Sophie Oak - Pure Bliss

“Permanently,” Noah added, his hand sliding over her hip.

She shook her head, still shocked at the outcome. “I don’t understand you.”

“That’s funny, darlin’,” Noah said. “Because I understand you.”

“Explain it to me, brother.” James sounded so calm, his breath easing in and out of his chest. “I would ask Hope, but I think I would get pissed off at the answer.”

“More than likely,” Noah replied. “You can’t understand, Jamie. You’ve never done anything that genuinely hurt someone, not even yourself.”

“Hell, I ain’t perfect.”

Noah laughed. “Not even close, but you’ve always done your duty. You even did it for a snot-nosed brother who doesn’t share an ounce of blood and who left you behind.”

“We’re past that,” James said firmly.

“See. You forgive so easily. But it’s harder to forgive yourself. Think about it, Jamie. What would have happened if I had stayed in town, if I had been Bliss’s vet? What would have happened the minute she walked into Stella’s? Did you know you wanted her?”

James’s hands stroked her hair. “Hell, yeah. I knew.”

“And you stayed away for a year because you had nothing to give her. You wouldn’t have felt that way if I had been there.” Noah’s voice dripped with regret.

A deep sigh came from James. “The ranch would have still needed work. The fire would have still happened. We still would have needed money.”

“But you would have trusted that between the two of us, we could give her what she needed.” Noah leaned against her. “A year gone. We would have gotten married by now. She would be pregnant. We would have a family. And we don’t because I got it in my head that I could finally get something you didn’t have only to find out that it didn’t mean shit because you weren’t there to share it with me.”

Hope smiled. “You two are taking a lot for granted. Maybe I would have played hard to get.”

A light joy threatened to take her. They were still here. She’d told them the worst, let them see the depths of where she’d sunk, and they held her. They were talking about a family. They had seen her worst and loved her anyway.

James’s smile turned distinctly wolflike. “Hard to get? I doubt it. I remember the way your pretty face flushed the minute you saw me. You wanted me. Now it might have taken longer because you would have known you had to take Noah’s ugly mug along with mine. I got all the looks.”

“Asshole.” Noah laughed.

James stood up and offered her a hand. “Come with us, baby. We want to show you just how little we care about your past beyond the fact that we love the woman you are now. You made one mistake. I forgive you for it, but we need to talk about it so you never make it again.”

She nodded, willing to listen to anything he had to say.

Noah took over. “You should have made damn sure the fucker was dead. Next time shoot him, darlin’. Don’t leave things to chance.”

“We’ll even help you hide the body,” James offered helpfully. “A body can get lost on this land.”

“I don’t deserve you.” But she would take him and Noah and whatever family they were blessed with.

James looked deep in her eyes. “I have a past, baby. If I haven’t fucked up quite as much as you and Noah it’s only because I didn’t have time to. I’ve made a mess of a lot of things in my life. I should have gone after my brother, but I let my stubbornness cost us.”

“He’s also slept with half of Southern Colorado,” Noah supplied.

James slapped at his brother and then looked back down at her. “He’s right. I’m not pure, baby. I’m not some perfect man, but I promise I won’t touch another woman after you. I don’t give a fuck who was in your bed before us, but from now on, it’s me and Noah. We’re your men.”

He took her hand and started toward the bedroom.

Hope followed, reaching behind for Noah’s hand, leaving her past behind for good. Now there was only her future ahead.

Noah’s hands were shaking as Hope led him through the quiet house where he’d grown up. He knew every floorboard and wall of this house. Every inch contained a memory. There wasn’t a room in the house where he couldn’t remember his parents or some blissful piece of his childhood. Even the bad times now held a certain bittersweetness, as though time and age had taken the poison leaving only the beauty behind. Yes, there had been hard times in this home, but each one had been met with his parents’ grace, his brother’s steadfastness. Though Noah had been born somewhere else, he couldn’t remember that place. The Circle G seemed like the only home he’d ever had, as though his life hadn’t begun until he’d walked onto this land.

And it had ended when he’d left.

He’d been a dead man walking, a ghost trying to get back to life and failing until one small woman turned her eyes to his.

He loved Hope.

James opened the door to the master suite, the one their fathers had renovated to share with their momma. An aching sweetness pierced him.

“Do you remember standing outside in this hall, giggling?” James asked. He stared at the room as though he could see their parents in there once more, loving and laughing and building a home for them.

Noah missed them with his whole heart, but they were still here in every board and wall, in every acre. “Well, they made an awful lot of noise, brother.”

Hope laughed. “You two would listen to your parents making love?”

Noah nodded, the memory coming to him. “It was hard not to, darlin’. Sometimes we could even hear them down the hall. When we got older and it was just gross because parents shouldn’t do that sort of thing, we would blast music. Our dads were always going after Momma. They were crazy in love. Twenty years they had together on this earth.”

James became solemn. “And forever. They have forever.”

Forever. It was all he could ask for. More than he deserved.

James walked through the door and sat down on the huge bed that dominated the room. So much of it had been left untouched, a shrine to the love that had surrounded Noah and his brother all their lives. Three dressers and Momma’s hope chest. Three rocking chairs and Dad’s bookshelf. Papa’s cowboy hat still hung on a hook near the closet.

“This is our room now. We’re going to fill it with love the way they did. You remember what Dad did after their wedding?” James turned his head slightly and looked at Hope. “We weren’t there, of course, but he told us all about it. Dad and Papa gave us the speech about sex. And then they told us how they felt about our momma and what words they used on their wedding night because sex, they said, went far beyond bodies.”

Noah nodded and reached down, shoving his arms under Hope’s knees, hauling her high on his chest. He loved the weight of her in his arms. He carried her over the threshold and to the bed where his brother waited. “Jamie and I loved this story. Papa carried Momma over the threshold, and Dad was waiting for her. Papa sat her on Dad’s lap and told her something nice.”

He settled Hope onto James’s lap, his brother’s arms going around her waist.

James held her close. “He said this is our home now. This is our place, and we will never leave it again. Our bodies can walk around, but our hearts and souls are here. Always.”

“Always,” Hope said, tears in her eyes. “I love you, James. I love you, Noah. I love you both so much.”

She loved them. The words threatened to unman him utterly. She loved him, and she loved James. The family Noah had longed for was within his grasp. The ghost that was Christian Grady still lingered, but it was easy to brush him away for now. They would have to deal with him. If he’d truly fled the area, Noah would find a way to hire a private investigator to track him down. He wanted that man out of Hope’s life permanently, and he would find a way to do it. He looked at his brother and could see plainly that James was thinking the same thing.