The Bad Boy of Redemption Ranch - Maisey Yates Page 0,112

Because all the colors in my world are brighter with you in it.”

“I feel the same,” he said. “I spent four years in prison thinking about where my life had gone wrong. Thinking about the man that I had decided to be. The person that I thought it was so important I become. It was all for other people. It wasn’t until I came back here. Until I met you. Until I found Emmett. Until I met the Daltons, that I realized the man I want to be for me. For you. I thought that being the right kind of person meant changing everything that I was. Because I looked at the life that I had, the life that we had with our mother, and I thought I had to be something different. But this feels right. This is more than fitting in. It’s finding home.”

He stroked her cheek, her skin so soft beneath his touch. She was precious and perfect. The kind of beauty he’d never imagined he might touch in his lifetime. But she was here, with him.

With all the pieces of himself.

“And it all came together when I met you, sweetheart,” he continued. “That’s when I started to grow roots here. Because this place is your heart. And I want to be where your heart is. I always believed in love. I’ve seen it in a lot of places, I’ve seen it go a lot of different ways. But my feeling on it was that you couldn’t see how it would turn out in the end, so I wasn’t willing to risk it. But this isn’t a risk, Pansy. It’s a baptism. I feel like I’ve come out clean, saved. For you. With you. I was never in love. Not before. I thought I knew. I saw my siblings with the people they fell for, and I thought I understood. But I didn’t really. I had a lot of bitterness in my heart. A lot of resentment. But anything that would get in the way of me loving you has to go. Because I’ve got to be able to open my arms as wide as they can go, and that’s what you do for me. I wasn’t really free when I walked out of that jail cell. I was still in bondage. Until you.”

She smiled up at him, and he kissed her, hefting her up into his arms and looking down at her beautiful face.

“I made police chief,” she whispered.

“Well hell,” he said, his heart expanding even more. Damn he was proud of her.

“I know. And I... I waited for that to feel like it made me perfect. Like it fixed all of this. But it didn’t. And that was how I knew. That’s how I knew it was never going to. Because it’s not about pictures on walls or job titles or building a monument to a memory. It’s all just about love. That’s what sustained us when we grew up. All our noisy family dinners and holidays and showing up to school with mismatched clothes that had holes in them, love was what made it work. But somehow I missed that I needed it in the rest of my life too. It’s not a job that’ll make me happy. It’s loving you.”

“Well, I’m damn glad you got your job anyway,” he said, sharp, hard emotion slicing through his chest.

Loving her this much hurt. But it was the best hurt he could have ever imagined.

“Me too,” she said. “I never thought it was possible to have everything.”

“Well look at you. You seem to have it all now.”

“Of course, I know what I could live without. And it’s not you.” She touched his face. “As long as I have you, I have it all.”

West Caldwell hadn’t been happy to get pulled over by the cops. At the time, it had seemed like an annoyance. But now, it seemed like a damned blessing.

If he could frame every ticket his wife had written him, he would.

“You know,” he said. “If you want to keep your last name when we get married, I understand. Because you thought about being Police Chief Daniels for a long time. And I know you want to continue your father’s legacy.”

“Did I say that I was going to marry you?”

He smiled. “You will.”

“You know, I don’t think I need to keep his name. Because he’s with me, and in my heart. Because he’s part of who I am. And because I’m going to be the