32. Chapter 32

The letter sat there in my lap, well Posie's lap, as we both quietly processed everything Pops had to say to me. My fingers slid up and down Posie's back as she sniffled back her emotions.

"He always said you would be perfect for me one day when you grew up and got your shit together," she said.

I turned her, so that her legs were draped over the side of my own and she was sitting sideways instead of with her back to me. Those beautiful, red-rimmed eyes of hers had a steady stream of tears overflowing down her cheeks and it took every bit of willpower I had not to kiss them all away and finally make her my woman in all the ways that would bond us physically.

"When did he tell you that?"

She giggled and shrugged her shoulders, but looked away as if the answer embarrassed her and she couldn't face telling me when we were eye-to-eye. "When I was 15."

"Fifteen?" I questioned. Posie nodded in response and turned to finally lock eyes with me again. "That was before…"

"About a year before you ever even noticed me at all."

"Why didn't he tell me?"

"Probably because you were too busy trying to date every girl in our school except me."

"That's not true," I stated. When she gave me that looked that had her eyebrows arching and a smirk firmly engaged, I dug my finger into her side. She squirmed away and giggled, which helped to dry up the tears I couldn't stand to see slipping down her beautiful face.

"It was definitely true. Cheyenne wasn't the first girl I saw you kissing."

"She wasn't?"

"Nope," Posie stated as she shook her head and grinned at me. "It was the first time it hurt to see it happen, because by then Pops had been convincing me for almost a year that his grandson and I would be a perfect match if only the boy would open his eyes."

"Maybe he should have written me a letter back then," I suggested.

Posie shook her head. "No. I think Jack handled things the way he was meant to. You needed to grow up and do your thing. If we had come together sooner, Evan and I might never have grown close enough to realize we needed to work together toward our same career goals. And even though the circumstances that brought him into your world hurt us both, you were meant to be J.J.'s dad and that couldn't have happened if we were together."

That was a hard pill to swallow, but I knew that Posie was just as right as my Pops. The fingers of my right hand continued to run up and down her back as my left rested on her thigh.

"I wonder what Pops would think if he could see us now."

Posie laughed as her shinning eyes met. "He would probably say, ‘About damn time' and then give us some privacy so we could seal the deal." She hummed a noise in the back of her throat before changing the subject.

"Maybe the first part. I can't see him willingly giving his ."

"I missed gone. There were pieces of him I've had to watch fade away as he lost his battle. Promise me that you won't ever replace those rocking chairs on that porch. If you do, then I want them here at the barn. It won't be the same, but-"

I cut Posie off. "There's no way I'd ever replace them anyway, but sweetheart, if I'm living in that house, then you'll be there with me."

"I have the barn here."

"You said yourself that you wanted to expand the barn. Until you do, the farmhouse will be your home just as much as it will be mine and J.J.'s."

"Wait, does that mean you're going to move here?"

I sighed heavily. "I already had a position with the local department here. There were a few loose ends I had to tie up before J.J. and I could move. It was supposed to be a surprise, since I thought there was still time." Fuck. It hurt to know that I had to waste so much time dealing with Beth that I'd missed out on my son and me getting to spend time with Pops before he was gone.

"You were… Wait, what about," Posie swallowed and seemed to have a hard time getting the rest out.

"Beth?" I questioned. She gave a slight tip of her head to indicate that was who she meant. "She's being dealt with, but I want to go check on the information Pops said he had. Maybe it will help put a few more nails in her coffin. My lawyer is delivering papers for her to sign this week to relinquish custody of J.J. willingly."

"You think she'll do that?"

"At this point, she'd be stupid not to. I already had to get an emergency injunction against her because she basically abandoned him with a babysitter to go on a vacation. Luckily, the girl was the daughter of an officer on the force and they called me when Beth never showed back up. She sent the girl – who was only 17 – a text telling her that she needed to watch J.J. for the rest of the week because she was out of town."

"I don't understand how someone could do something like that."

"That makes two of us. My private investigator was able to track her down and get footage of her supposed emergency. She was a on a beach in Florida with her friends. He got some good pictures of her doing coke in the bathroom and a few other things we're going to use in court if she refuses to sign."

"How did he get bathroom coke-snorting pictures?"

I chuckled then. "One of her friends needed a few hundred dollars more for her vacation and had no problem selling her out."

"Some friend."

"When you treat people – even friends – the way Beth does, it's not surprising when they turn."

"I wouldn't know."

"Of course you wouldn't. You're one of the most genuine people I know, Posie."

She snuggled into my side and put her head on my shoulder. The gesture caused her silky hair to drape over my arm as her warmth seeped into my chest and left me feeling content even in a moment when I should have felt anything but. My grandfather just died. We were discussing my son's good-for-nothing mother. I was still in limbo waiting to move closer, though at least it finally seemed to be moving forward instead of backward. Still, I felt the most contented I'd ever felt in my life just sitting in an overstuffed chair in Posie's surprisingly homey barn as she sat snuggled up in my lap.

"It would be great if we never had to move."

"Did you mean to say that out loud?" She asked, and I could hear the humor in her voice as she did.

"No, but it's not something I'd hide from you either. Having you in my arms feels like a dream, too many years in the making."

"It really does." Her agreement had a tinge of sadness mixed in. "He would have been so happy to see this."

"I'd bet anything he knows."

"You're probably right."

I closed my eyes and allowed the warmth of her body to seep deep down into my very soul. She claimed my heart years ago. It had been done in pieces; another little section was given over to her with each new letter. Every time I held my breath as I checked the mail and hoped to hear from the one person had been such a puzzle to me in the beginning, made me yearn for her even more.

The only thing that disturbed us was the insistent buzzing of the cell phone I had stuffed in my pocket. "You better get that," Posie explained as she slowly removed herself from my lap. She stood there and waited while I retrieved my phone, but as soon as I had it in hand, I pulled her back down onto my lap. There wasn't a single cell in my body ready to give her up just yet.

"Hey, is everything okay?" I answered immediately after dialing my mom's number back.

"Everything is fine. We wanted to check to make sure you were both okay and see if you needed someone to come pick you up."

I tucked Posie closer to me and she burrowed her head into the crook of my shoulder where I could feel each of her breaths flutter across my neck. The sensation caused goosebumps to sprout all over my arms and neck.

"We're both fine. Posie gave me a letter from Pops and we just got done reading it. Did you guys know he left his house to me?"

"Did he?" My mother asked, though I could tell by her falsely high voice that she already knew the old coot had been up to something.

"Why didn't someone tell me? I've been looking for a house to buy."

"We all thought you would come to do some in person house hunting and your pops wanted to give you the deed then, but then your visit got pushed back because of that woman."

Mom refused to say Beth's name. She hated her. In fact, on more than one occasion, I'd heard her compare Beth to Posie's mom. She probably wasn't far off, but her need to keep making that comparison needed to end. I wasn't sure if it would hurt Posie to hear that, and it wasn't something I was willing to take a chance on.

"Well, that will be dealt with soon. Is J.J. okay there with you guys? If not I can come pick him up."

"He's absolutely perfect and being spoiled by his Uncle Evan as we speak." Posie must have heard because she patted my chest and smiled into my shoulder. "There is an official reading of your grandfather's will at the end of the week. for that?"

"I'll be here for that, if not a little longer."

"Does that mean you're still going back?"

Posie stiffened at Mom's question, but I squeezed her tighter to my body in reassurance. "I have to go back and get things packed up, but I'm thinking of taking some help with me."

"Oh! Do you need your brothers?"

"Not at all." I laughed because, once again, Mom wasn't fooling anyone with her inane questions. "I'm hoping Posie will go back with me to help get everything set for my move back home."

Mom shrieked and it sounded like she may have dropped the phone in her excitement, but none of that mattered as Posie sat up and locked eyes with me.

"You want me to go help you pack up?"

"I'm already mostly packed, but I thought it would be nice if you came and helped out and got to know J.J. a little bit before we move in officially." Posie's wide eyes turned almost panicked as she glanced around the barn. "Next door," I tacked on before also adding, "for now." She nodded her head in agreement just as my mom picked the phone back up.

"Don't worry about J.J. We have him for the night. If he needs anything, I will call you."

I pulled the phone from my ear to double check what I was hearing. "She hung up on me."

"She sounded excited to have her grandson spend the night."

"I think she sounded more excited that we were about to have a sleep over."

Posie giggled and then tipped her head back down onto my shoulder. "Is it weird to feel all of this and be happy about finally being in the same place? I feel like I'm betraying Dad's memory somehow."

"Pops wanted us together. He tried to get us on the same page for years. I don't think he'd agree that it was weird. I bet anything that he would think it was perfect. We have each other to lean on in his absence now and that's really all he wanted from the very beginning."

"I wonder why he thought you needed me to lean on?" It was a mumbled question, more like a thought slipped out than Posie was looking for an answer. Still, I couldn't stop myself from going there.

"I know exactly why. You're everything I should have been looking for all along. We enjoy enough of the same things to give us a solid building block for a relationship, but we're different enough to keep things interesting. Plus, Pops loved you. The real question would be why he thought I was the right Carter brother for you, especially since Evan is closer to you in age."

Posie's beautiful laugh filled my heart with hope. "Evan and I are too much alike. We would have either been at one another's throats or gotten bored too quickly."

"Yikes, I guess I can keep your secret for how you really feel about him," I teased.

"He knows."

Anger swirled deep in the pit of my stomach. "How would he know?"

"We talked about this very thing before." She shrugged as if it wasn't a big deal. I knew better. Evan had pretty much told me that he was interested in her at one point, but she was too hung up on me. Posie must have caught on to how I was feeling because she lifted a hand and traced it across my jaw. "He knows how I feel. He"s just as much a brother to me as Michael and Devon are. Ev thought he had a crush on me for about five minutes before he realized the same thing I've always known. We're too much alike and not compatible at all."

"That doesn't really make me feel better when I have to wonder if my brother's hugs mean something completely different than everyone assumes."

Posie giggled again and then leaned in to kiss my cheek. "Are you always this possessive?"

"I've never been possessive a day in my life."

"Really? I find that hard to believe."

"The only reason you find it hard to believe is that you are the one person who I get possessive over. I know we have a lot to figure out and it will take time to see where this thing between us is going, now that we'll be near one another, but I can tell you now that I won't be able to handle other men pawing all over you."

"Ditto," she insisted.

"Great, it's settled. Other men aren't allowed to paw all over either of us." She smacked my chest playfully and laughed.

"Other women better not be doing it either," she tacked on as I squeezed her body reassuringly.

"Come on, we need to get some food and then get some rest. I have a feeling tomorrow is going to be a long day with the family."

Posie sighed. "I suppose we can't stay in this little bubble forever, huh?"

"How about we promise to revisit the bubble as often as possible?" When she stared blankly up at me, I rephrased. "I like sitting here, with you in my lap, having random conversations about life, family, and even the future. I think this is something we should make time for every day, if possible. Even if it's just an hour out of our day, to catch up in the quiet hours when we're together."

"I'd like that a lot, Max."

"Good, it's a date then."