She laughs. “No. I bought one and stuck it in the oven to play the part. It was either sexy Chase or domestic Chase, and I chose the former for you.”

“Good choice. Sexy Chase was definitely a good choice.” I kiss her again.

“No regrets.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Chase

DAYS PASS IN LAUGHTER.

Nights crawl slowly as we make love.

Regardless of what we’re doing, we can never get enough of each other.

I can never get enough of him.

And even now, staring at Gunner as he looks over his shoulder and parallel parks his truck, I’m not sure if I ever will.

He’s so different than my norm, but maybe that’s the problem. Maybe I needed to think outside the box. Maybe what I thought I needed wasn’t it.

But is Gunner it?

I shake loose the thought, which is more and more frequent after spending so much time together. You can learn a lot about a person in a short amount of time when you’re sharing space with them.

Like how clean someone is, how they like to spend their downtime, what their pet peeves are, and how they act when they’re tired or hangry. The funny thing is Gunner is like me in all of those aspects other than he never puts things back where they belong. And I’m not talking in places I think they belong, but rather in the places he had them to begin with.

We’ve had banter over it. And tiffs.

Regardless, in the end, we’ve laughed and then snuggled on the couch . . . or more often than not, kissed each other until the kissing turned to snuggling in other ways.

But it’s nice waking up in someone’s arms. I’m not sure why I never knew that. I’m a person who always wants her space and time to decompress or sit in silence. The fact that I can do all those things without feeling smothered is new and insanely unexpected.

When Gunner looks back to the front of the truck, he catches my eye and smiles. “What?”

“Dare I ask where you’ve taken me?” I look around at the nondescript strip mall where we’re parked. It’s in the downtown area of a town about thirty miles east of Destiny Falls. There’s a decent-sized sports bar across the street, a park in the distance, with huge swaying trees and a busy playground. The parking lot houses a nail salon on one end, a dog groomer on the other, and in the center is a large shop with blacked-out windows and a huge sign above the door—in font that looks like it’s blurry—that reads RAGE.

“We’re going there.” Gunner points.

“The haunted house-looking place?” I ask, referring to the place called Rage. “Should I worry that you’re trying to off me in some creepy ritual?”