Alex worked at the same doughnut shop Rowen did. She’d helped Rowen get the job there and, since it was a Friday night, she wouldn’t come through the front door until the sun had come up. Alex lived life like it was going out of style, and weekends and all of the limitless adventures they held were not to be wasted.

After unlocking the door, I stepped inside and closed the door noiselessly. All of the lights were out except for the lava lamp bubbling in the window. The apartment was about the size of a shoe box, but Rowen and Alex had made good use of the space. Once I’d slipped off my boots at the door, I padded through the cubby-sized kitchen and headed for Rowen’s bedroom.

She always burned a vanilla candle when she was drawing or painting or molding or whatever other medium she was hard at work on, and I could still smell it. I’d associated with that smell with coming home, with finding my way back to her.

Her door was cracked open, like she knew I’d be showing up and was waiting for me. I slipped inside and leaned into the wall. Rowen wasn’t even ten feet in front of me, asleep in one of my white shirts that looked like a dress on her, her sheet tangled around her legs. I froze for a moment and just let myself . . . admire her.

That girl, that woman, was mine. And even though that was a hallmark I was intensely proud of, I was more sure and proud of something else.

I was hers.

It wasn’t a question. It had never been an option. It was something set into motion the day the universe was created, and thousands of years later, there we were. We’d found each other. I was hers, she was mine, we were each other’s. It was powerful stuff that hit me in moments like that. I knew it was the kind of profoundness that would get me labeled as a whipped sap, and I didn’t give a damn.

If people wanted to call me a whipped sap because I loved—loved—the girl lying in front of me, then bring it on.

After another minute, that ache of separation reminded me of its presence. Watching and musing time was over; I needed to be close to her. My need to be with her became so urgent I didn’t bother to slip out of my jeans. I just lowered onto the bed and slid across the mattress until every inch of me was curved around every inch of her. One arm slipped beneath her as the other one wrapped around her. I breathed the first full breath I’d taken since I’d said good-bye two weeks ago when she left Montana.

My intention wasn’t to wake her, but she always did, almost like she was waiting for me in her dreams. “You weren’t supposed to be here for another twenty hours,” she said in a sleep heavy voice. “Sleep deprivation. Falling asleep at the wheel. I like you alive and in one piece.”

I smiled and pressed my face into the curve of her neck. I inhaled, taking her in, and exhaled, letting her go. “I know.” I tightened my arms to feel her more solidly in them.

“You never listen to me.” She sighed, and it was more a contented one than a disgruntled one.

My smile spread. “I know.”

She twisted until her eyes locked onto mine. I couldn’t breathe when she looked at me that way. I’ve never been able to when those blue eyes of hers held the emotion they were capable of. I was just leaning in to cover her mouth with mine when her hand pressed into the side of my neck, stalling me.

“I’m glad you don’t.”

“I know,” I replied. “Me too.” I held my smile for another second before my mouth dropped to hers. Rowen sighed again, and before I gave my body permission, I’d shifted until I was holding my weight above her. The pace of our kissing never slowed.

Her hands moved for the buckle of my belt at the same time mine moved for the hem of her shirt. Rowen was kissing me, touching me, and loving me in all the ways I could ever want to be loved. She was expressing her love in ways I’d never even known existed the first five years of my life.

She’s love in human form, and even though I could tell she was still half-asleep and I was exhausted, I made love to her. We went slow and locked on to every touch like it was our first time all over again. When I moved inside of her, our combined sighs filled the room. And when our breathing turned into something heavier, I felt her unspoken words in her touch. She’d never loved, or never could love, anyone like she loved me.

Rowen Sterling consumed me.

IT WASN’T EVEN seven in the morning, and I was smiling. Actually, I was almost beaming.

I’d never been big on that whole “exuberant facial expression” thing. And then I met Jesse Walker. And now I beam at quarter to seven in the morning. I put all blame on him because I didn’t think about it when he was around—smiling, that is—it’s just something I’m simply incapable of not doing when he was close by. I’d fondly nicknamed it the Jesse Walker Smile Curse.

It wasn’t a sickness I was searching out a cure for.

After “saying our hellos” last night, we both passed out about two heartbeats after. When I’d gotten up to start breakfast, Jesse hadn’t even shifted. I almost checked his pulse he was sleeping so soundly. Sleeping in for Jesse was snoozing a few minutes past dawn. For him to still be asleep when it was rounding onto seven, the guy had to be about as beat as a person could be before keeling over from exhaustion.

As the bacon sizzled, I tried to work up some anger, or at least irritation, at Jesse making that five hundred mile drive after being awake for twelve hours. As usual, it didn’t work. Truthfully, part of me was thrilled he’d defied exhaustion to get to me sooner. Another part of me, a part that seemed a bit larger, worried that one day, our luck would run out and something terrible would happen.

That whole “running out of luck” thing I worried about didn’t only apply to Jesse driving across two state lines late at night. It plagued my nightmares and the darkest recesses of my mind when it came to Jesse’s and my relationship. I tried to ignore it—that feeling that the bottom would surely fall out from beneath us any day—but it crept into my mind and spread like a cancer. I knew my natural mentality tended toward pessimism and that those premonitions stemmed from that, so I tried damn hard to suffocate the naysayer in my mind. It was a constant battle.

I’d never brought up my luck-running-out thoughts to Jesse, and I never wanted to. They were my demons to fight. It wasn’t that I didn’t want his help; it was just that I’d have to bring him into hell to be a part of the battle. Hell—my personal one or any other one—was no place for someone like Jesse Walker.

So I battled them on my own, swore to myself I wouldn’t let the self-destructive person I’d locked up months ago out of her cage, and would do everything in my power to make sure I never ran out of luck when it came to Jesse. Whatever came, whatever obstacles we faced, one thing was certain: he was there now. He chose to give his love to me, and that had left me forever changed, no matter what happened.

“You make me breakfast when you come to Willow Springs, and you make me breakfast when I come here. You do realize you’re spoiling me, right?”

My beam was back in all of its prior glory.

“I do.” I turned off the burner before turning around. Jesse had managed to find his jeans, although the top button wasn’t fastened, but he was still sans shirt. Probably because I’d tossed it behind the headboard when I peeled it off of him last night. “I kinda like spoiling you.”

His eyes ran over me in a slow, purposeful way. Not in a lustful, I’m-going-to-take-you-right-now kind of way, but in a worshipful kind of way. I doubted I’d ever get used to him admiring me that way. “That can make a man weak.”

“I know. That’s all part of my evil plan.” Whether it was the look in his eyes, or the way he looked in nothing else but a carelessly situated pair of tight jeans, I simply couldn’t not approach him.