Chapter Eighteen

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

EVELYN

My brand new phone rings on the arm of the chair as I sit on the back porch of Beckett’s cabin, a mug of tea in my hands and my feet propped up on the railing. It’s an unfamiliar number, but I recognize the area code.

I tap answer as I watch Beckett cross back and forth through the thick glass windows of his little greenhouse, bending at the waist with a watering can held loosely in his fist. I don’t know how anyone got this number. I asked Josie for a new one when she ordered me a replacement phone.

I pull the phone away from my ear and glance at the screen. That is a—creative interpretation of the sweet but lingering kiss Beckett gave me beneath the flower arch.

I’m pretty sure Kelly wasn’t even in the greenhouse earlier today. There’s a pause and then her loud and boisterous laugh dances over the line. I can always tell when the salon door is open when I’m walking through town. I can hear Kelly’s laugh from a mile away.

I hang up the phone and kick my legs as I stare out at the rolling hills. I let myself imagine what this would be like. Mornings spent in town and afternoons on the farm, brilliant color spilling out behind the house as the flowers begin to bloom. Calls from the phone tree and cookies from Ms. Beatrice in the dead of night. Beckett’s mouth against mine.

I still haven’t gotten that itch to move. The pulse that beats in my chest to go somewhere new—chase, discover, find—it’s fainter now. Quiet. I don’t think it’s gone. It’s just … satisfied, I think.

I glance at my phone and instead of feeling a swell of anxiety rising like a tide, I just feel … nothing. I didn’t bother reconnecting any of my social accounts when I set up this new phone. Didn’t connect my email either.

I’m starting to let some things go.

I watch Beckett cross behind the windows again—one thing I don’t want to let go of.

With Beckett, I’m trying to figure out too much on my own when there’s another half to the equation currently hiding in the greenhouse, tending to his plants. Does he even want me to stay? I stand from my seat and step down the back porch, following the path laid by oversized, flat stones. Comet and Vixen rush ahead of me, hopping from rock to rock to slip through the crack in the door.

Beckett’s back is to me, his t-shirt stretched over his shoulders as he works at the table pressed against the length of the back wall. Almost all of the floor space is occupied by various pots and planters, a long shelf against each floor-to-ceiling window crowded with orchids and petunias and bright red poinsettias, their silky petals open to the setting sun. I duck my nose into a cluster of pink I don’t recognize, its scent like the first bite of a crisp apple. Tangy and sharp.

I lean back and find Beckett watching me.

I regret my choice of words almost immediately. The only thing official about what we’re doing is officially avoiding the conversation. Officially stupid about it. I roll my eyes up to the glass panels of the ceiling and back down again. “You know what I mean.”

He wipes his hands on a towel, his movements practiced and smooth. “We’re officially on everyone’s creep radar?” He tosses the towel to the side. “We’re officially going to have to start checking the front bushes for neighbors?”

I like that word so much. We.

I blink up at him and feel a smile tug at my mouth. I bite down on the inside of my cheek in a show of restraint. “The second option sounds nice, thank you.”

He shakes his head and rubs his knuckles against his neck, exasperated. This poor man. I’ve really put him through the ringer this week. The pond, a kiss … sex in a field. I’d feel bad if I didn’t know for a fact he loves it. He loves the challenge, the fight, the big tease of it all. He drops his hands and reaches under the table, flicking some hidden switch. A low string of lights twined around the ceiling panels blinks to life and the whole space glows with a warm, hazy light. I catch a reflection of us in the glass to my right, night creeping across the fields outside and cloaking everything in shadow.

I’m captivated by the look of us reflected back in a wavy distortion. Me standing in front of Beckett, his body strong where he’s propped up against the table. His tattooed arms spread wide. My ponytail curled over my shoulder.

A smile flirts with the corners of his mouth. He settles the palm of his hand against my neck and traces below my ear. “I like you, Evie,” he breathes, and the humid air in the greenhouse turns thicker, warmer. His gaze softens on mine and everything in his eyes looks a lot more than like. My heart pounds in my chest and I know whatever he feels, I feel it, too. “I like you a lot. I want to see where this goes.”

He gathers the fabric in his fist and rolls the material up once. I shiver.

I more than like him.

His hands flex at my waist, fingers slipping under the band of my underwear. He twists the material and tugs. “As many as you want, honey.”

He nods and tucks another kiss under my ear. Drags his teeth down my throat and gives me a sharp, biting kiss just above my collarbone. “They are.”

Oh, boy.

I already know how I want him when we get there. Fast. Hard. Against the dresser in his bedroom. Bent over the edge of his bed. Maybe the couch, too. I fist my hand in his hair and guide him until I can catch his lips with mine. I let him know everything I’m thinking with my mouth against his and he groans something desperate into my bottom lip. When he pulls away, his hands are clenching at my legs, head already shaking.

His gaze slants to the side and he curls his hand under my jaw, guiding my face to follow until I’m looking at our reflections again.

I see it then, exactly what he wants. Beckett pressing me into the table with my dress rucked up around my hips, the long line of my legs a streak of copper in the window. I can’t see anything beyond the glass now. Just the two of us, globe lights glowing above our heads like fireflies. The one in the corner flickers on, off, and then on again.

And then he drops to his knees.

It’s strange, watching him in the glass. Everything is a little bit off. I feel his breath against my knee before I see him brush a kiss there. Feel the calloused pads of his fingers before I see him drag my underwear down my legs, wrap them around his fist and put them in his pocket. I watch myself spread my legs wider before I’ve even realized I’ve done it, his head disappearing between my thighs, only the top of his hair visible in our reflection.

He watches my face as he puts his mouth against me, his eyes drifting closed in agonized relief with his first slow kiss. I watch him in our reflection as he rolls his tongue against me, a steady pulse that has me scrambling for purchase against the tabletop. A long, thorough drag. A gentle hum of satisfaction.

The watering can goes clattering to the ground. His garden shears, too. The lavender is spared but only because my hands find the low shelf at my back, Beckett’s grip steadying my hips. I look away from our reflection, more interested in the reality of it instead. His head bowed over me, one arm banded low over my stomach to hold me in place. The other disappearing below us, the clink of his belt against the cement floor letting me know exactly what he’s doing.

It pulls and pulls and pulls—this feeling—low in my belly where his forearm rests against me, my hips desperately rolling up and into him. Chasing that beautiful feeling that I only ever get with Beckett. His hands and his lips and his deep grumbling groan of relief against me when I gasp his name and arch up, my release stealing the breath from my lungs.

He drags his mouth back and forth against the inside of my thigh, the prick of his beard making my legs jump. He rests his forehead there briefly. “More?” His hand slips low over my belly and his thumb curls down where I’m wet and sensitive. Another jump in my hips that has him grinning into my leg. He taps there once and I almost slip right off the table to the floor. He’ll have to collect my pieces in a basket and cart me back into the house.

While the idea of Beckett giving me another orgasm on this table with his hands and his mouth is tempting, I want something better. I shake my head and use the hand still in his hair to urge him up. It’s a wonder he has any strands left at this point. I rub my fingers against his scalp and he makes that rumbling sound again, deep in his chest. Like a cat in the sunshine.

He drags his thumb over my bottom lip and I pull it into my mouth. He makes another deep sound, a heavy exhale of breath.

I slip my hands under his shirt and scratch my nails up his chest, back down again when his body falls deeper into mine. I curl my hands in the material of his jeans and push them down over his hips, the button and fly already undone, the band of his briefs pulled low. The thought of him touching himself as he touched and tasted me, it sends heat flooding through my body. A pluck of arousal in all the right places.

The hand on my cheek slips into my hair, tilting my head back as his mouth finds mine. It’s a rough kiss, possessive, and I hold onto the sides of his torso as he bends me backwards over the tabletop. A perfect curve, his hands holding me up. He pulls back and drags his nose against my jaw, dips down and presses a single, lingering kiss on my shoulder.

He doesn’t say anything as he presses into me, a thick slide of heat that has me shifting my body against the table—trying to take more. Trying to take it all. He watches with his head tipped down between us, a low groan that sounds like my name. I close my eyes and feel him everywhere he’s tucked against me. One hand in my hair. The other on my thigh, guiding my leg wider. His deep, panting breaths against the sensitive skin behind my ear. The tiny restless movement of his body against mine when our hips tuck together, like he wants to move but can’t quite yet. Like he needs a moment to collect himself.

He pulls out slightly and pushes back in, a short stilted movement that still, somehow, manages to steal my breath. He curses and does it again, a messy grind on his retreat that rubs against me in all the right places. My hand slips down to his jaw, fingers curling against his rough stubble. I guide his face until he’s looking at us on the glass wall to our left.

We look like something from a dream. A filthy dream that I’ve had a million times where I wake up still tangled in the sheets. My heart in my throat and a thin sheen of sweat on my skin, a drumbeat of wanting between my thighs.

My legs are curled high around his hips, my back arched in a delicate bend against the tabletop, anchored with his hand twisted through my hair. His body, strong and tall above me. His jeans caught halfway down his legs. I look at him in our reflection and the storm raging in those green eyes. Banked desire. A wordless promise.

He pulls out slowly. Thrusts back in so hard the entire table shakes. A planter goes crashing to the ground and I cling to him.

And I don’t hide a single thing from him as I fall apart.

I grumble and swat at the warm pressure at my back, a heavy hand at my waist over the thick quilt. Beckett huffs a laugh and his hand squeezes, rubbing over the flank of my thigh and back again. I have marks on my legs from the metal of the table last night, light bruises from when Beckett pulled me from the edge, turned me around, and bent me at the waist. There, he said with his mouth at my ear, his hand between my legs. Now we can both watch.

I shiver as I remember, and Beckett gives a knowing chuckle above me.

Except his body is currently fully dressed and above the covers, a baseball hat pulled backwards over his messy blonde hair. I blink at him over my shoulder, confused.

His thumb traces over my bottom lip, a half-smile on his handsome face. “Everything is fine. Kind of. They delivered our saplings to the wrong farm. Barney and I have to drive up to upstate New York and grab them.”

He hums in the affirmative.

I blink some more. “Right now?”

He nods. “If we wait for them to do it, it’ll be next week. I don’t want the trees to dry out.”

I sit up on the bed and rub my hands against my eyes. Prancer lets out a plaintive meow from her place at the edge of the bed, upset by the disruption. I drop my hands and yawn in Beckett’s general direction. “I’ll come with you.”

He shakes his head and shifts forward to brush a kiss against my lips. Soft. Perfect. “Stay here,” he says. He hesitates for a second and then curls his hand around my neck, his palm sweeping against sleep-warm skin. “Sleep in my bed while I’m gone, yeah? I’ll see you when I get back.”

I collapse back to the pillows and blankets with a grateful sigh and bury my face in flannel. “You’re sure?”

The last thing I hear before I drift back to sleep is his rough chuckle, his fingertips carding through my hair.

When I wake up again, I’m curled on Beckett’s side of the bed, clinging to the sleeve of a flannel hanging from the bedpost. I laugh at myself and give in to an indulgent stretch beneath the comforter. There hadn’t been a discussion last night as to where I would sleep. We stumbled in from the greenhouse with our clothes rumpled and I followed Beckett into his bedroom. I draped my body over his, pressed a sleepy kiss to his mouth and fell asleep with his arm slung over my hip.

He grumbled about me hogging the blankets, but I woke up in the middle of the night to Beckett holding most of them close to his chest, his face buried in my hair.

I reach blindly for my phone on the nightstand, squinting at the screen. The house sounds too quiet without Beckett here. I miss the sound of drawers opening in the kitchen, metal spoons and the clink of his coffee mug.

10:37 am

Josie: Text me when you’ve got a second. I’ve got news.

I tap her name and let my phone rest against my chest as it begins to ring. I stretch out my legs with another groan.

A long green stem. A cluster of small blue blooms. Meadow sage, I think it’s called.

I hold it under my nose with a smile.

I said maybe two words to Josie the other morning in the kitchen before I slammed the laptop shut. Luckily she had been too gobsmacked by the appearance of Beckett’s bare torso to do anything but gape like a fish.

I guess she’s collected herself.

I laugh. “No.”

It is devastating. Lovely and sentimental and sexy as hell, too. I had curled my hand around the constellation on his forearm last night when he braced his palm on the table next to me. A bull with its horns lowered. Crowns of thick, vibrant greenery twisted around its head. “I’m not going to objectify him.”

I set the flower I’ve been twirling between my thumb and forefinger on the nightstand and see a post-it note stuck to his stack of books. Sneaky man. I pick it up and glance at his neat handwriting. Muffins on top of the oven, it says. Be back soon.

A scribble beneath, something that looks like a … cat dozing? His doodles are horrendous.

But I like it better than any saccharine thing he could have written. One hundred percent Beckett. Practical and sweet—care through action. Breakfast waiting on the counter and coffee in the pot.

I place his note next to the flower.

I laugh, a quiet snicker that has one of the cats poking her head up from beneath a mountain of sheets to look at me. She flops back down and nudges me once with her paw for the inconvenience. “I have no doubt.”

That’s right. The head of the small business coalition. We’ve talked briefly over email about the position and what it would entail. Small business advising, more or less. Helping people like Ms. Beatrice and Stella get up on their digital feet. I had given him Josie’s number in my email back, letting him know my phone was temporarily out of service. I didn’t mention that it was at the bottom of a pond. “Everything okay?”

My heart beats a little bit faster in my chest. Excited, I think. Hopeful, too. Nervous as hell, surprisingly. “Yeah? That’s good, right?”

I’m flustered, smiling so hard my cheeks hurt with it. “Do you think—do you think I’m qualified for something like this?”

I sit up in the bed and stare at the cats cuddled up around me, a stack of Beckett’s neatly folded sweaters on a chair in the corner. The job is half-remote office work, half-traveling to small businesses around the country. Not all that different from what I’m doing now. It would mean—I would have some flexibility as to where I stay. I would have options.

Inglewild-shaped options.

Beckett-shaped options.

It’s the secret I’ve been holding in my heart for the last couple of weeks. Nowhere has ever felt like such a perfect fit. It’s not just Beckett. It’s the friendly call of my name as I walk down the street. It’s the same order every Wednesday from Matty’s pizza. It’s knowing the exact steps to take down the side street and through the park to make it to the cafe before the morning rush.

Comfort.

Familiarity.

A home.

She sighs out, long and slow. I’m grateful she’s thinking about it and not blurting out mindless reassurances. But then again, that’s Josie.

I rack my brain for the last time I felt this content. This settled. I can’t think of a single time.

I pick up my flower from the nightstand and twirl it between my fingers. “We’ll have a lot to do to tie up loose ends.” My mental to-do list appears, gathering items like raindrops in a bucket. I frown, a thought occurring. “We wouldn’t work together anymore.”