Page 111 of One Wild Chance

“You’re doing the right thing, Jaxon,” Grady says. “You know that, right?”

“Yeah, I know.”

Wyatt claps me on the back. “Good. Because if you’d gone to Michigan and left that woman behind, I would’ve sent her pictures of middle school Jaxon just to punish you.”

“You mean his headgear-wearing phase with braces?” Grady says.

“It’s not my fault I had an overbite,” I defend.

“What about the blond highlights?” Rhett counters.

“It was popular!” I say.

Rhett lifts an eyebrow. “So were mullets. But that didn’t mean they looked good.”

I point at Rhett. “When I come to your next game, I’m wearing a T-shirt with your prepubescent face on it.”

He shrugs. “Nobody would recognize me. I was a scrawny kid.”

“Mom said we all looked like angels,” Wyatt says.

“All moms are obligated to say that,” Grady says, then turns to me. “You go to Rhett’s games? Why don’t you come to my games more?”

“Because baseball takes four hours and nothing happens,” Rhett says.

“It’s the great American sport!” Grady says.

“So is napping,” Rhett says.

“I’ll come to more of your games now,” I say with a laugh. “Maybe I can even talk Summer into it.”

I look over at her. She’s smiling at something Jess says, my jacket sliding off one shoulder. I’ve spent over a decade with people cheering for me in arenas, and I never once felt the way I do right now.

Content. Like I have everything I’ll ever want right here.

Watching her, I know that whatever I might’ve found in Michigan would have to be extraordinary to compete with this.

Chapter 31

Summer

I should’ve known Jess Connors would put our picture on the front page of the Golden Springs Gazette. Not even the Chance brothers’ picture on page two could top it. There, front and center, is a color picture of Jaxon and me standing in the barn doorway, looking adorably cozy with his jacket around my shoulders.

I probably won’t be able to show my face in Golden Springs now without someone asking about a future wedding date.

Larissa calls before I’ve finished my first cup of coffee. “I’m looking at the paper online right now,” she says, without saying hello. “SUMMER.”

“I know, I know,” I sigh.

“You look like you’re in a movie. Like the cutest rom-com ever.”

“Stop.”

“And wearing his jacket?” she gushes. “How adorable are you two?”

“Larissa, it’s not a proposal. We were posing for the camera.”

“Did you read what Jess wrote?” she asks. “Jaxon Chance and Summer Daniels never imagined they’d find love when they set out to establish the area’s first wedding venue at Lucky Chance Ranch. But it turns out the luck rubbed off on them, because Wildflower Weddings may have brought more than brides to the barn. It brought them together.” She sighs like the romantic she is. “Summer, she basically announced your relationship in the Golden Springs Gazette.”