And if she rejects me, I don’t want them to know I’ve failed to hold on to the most precious person in the whole wide world to me.

My brother and sister are the only family I have now, and Sienna has come to feel just as important to me as they do. Even more so in many ways. All the important ways, and like an idiot, I didn’t see it until I’d gone and made her all the way mad at me. So angry she needed to never see me again.

Not that I accepted that for a second. As soon as I finished reading her letter, I was on the phone to the airline I fly with the most, begging for any ticket they could find for me to get to Denver today.

But even as I stormed to the airport and flew toward her without a second thought, I didn’t ‘think I’d be searching an attic nursery for extra pillows to make a spare bed on the floor.

What did you think would happen?

I wasn’t thinking.

I was only driven by instinct.

The bathroom door creaks open as I finish making up a makeshift bed on the floor.

Sienna’s long auburn hair is loose from her ponytail now, tumbling over her shoulders. “I—” She gestures at the bathroom. Then at me, and the beds. “Thank you. Your turn?”

“In a minute.” I frown as I glance around the room. It’s missing a couch, but it has a large armchair. That will do.

I cross to Sienna and pick her up, swinging her into my arms.

She shrieks and wraps her arms around my shoulders. “Put me down!”

I sit in the chair and arrange her in my lap.

Yes, this is better.

“What are you doing?” She grumbles the question at me as I smooth my hand down her cotton-covered thigh. She’s wearing soft, worn Christmas PJs that stretch over her curves in a way that is ten-times sexier than lingerie.

“We need to talk.”

“Do we need to be touching for that to happen?”

Yes.

I know she means the question to be sarcastic and bratty. To push me away and throw up a barrier between us, because I’ve hurt her, and she wants to protect herself.

But yes. I need to be touching her, and from the way she’s clinging to me, I think she needs to touch me, too.

“There’s nowhere else to sit.” I squeeze her knee, and she curls in tighter to me, turning herself into a ball on my lap.

As if even annoyed with me, she needs to be held.

I wrap my arms around her and squeeze her tight, my heart pounding.

“Jacob?”

I don’t correct her on the name. Maybe it’s better if we’re real behind the closed door of our room. “Mmm?”