Page 149 of Knot my First Rodeo

Nobody in our truck is paying much attention to the opening credits.

Autumn has somehow managed to burrow herself into the nest of blankets she'd built earlier. She's sitting between me and Tripp with her back against the cab, one blanket draped across her lap and another pulled around her shoulders.

Briggs is leaning back against the wheel well with one knee bent. Her feet are stretched across his lap. At some point, she'd kicked off her Vans and Briggs quietly picked them up before they could fall out of the truck bed. Now, they're sitting neatly beside the tailgate.

Autumn shifts slightly, and one foot slides against his thigh. Without looking away from the screen, Briggs wraps a hand around her ankle and settles her leg back where it was. A few minutes later, his thumb presses into the arch of her foot.

Then again.

Massaging.

Absent-mindedly.

I don’t think he even realizes he's doing it.

Autumn's head turns, and for a second, she just looks at him. Briggs keeps his attention fixed firmly on the movie. The corner of her mouth lifts before she settles back against the pillows.

Autumn reaches into the popcorn bucket balanced between us and holds it toward Briggs without looking. He takes a handful, and a minute later, she does it again.

Conversation happens occasionally. Not enough to annoy the people around us, just little comments between scenes.

At some point, Autumn tucks herself closer against my side, her shoulder brushing mine before settling there completely. I drape an arm around her, and she leans into it just as naturally.

I glance over when I realize she hasn't spoken in a while. Her eyes are closed, one hand is still resting in the popcorn bucket, and the other is curled loosely against her stomach beneath the blanket.

She's asleep.

The sight pulls a smile from me before I can stop it. Tripp notices a second later, and his mouth opens. I shake my head once.

The movie continues around us, the crowd laughs, somebody starts their truck. Autumn sleeps through all of it.

My gaze drifts from her to Tripp, then to Briggs. The same stubborn man who’s spent so much time convincing himself distance was the answer, is still sitting there with her feet in his lap, still rubbing slow circles into the arch of her foot.

I look away before he catches me. Because looking at them now, sprawled across the blankets in the back of a pickup truck, while a movie nobody's really watching plays overhead, it feels like everything is already figured out and settled.

We've just been taking the long way around to get to it.

Chapter

Forty-Three

Briggs

The second I walk into the kitchen, Autumn’s eyes widen slightly and the laptop screen disappears so fast it might as well have caught fire.

I pour myself a cup of coffee and lean against the counter.

For three days, I've been telling myself I need to talk to her.

Three damn days.

Ever since the swimming hole idea first lodged itself in my head, I've been batting it around, waiting for the right moment, but Clint and Tripp had little dates planned, and I didn’t want to intrude on their plans. Both of them were finally getting what they'd spent weeks wanting, and the last thing I wanted was to step in front of that.

So, I waited. One day became two. Two became three.

Which would probably sound reasonable if I wasn't a grown man, and acting like asking a woman to spend an afternoon with me required approval from the president.

I take a drink of my coffee and look at her over the rim of the mug. She's hiding something and a terrible liar.