CHAPTER FIFTEEN
EVELYN
Not much changes after our furious make-out in the kitchen.
Despite slamming his body against a kitchen appliance and kissing him like I’ve been thinking about nothing else, we continue to act as if nothing has changed. We have dinner together on the porch every night. He leaves me notes on the kitchen counter. I steal his socks. We exchange long, heated stares over the rims of our coffee mugs in the morning, a perfectly polite three feet of distance between us.
It is both wonderful and exceedingly annoying.
I like Beckett. I like his half-smiles and the way his voice deepens and scratches early in the morning, the gentle brush of his fingertips across my shoulder as I slip past him in the kitchen. I like the calendar he keeps taped to the side of his fridge, his family’s important dates scribbled down in red. I like that he’s always taking care of everyone around him, from the cats to his sisters to the pastries Barney demands from atop the tractor.
I like the way he looks at me when he thinks I’m not paying attention. The softness he tries to hide.
I’m looking forward to our date, whenever he decides to follow through on that particular promise.
I’m also looking forward to throwing him down on the nearest flat surface and having my way with him.
I’ve caught him staring at the kitchen table a couple of times since that morning, his thumb at his bottom lip and a look of deep concentration on his serious face. I’ve caught myself staring at it, too.
My restraint is hanging on by a thread, bolstered only by Beckett’s extended time in the greenhouse. He disappears there every free moment he has, mumbling something about making space and clearing clutter. Spring cleaning, he says.
Nothing to do with a duck.
But I’ve seen four packages arrive this week and I know the man isn’t buying duck food for himself. The smallest box contained a tiny little golfer’s hat with a bright red poof on top that Beckett snatched away as soon as he saw me with it, his cheeks a furious shade of pink.
By Wednesday, I’m a tangled up mess of tension. I sit at the kitchen table with my legs folded beneath me, my laptop open but my gaze fixed firmly out the back window. I catch a glimpse of him every now and again through the fogged glass of the greenhouse, his tall form bowed over something, his hand braced flat against the window, fingers spread wide. I have to turn away and busy myself with emails, lose myself in work in an effort to forget how that hand felt against my skin. How the sun lit up every single line and ridge of his body, his shirt thrown to some corner of the kitchen. The cut of his hips and the trail of hair below his belly button, the thick press of him against the front of his flannel pants.
I put my head down briefly over my computer and tap it there twice.
Beckett is a complication in my plan. My wishy-washy plan that doesn’t have a timeline or a clear end point. It would be easier if all I wanted was his body—to fall into bed with him and bury my confusion with the things he makes me feel. But I don’t. I want late nights on his back porch and stories about the stars. I want dirt on my hands and that smile on his face, the quiet one that inches up in fractions.
Last night he found me on the back porch, tucked in my chair with a blanket wrapped around my shoulders. I had been in a foul mood, annoyed with myself and my inability to just—figure this out. Get it together. Be better. He had watched me quietly with his shoulder propped against the door and asked:
“Did you find your happy today?”
I ground my teeth and shook my head. A quick jerk. “No.”
He had hummed once, head tilting to look out over the fields. “You want a hug?”
And that had been its own sort of magic, hadn’t it? He hadn’t tried to fix it. Just … asked if he could hold me through it.
I nodded and he wordlessly collapsed in the seat next to me, patting his thigh once. I shuffled over to him and curled up in his arms, my head nestled under his chin, his palm a heavy weight against my back, sweeping from my shoulders to my hip. A gentle pressure. A quiet affirmation.
My job means I travel all the time. This trip to Inglewild is the longest I’ve stayed in one place since I turned twenty. I’ve always had an itch under my skin to explore. It still flares to life now and again, but these days it’s tinged with exhaustion. More muscle memory than any sort of compulsion propelling me forward. I don’t want to go.
I want to stay.
I direct my attention back to my laptop and scan my email for the note from Josie. She sent over the information for Theo yesterday, the guy from the small business group that’s been reaching out. I tap out a quick message to him about connecting and hit send, the back door creaking open as I finish.
I glance up at Beckett, dirt covering his hands and in a smudge above his left eyebrow.
“How are the plants today?”
“They’re fine.” He glances down at his dirty hands and then back to me. There’s consideration there, like the only thing keeping him from throwing me against the table I’m sitting at is the topsoil on his palms. I curl mine into fists. “Can you be ready to go in an hour?”
“Ready to go?”
He nods. “Yeah. Ready to go out.”
I stare at him and wait for an explanation. He doesn’t give me one.
“Out where, Beckett?”
“On our date,” he tells me. A smile starts in his eyes. “You still want to?”
I nod. I absolutely want to. I was starting to think he forgot about it. That maybe it was just something he said in the heat of the moment.
I push back from the kitchen table and stand. “Where are we going?”
His smile spreads until he’s biting his bottom lip against the force of it. “Not very far.”
“Are you warm enough?”
I huff and puff my way up the hill, the second sweatshirt Beckett pulled over my head before we left the house making it difficult to move. I give his t-shirt a pointed look, my lips pressed in a thin line.
“Yes, I’m warm enough.” I’m too warm, but every time I try to take this damn sweatshirt off, Beckett looks like he wants to wrestle me right back into it. Which could be fun, but I’d much rather him wrestle me out of it.
He had appeared at my bedroom door at six on the dot with a large, greasy paper bag clutched in his hand and a backpack slung over his shoulder. A single, perfect white peony held between thumb and forefinger.
“Told you I’d bring you flowers,” he said.
I toy with the stem of it now as we wander our way through the fields, the branches of the pine trees catching on my sleeves. It’s warmer tonight, the first real spring evening we’ve had since I arrived. The dark sky blinks to life above us, the moon beginning to rise over the trees. I can see the glow of it, stars scattered behind.
“Not much further,” Beckett tells me.
It better not be. I’m being tortured by the way he looks in those jeans. The crisp white of his t-shirt against his tanned skin.
I bump his shoulder with mine.
“Do you take all the pretty girls out in the fields late at night?”
“Nah,” he shakes his head and bumps me back. “Just you.”
A flicker of warmth lights in my chest as he slows to a stop at the edge of a field. A clearing rolls out from beneath our boots to the edge of the woods. He looks at me from the corner of his eye and slips the backpack from his shoulder.
“Do you know where we are?”
I spin on my heel slowly, trying to remember. Two giant oak trees overlook over both sides of the entrance to the clearing, towering like guards to the forest beyond. I have a hazy memory of standing between them last fall with my arms outstretched, trying to touch both at the same time. Big, rusted orange leaves—almost the size of my hand—drifting down around me.
“The trees,” I say. “I remember them.”
He nods and pulls a blanket from his backpack, letting the edges fly out with one flick of his wrist. It settles against the grass with a quiet swish. A bottle of wine comes next, anchoring the corner. Two glasses, one of them my jam jar. The other, a chipped coffee mug.
“This is very impressive,” I say. He gives me a skeptical glance but I mean it. The last date I was on was close to a year ago and the guy took me to a shooting range where his ex still worked. Needless to say, there wasn’t a second date.
“You haven’t even seen the best part yet.”
“I’ve already seen your dick, Beckett.”
He barks out a surprised laugh, shaking his head. In the light of the moon, I can barely make out the little lines that appear next to his eyes with his grin. He grabs the greasy bag by his feet and holds it out to me, letting me peek inside. Cheeseburgers from the cafe, two overflowing cups of crispy french fries that are somehow still hot. I moan and reach for one, but he snaps the bag shut before I can, placing it by his feet.
“Hold on a second.”
“But … french fries.”
“They’ll still be there when we get back.” He starts walking backwards, closer to the edge of the woods where the twin trees stand. “C’mere.”
I laugh. “C’mere, what?” But still I follow after him. The moon lights up the constellations tattooed on his skin, the sky dipping down to twist around his arms.
“You haven’t had your happy today,” he tells me, hands already reaching, stars on his skin and in his eyes and in the sky above.
My heart flip-flops in my chest. “And you’re gonna give it to me, huh?”
“Yeah,” he smiles, as full and bright as that damn moon. “I’m gonna give it to you.”
He’s wrong though. I have had my happy today. I’m practically drowning in it—in simple, quiet joy. The warm comfort of a perfect moment with a good man.
I stop right in front of him and he stares down at me. I trace the lines of his face and I feel like one of those meteors he loves so much. Tearing through the atmosphere, a giant ball of light.
“The last time you were here—” He cups my face with both of his hands and presses a gentle kiss to the tip of my nose, the space between my eyes. Everything in me shivers and melts, and my hands grasp at his elbows. “The last time you were here, I wanted to kiss you under this tree.”
“You hid it well,” I murmur as I follow his retreat, silently begging for more.
“Nah,” he says, his voice a rasp. “You just weren’t looking close enough.”
And then he kisses me.
And he shows me everything I missed.
“And that one?”
I point at a bright cluster of stars with my french fry, my boot knocking against his on the blanket. I shift my head against his shoulder and he follows the direction of my hand, nose brushing briefly against my hair as he angles to get a look.
“Cetus,” he says around a mouthful of burger. He swallows and tosses the wrapper towards his bag, settling back on his elbows with a happy sigh. I follow after him when he tugs once at my belt loop, my back against his chest. “The Sea Monster. Poseidon sent him to ravage some coastal town when Cassiopeia said she was more beautiful than the sea nymphs.”
“That sounds petty.”
He hums in agreement and curls his hand around my wrist. He guides my hand slightly to the right so we’re both pointing at another cluster of stars. “Aries is right there.”
His thumb drags a lingering half-circle against my pulse point and I feel it like a touch between my legs. I shift on the blanket and wiggle closer, my head under his chin. “And that one?”
“That’s an airplane, honey.”
A laugh slips out of me and I peek up at him. Relaxed, his face tilted towards the sky, a smile curling at the very edges of his mouth. He’s loose out here in the fields in a way he isn’t anywhere else.
“This is a good date,” I tell him quietly. The best I’ve ever had. “Thanks for bringing me out here.”
“Thanks for coming out here.” He looks down at me and plucks at the cuff of my sweatshirt. “Properly dressed.”
I glance down at the doubled up material stretched awkwardly across my chest. “Overly dressed, I think.”
He makes a sound against me, a deep rumble low in his chest that I feel against my back. His hand slips from my wrist to my elbow, up over my shoulder. Two fingers tuck into the collar and trace along my bare collarbone. My whole body shivers.
“Yeah?”
He catches the edge of my ear between his teeth and I grin. His first concession to the heat banked between us. I remember how much he liked that the last time we were together—his teeth against my skin, praise whispered with every rough scratch.
I nod. “Mmhmm.”
I shift and shimmy until I can tuck my arms through the sleeves, the movement clumsy. I laugh as the material gets caught around my head, two big hands grabbing and pulling until I can see the field and the sky and the trees again. Beckett looking at me like I hung the damn moon myself.
It’s so different from the last time we were together. Different, but exactly the same. He still looks at me with a ferocious heat—careful eyes mapping out exactly what he wants to do and where. What touch to give me first. But there’s wonder, too. Like he can’t quite believe I’m here with him, in this place. Affection and amusement and a bubbling warmth, deep in my chest.
He blows out a breath and scrubs his palm against the back of his head, watching as I lean back and prop myself up on both hands. I don’t think he meant it as a grand seduction, but it feels like one now, those sweatshirts sitting in a clump by his hip. I’m left in nothing but the threadbare t-shirt I pulled on before we left the house, the wide collar slipping over one shoulder. He catalogs the bare skin it reveals with heavy eyes, his tongue sweeping across his bottom lip when I shift slightly and it droops a little more.
“I want you,” I tell him, finally voicing the thought that has been running circles in my head since I first saw him step off the curb in the middle of town. Since I saw him step through the door of a dive bar. I don’t think I’ve ever stopped wanting Beckett, not really. I tiptoe my fingers up the delicate ink on his wrist and curl my hand around his forearm. Pull once. “And I think you want me, too.”
His eyes snap up from where they were burning a path across my bra strap and he gives me that half smile again, somehow better than the full grin that spills out of him like starlight. This smile feels like mine and mine alone. He gives in to my tugging and shifts up on his knees.
“Of course I do,” he says, sure and direct, impossibly Beckett. He says it like it’s something he’s been thinking about, too. Maybe since he saw me standing with my hip against a rental car. Maybe since he saw me sitting at a bar top with a glass of tequila in front of me. “Wanting you has never been a question.”
He maneuvers in front of me until he can grip my ankle, caressing it once with his thumb as he opens my leg wide, making enough space for him to move in between. We’re only touching at that one place, his hand against my leg, and already I feel it everywhere. In the small of my back and the tips of my breasts, the arch of my neck and the space between my legs.
His hand squeezes me gently and his palm moves up. The calluses on his hands catch on the rough material of my jeans, a stilted movement that’s better in its honesty. Another squeeze at my thigh, thumb dragging along the inseam above my knee. He hesitates there briefly, considering, and then reaches for my hip.
“If we do this again, Evie, there’s no running.” His eyes are serious, his body held perfectly still between my open legs. “I don’t want to wake up alone.”
I grip his shirt in my fists, regret slicing across my chest. For the way I left him all those months ago and for the ways I’ve left him since. I lean up and brush a kiss across his bottom lip. An apology, but a promise, too. “You won’t.”
“Alright,” he says, and his eyes flash darker, his tongue appearing briefly at the corner of his mouth. His hands flex at my sides, fingertips pressing and guiding. “Lay back then.”