Harlow slaps a twenty down on the bar. “Then shit, Sunshine, we’d better hit the road.”