Chapter 24
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
WILLOW
I didn’t come out to Old Mill Road very often—or ever, really. Hadn’t had much of a reason to since Finn left. For one thing, it held a lot of memories I wasn’t sure I’d wanted to face. And for another, I was a grown woman, and if I wanted to see someone, I didn’t need to sneak out to the middle of nowhere to do so.
Except that wasn’t exactly true now, was it?
Because despite being a grown woman, I was still sneaking around with a Thomas boy while we got up to no good. Which was how I found myself leaning against the side of my car, watching the breathtaking rainbow of colors as the sun set. The comfort of it, even being out here in the middle of nowhere, was like a blanket wrapping around me.
As soon as I’d slipped back into my office after lunch with my family, I’d sent a text to Finn, thanking him for his delivery and asking if he’d meet me later that night. I hadn’t heard back from him. For all I knew, he hadn’t even gotten my text or had no intention of?—
The rumbling of his borrowed truck on the deserted road cut off my thoughts. He brought it to a stop next to my car, the wheels kicking up a cloud of dust behind it. I couldn’t deny how relieved I was to see that beat-up truck. To see Finn slide out of the cab and stride straight toward me, his eyes dark and hungry.
He stopped mere inches from me, his fresh scent invading my lungs as I inhaled deeply. His wet hair confirmed my suspicion that he’d just showered—a fact that, for some reason, just made me want to mess him all up.
This was new territory for us—me making the first move. Asking him to come to me. And Finn proved that by standing there, so close to me but not touching, waiting for me.
“Hi.” Groundbreaking conversationalist, I was.
His lips quirked up at the side before he glanced around, taking in our remote location. “Been a long time since I’ve been out here.”
I looked around at the clearing, a quiet little spot we’d stumbled upon one night after a shift at the shelter. A small pond—one we’d swum in too many times to count—and an old, long-forgotten barn were the only interruptions in an otherwise giant swath of fields as far as the eye could see.
“Me too.”
It’d always been our special place, which was why I’d never shared its existence with another soul. Mac didn’t even know about it.
Finn’s eyes darkened and dropped to my lips as he licked his. “And what made you want to come all the way out here tonight?”
I lifted a shoulder. I couldn’t explain it, really. I’d just been feeling the urge to… be with him. Not sex—though that always crossed my mind—but be in his presence. Talk to him, learn the things I didn’t know, fill in the huge gap of time for which I had no reference.
Not knowing how to put that into words, I said, “Just wanted to say thank you. For the cupcakes.”
“Swinging into the bakery and grabbing them for you hardly constitutes all this fuss.”
“Finn…”
He mocked my tone. “Willow…”
“C’mon now, don’t do that.” I reached out and wrapped my fingers around his wrist. “I know it was a bigger deal than you’re makin’ it out to be.”
For a long moment, he stared at my thumb rubbing tiny circles along his inner wrist. Finally, he asked, “Are they your favorite?”
“You know they are.”
“Then it’s no big deal at all.” He stepped closer and wrapped an arm around me, bracing his hand at the small of my back.
Lord, I got tingles every time he touched me. Tingles that zipped all through my body, pinging this way and that, before settling low in my belly. Building. Growing.
“Why’d you ask me out here, Willowtree?”
“I…I already told you. To thank you.”
With his other hand, he cupped my neck, his thumb brushing maddeningly along the underside of my jaw. “Coulda done that in the text you sent tellin’ me to come here. Or you coulda stopped by the bar after work. You coulda done it a dozen different ways, but you didn’t.”
I couldn’t very well tell him that besides wanting to be in his presence, I’d also hoped we could take advantage of the secluded location to sate the lust that’d overtaken me.
While we’d gotten in some heavy making out and had rounded a few bases during all our sneaking around, the last time he’d been inside me had been that day in his bar. When he’d made me lose my mind right up against the wall. Made me lose my mind and crave him tenfold. The bastard.
“I just… I—” I snapped my mouth closed, swallowing back the words.
Saying all that was too much, made me feel too vulnerable when that was the last thing I wanted to feel around him. If this was going to work between us, I needed to stay one hundred percent in control.
Something about my body language must’ve tipped him off, because instead of pressing, he simply dropped a soft, sweet kiss on my lips, then wrapped his arm around my shoulders and guided me toward the truck. “Sweet as this invitation was, I didn’t figure you planned to do much in that tiny toy car of yours.”
“Hey, I like that tiny toy car.” I elbowed him in the side then glanced at my little Prius. It was perfect for tooling around town and getting me where I needed to go, but it wouldn’t serve Mr. Six-Foot-Two very well. And, truth be told, I hadn’t thought much past getting him out here so we could be alone. Some planner I was. “Though I guess you’re right…”
“Good thing I thought ahead.” He dropped his arm from my shoulders and pulled down the tailgate. The bed of the truck was piled high with blankets and half a dozen pillows, a perfect, cozy nest. “What’d you say, Willowtree? Wanna look at some stars with me?”
The words made me pause, made my heart skip a beat. They’d been the exact ones he’d said to me, in this exact location, more than a decade earlier. It’d been our first date, and I’d been such a mix of nerves and excitement, I’d been worried I’d throw up my lunch.
Finn hadn’t had much money, and I hadn’t cared if we’d gone out to eat or to a movie like all my friends tended to do on their dates. Instead, he’d driven us around in his beat-up truck—one so decrepit, I’d prayed it would run long enough to get us back home safely—until we’d found this place. That decrepit truck had lasted dozens of times, taking us from town out to our little pocket of paradise and back again.
Damn. This was bad. So bad. I could actually feel my walls crumbling. Cracks and fissures on every surface I’d erected around my heart. Trouble was, even though I knew it was bad, knew it was happening, I had no desire to stop it.
I’d spent years feeling nothing more than a mere blip of attraction to a small handful of men. With Finn, it was different, a single star compared to the whole galaxy. It was intoxicating to feel this mix of desire and chemistry again.
As long as I kept things on track, it’d be fine. As long as I kept reminding myself this was temporary, that he wasn’t there to stay—that our affair would end, again—I’d be fine.
So I smiled up at him, dipping my chin in answer.
“Attagirl.” He lifted me straight up into the truck bed before jumping in after me.
“Awful cozy up here, Griffin Reilly.” I settled back against the pillows stacked along the cab of the truck, my legs stretched out in front of me. “What, exactly, were you plannin’ on gettin’ up to back here?”
He lay next to me, the arm closest to me folded behind his head, as if offering his chest for me to snuggle into. Not that I was going to do that. Snuggling was something couples did, and that was one thing we definitely weren’t.
“I’m not sure what you’re insinuatin’, Miss Haven. I’d only planned to look at the stars.” He pointed to the sky and twirled his finger in an unknown pattern. “Thought we might try to make some dirty pictures out of what we see.”
I laughed and followed where he pointed. “That sounds more in line with what I know of you.”
He gasped, dropping his hand to his chest as if he were affronted by my words. “ Me ? You’re the one who came out here with plans to…what? No blankets in your car, no pillows, no picnic basket…” He leaned close, dipping his head down to whisper into my ear. “Were you hoping I’d fuck you up against that tree, or that I’d send you to your knees in the field and take you from behind?”
Sweet Lord in heaven, his words did nothing to abate the burning low in my belly, the ache that’d settled permanently between my legs.
I tried not to let my reaction show when I said, “Actually, I thought we might go for a swim.”
Finn hummed, not moving his mouth from my ear, and the sound sent ripples of need down my spine. “Pity. I didn’t bring a swimsuit.”
Funny. Neither did I. We never did—hadn’t since the first time we’d done it.
I turned my head so we were nose-to-nose, his warm breath whispering across my lips. “Since when has that stopped you?”
He reached up and brushed my hair away from my face, then trailed a single finger from my temple to my jaw. Leaning in, he nuzzled my neck. “You know what’s funny? Everyone thinks you’re so innocent, but really you’re a terrible influence on me.”
I laughed, and he joined along, his puffs of breath tickling my collarbone. When he didn’t respond to my original request, I pulled back so he’d lift his head, our noses once again brushing. “So? You gonna let me be a terrible influence on you and drag you skinny-dippin’ with me?”
The look he pinned me with said if we did this, we’d be doing a whole lot more than skinny-dipping when we got in that water.
Which was exactly what I’d been hoping for.
It was almost midnight before I got home, so late the thought that I needed to sneak in to the guesthouse didn’t even enter my mind. I slipped out of my car, shut the door, and stepped onto the front walk, head down as I smiled to myself, remembering the feel of Finn’s arms around me, his whispered words as he’d taken me in the water under the moonlight.
“Awful late night, honey.”
I jolted, my head snapping up. My grandmother sat in one of the beat-up rockers Mac and I had purchased for our tiny excuse for a porch, wearing her housecoat and a pair of scuffed slippers.
“Gran! You scared the livin’ daylights out of me.”
“Mhmm, and I’m sure you bein’ jumpy has nothin’ to do with you bein’ up to no good tonight, isn’t that right?”
My face heated, not only from the thoughts that’d just been running through my mind, but from what I’d gotten up to in those thoughts. “What? I wasn’t?—”
“There a storm somewhere in the county I didn’t hear about?” Gran scanned me from head to toe, making me feel like I was standing there naked instead of fully clothed. “Better question, if there was, how are your clothes dry, but every other part of you is soaked to the bone? Your hair is positively dripping.”
I reached up and patted the wet strands. Soaked, indeed. That was because, as prepared as Finn had been, he hadn’t thought to bring towels. And as we’d already established, I hadn’t thought to bring anything but myself. I was a mess. A completely sated, blissed-out mess.
“Umm…”
“Mr. Thomas must give out some excellent cupcakes to deal with all this nonsense.”
I choked on a laugh, my eyes bulging as I stared at Gran. There was little doubt cupcakes was a euphemism for Finn’s dick—something I definitely didn’t want to discuss with my grandmother, for heaven’s sake.
“Oh, honey, I’m old, not dead. And that’s one fine-lookin’ man you’ve got there.” She pushed to stand and shuffled her way to me, patting my arm as she passed.
The path between here and my parents’ house was well lit, so I wasn’t worried about Gran finding her way. Still, I said, “You want me to walk you over?”
But Gran just waved a dismissive hand over her shoulder. “Don’t worry about me. Go on in, now, before your daddy comes out lookin’ for me. And dry that hair before you catch a cold.”
I stood rooted in place, staring after my grandmother until she slipped into my parents’ house, and I was out there all by myself. Even though Mac and Avery—and, shit, now Nat—knew about this thing I had going with Finn, I couldn’t deny it felt kind of…nice…to have someone else in on it. Especially when that someone else encouraged the madness.
What was it my gran had said earlier? It was about time I had gotten up to some nonsense? I couldn’t agree more.