Page 63 of Breaking His Exile

X frowned. River deflected everything into a bit. Give the man a funeral, and he’d have you laughing by the graveside, then hate himself for it later. But he’d been folding into himself all week, quieter each day.

Gemma caught X looking. She lifted one shoulder, gave up, and reached for her drink.

X filled a plate, lost Kavik to Oliver feeding him scraps, and found himself watching Mariah Duval cross the yard with a glass of sparkling water and her son beside her.

Fourteen months. He’d counted. Fourteen months since he’d gone to Nessie’s with Jax after a security scare, and Mariah had shrugged off his charm and told him, “I don’t know where you got all that audacity, but you need to go put it right back,” in her honeyed southern lilt.

And he’d fallen. Right then and there. Hard.

Fourteen months of asking, of getting told no with varying courtesy, of inventing reasons to be in the parts of Solace where a florist might logically be. Fourteen months of calling her “mi reina” — the word came out of him before he could stop it, every time, no matter how firmly he told himself to quit.

He knew what she thought of him. Charm on legs, all polish and no weight, the flirtatious ranch hand who’d run the same routine on a hundred women before her. She wasn’t wrong about the routine. She was wrong about what it meant when he ran it on her.

Tate had caught some cake frosting on his thumb and was studying it like a scientist with a specimen. Mariah watched the yard with the composed, watchful look she wore in public, the one that performed serenity.

Christ, he thought. She’s beautiful.

He crossed the grass.

“Reina.” He stopped in front of her with his best grin assembled. “Dance with me.”

“No, thank you.”

“That was fast.”

“Practice.”

“Bailas bien,” he said. “I’ve seen you dance at festivals. It’s criminal, you sitting this out.”

Tate looked up from the frosting and swiveled his head between them. “Just dance with him, Mom.”

Mariah looked down at her son. Tate looked back, too serious for an almost eight-year-old.

“Tate—”

“He asks you every time,” Tate said. “Every time. And you say no. And then you watch everyone else dance.” He considered the frosting on his thumb, then licked it off. “That seems bad. Go dance.”

X held up his hand and waited for Tate to smack it. “Chamacho has a point.” Then he turned and gave Mariah his best puppy-dog eyes, clasping his hands in front of him. “Please? One dance.”

Mariah looked at the sky, briefly, like she was appealing to a higher power that had repeatedly declined to help. Then she looked back at X and Tate, who had mimicked his pleading pose, and amusement cracked through her composure.

She gave him her hand. “One dance.”

Joy bubbled up inside him, and he just barely held back the whoop of excitement as she let him lead her out to the wooden dance floor.

She held herself at the correct social distance, posture flawless, like she was at a charity gala instead of a ranch wedding with a husky stealing food from tables.

He kept it easy at first. A rhythm anyone could follow, his hands respectfully at her waist until her scent reached him. Fresh flowers, always, worked into her hair and her skin from the shop. Something warmer and softer underneath. He pulled her a little closer and inhaled. She didn’t protest the contact.

The song ran halfway before she spoke. “You’re quiet.”

“I’m full of contradictions.”

“You’re usually performing.” She wasn’t looking at him — her gaze was somewhere past his shoulder, watchful, always watchful—but her jaw wasn’t quite as tight, her spine not as steely.

“Thinking about Jax and Nessie,” he admitted, nodding to the happy couple who were laughing with Jax’s two SEAL teammates. “I’ve been to three weddings in my life, but today’s the first one where I understood the point.”

She glanced at him, and he caught her gaze, held it. “Don’t you want that, reina?”