22. You Want To Ride My Bike
Stage fright.I’ve never experienced it, as I’ve never been on a stage before, but I’m pretty sure this is it. Riding with Primrose behind me feels like stepping onstage to perform. My hands are clammy inside the gloves, and her delicate fingers on my chest send shivers across my whole body.
It almost makes me lose focus, but I can’t afford to, not while I’m riding and not with such precious cargo.
Regaining composure, I throw the bike into gear and drive at what I assume is an appropriate speed. I’ve never ridden this bike with someone, but Primrose is so light that she makes little difference.
“You can go faster if you want,” she says, her voice reverberating through my helmet. She sounds out of breath, but in a good, exhilarated way, and as much as I want her to have fun, I’m not sure my mind’s on the road as much as it should be.
I twist the throttle, and the bike speeds lightly as inertia pulls her backward. Her hold of my shirt tightens, the fabric bunching up in her fist.
Feeling more confident, I open the throttle completely, and her body tenses with nervous apprehension as we move through traffic. She draws closer as if she’s afraid we’ll hit the cars on either side of us, her fists pressing against me.
I could brake hard, make her bump right into me. I’ve been craving her so much it’s painful, so I’d do almost anything to feel the soft curves of her body against mine. But I don’t want her to get scared, nor do I intend to take advantage of the trust she’s put in me by riding behind me, so I come to a gentle stop at a red light.
Once the road is mostly free again, I keep a cruising speed, wanting to prolong our time on the bike, but I miss the intensity of going fast and feeling her thighs clenching mine.
It’s fucked-up.
Goosebumps scatter all over me at the heat radiating from the contact spots between us, and every time, I’m tempted to turn this bike around and bring her home. Continue where we left off at the market.
But we’re almost at our destination, so I focus on the road until we slow to a stop.
My heart’s still racing with the residual thrill as my helmet comes off.
I let out a slow breath and hang it on the handlebar by its strap when Primrose asks, “What is this place?”
Her hands are still on me, her thighs clenched against mine. And she’s warm. Soft. I’ve been fighting a hard-on for most of the ride, and if she doesn’t stop touching me right now, I’ll lose that battle.
“Just a nice view,” I say as her hands abandon my chest. But it’s not just that, and I don’t want to stop and think about why I brought her here, to the place I love the most in the world.
I let my eyes roam down the hill, enveloped by the breathtaking panorama that stretches before me. The air is crisp, and the gentle breeze carries the scent of earth and blooming flowers. The world unfolds in layers of greens and gold, a patchwork quilt of fields that seem to go on forever.
I twist to look back at her, but her visor is down, so I can’t tell for sure how she’s feeling. “Arms, Barbie.”
“No, I’ll get down by myself.”
All right. I stand and give her my hand to lean on. She takes it and, awkwardly raising her leg over the bike, hops down.
“Chin,” I say as I approach. Once the strap is snapped open, Primrose takes the helmet off, her flushed cheeks, ruffled hair, and misty eyes making my breath catch.
She looks like she’s been fucked.
She looks like she’s been fucked because she was riding behind me on my bike.
“Wow,” she says as she turns to the view, and unable to look away from her, I nod.
Wowsounds about right.
“Logan,” she whispers, and for the life of me, I can’t imagine what she’ll say next. “I think I want a bike.”
Huh?
She chuckles, her eyes wide. I can almost see her blood pulsing. “It was like—like flying! Like I was free or...light as a feather. Like nothing else mattered except following the bike’s movements with my body. Like...like...”
Huh.
She gasps. “When you turned, there at that big intersection, I was sure my knee was going to touch the ground, but it didn’t, and then all I could think about was that feeling—like a buzzing in my veins...” She paces back and forth, her eyes darting around as she searches for the right word.
“Adrenaline,” I mumble.
I can’t believe she loved it. It makes me like her even more.
“Yes!” She points her finger at me. “That’s it! Adrenaline. It was so cool, and—wait, do you think we can take a longer route back?” She gasps. “Oh my god, can you teach me how to ride?”
Woah. She’s never riding my bike. Cute that she’d think she could even hold it up. But it does make my chest warm, how much she liked it. It’s nothing special, right? Women love bikes. Some women must.
But she’s not some women. She’s Primrose.
“This place is so beautiful,” she says, walking to the hill’s edge as if the previous topic is done.
I join her side, anxiety slapping me in the face when she leans against the handrails. Someone who tends to fall without moving a single muscle should not be that comfortable this high up. Her eyes eat up the gorgeous view, and she slips into a contemplative silence, only the rustling of the wind and the melodic birdsongs to keep us company. As casually as I can, I place a hand on the railing in front of her.
“Can we see your farm from here?”
I turn to the lines of neatly planted crops forming geometric shapes. The afternoon sun bathes the landscape in a warm glow, casting long shadows, and birds soar overhead, riding air currents. Gently grabbing her arm, I move it until I point it home. From here, it looks doll-sized, and besides the red roof, it’s hard to recognize anything else around it. “That’s my house.”
“Oh, yes, it is.” She turns to me, her eyes dancing on my lips for a second. “So if that’s your house, then are we looking at...”
I move her arm to the left, toward the fence I know is there but is invisible from so far away. “That’s the end of the property.”
She gasps, and it’s the most sinful noise. I could hear it every day. Could wake up to it. Fall asleep to it too. Get her to make it in so many different ways.
“It’s your farm. All of it.”
“Only place you can see it all.”
“Wow.” The wind has her hair blowing over her face, and tucking it away, she exhales in a dreamy kind of way that makes me want to hug her. “It’s perfect. Do you come here often?”
“Often enough.” I ignore her smile as she watches the side of my face. “From up here, you’re like a silent observer of the cyclical patterns of growth, harvest, and renewal. You watch it all happen, season after season. It’s...I don’t know.”
“Humbling?”
“Yeah.” I inhale deeply, then let it out. “And comforting. You look at all that, the life and the beauty, and you know your problems are just...” I pause, eyes darting over the fields. “Dust.”
“Sure.” She wraps an arm around herself. “But even dust has its place in the world, right?” When I throw a questioning look at her, she shrugs. “I just mean...You have the right to feel your pain. You don’t need to remind yourself it’s not a big deal.”
“But I don’t want to feel this pain. Any pain.”
“Nobody does. But processing your emotions is the healthy way to?—”
“I don’t want to talk about it, Barbie,” I interrupt. “So if that’s why you came, we can just ride back.”
She looks away, and my stomach drops when I watch her smile die. I deserve to trip over this hill. She’s just trying to help. Just doing what she thinks is right, as she’s done since she got here. Despite how horrible I am to her every single time. No matter how much I push her away.
It almost makes me believe she will never stop, but that’s a naive thought. Everyone eventually stops. People grow apart, they get tired of each other, they betray and abandon and look only after themselves. People are always a disappointment, and despite how hard Primrose seems to want to prove the opposite, she’s leaving in five days. Her ticket back home has been sitting on the bookshelf, reminding me of it.
Like my problems compared to the magnificence of nature, these two weeks together are just dust.
But even dust has its place in the world.
I stare at her, watching shivers break over her skin when another gust of wind strikes us, and slide my jacket off my shoulders. I hold it out, but her focus is elsewhere, so I drape it over her.
With a flinch, her eyes meet mine. “Oh, you don’t need to?—”
“I forgot how windy it gets up here.”
Her bright blue eyes stare at me appreciatively as she lifts it off her shoulders and slides her arms inside the sleeves. “Are you sure? We both know how you feel about me wearing your clothes.”
Horny, that’s how I feel. So horny, I can’t drag my eyes away from her. The jacket reaches her knees, her shoulders disappearing into the black fabric. No matter how ridiculous it looks on her, seeing her in something of mine stirs something possessive in me. She’s wrapped in my smell, and when she gives it back, I’ll be wrapped in hers.
“Number twenty-two.”
“Lend me his... faux leather jacket.” She pulls her arms up, the long sleeves flapping past her hands. “It’s the first time someone else’s clothes are too large for me.”
Someone else’s clothes.
An image of her wearing some other man’s shirt has me nearly seething with jealousy, and I scrub a hand over my jaw, forcing the bile burning in my throat to settle.
She’s leaving. She’s leaving.
Only because we agreed to spend the next five days exploring this, I don’t get to be jealous. To get attached more than I already have.
I’ll repeat it until it settles in my brain.
She crouches down, sitting on the ground and holding on to the metal fence. Whenever I come out this way, I usually sit on my bike, but I’m not comfortable leaving her alone this close to the edge, so I settle beside her, resting my weight on my hands behind me.
“We don’t have to talk about it,” she says softly. “But can you just tell me what the police said? Am I in trouble? Are you?”
My eyes flutter closed. With everything else that’s happened this afternoon, I completely forgot about the police. She must have been freaking out—god, I’m such an ass.
“They’re still working the case, and from the look of it, they’re hardly going to stop,” I say as I think of the slew of questions Josie and Connor asked me. “They’ve made me repeat the same information we already gave them, and tried to scare me with the prospect of prison time.” With a shrug, I meet her concerned gaze. “Nothing new.”
“And the scrunchie? Did they test it already?”
“Remember that first night?” I ask as I think of the accident, then my panic attack. “You asked me for three movements, and?—”
“You touched my scrunchie.”
“Uh-huh. Left lots of big ol prints on it.” I can’t help but chuckle at the sheer luck of it. “They have no way of proving it’s yours. And I could have entered Derek’s property any time before or after Friday night.”
“So they have nothing?”
I nod.
Her shoulders relax as she fidgets with a strand of grass. When her eyes meet mine, I can almost see the question flashing through her mind. Then why were you so upset when you got home? But she swallows it, and instead, points at my arm. “I like your tattoos.”
God, it’s hard to think when she looks at me lik that. “You’re about to ask me what they mean, aren’t you?”
“No,” she says pointedly. Then, jerking her chin up, she asks, “Are you calling me nosy?”
I smile wide. Too wide. “Yes.”
“Then I don’t like your tattoos.” She pouts, but the uplifted corner of her lips betrays her.
“I have forty-six of them, so I won’t tell you the meaning of every single one, but—” I sit up and show her my wrist. “I’ll give you three.”
“Today, or in life?”
My heart twists, but I smother it.
She’s leaving. She’s leaving.
“Just choose.”
She perks up, her eyes scanning up my arm like she means business, and I know I’m playing a stupid, dangerous game. Now I’ve got her eyes on me, scrutinizing me with too much attention. Making me want to do and say more stupid things. Dangerous things.
“This is only a minimal portion of your tattoos.”
With a sigh, I bring forward my other arm, begrudgingly holding them side by side for inspection.
“Still...” she says as she points to my chest.
Lowering my arms, I cock a brow. “I just gave you my jacket. Now you want me to strip down?” I hold out my arms again. “Just. Choose.”
“The word you have on your back.”
Of course, she’d pick that one. When did she even see my back?
“What?” She shrugs. “I chose.”
“That’s...” I run my finger over the sharp edges of a small rock. “Fratello. Aaron spent a couple of years in Italy when we were younger, and I visited him for my eighteenth birthday. One night, we drank too much and got the Italian word for ‘brother’ tattooed.” I hum, and the sound comes out gravelly as the memory of the tattoo studio we ended up at sours the taste in my mouth. “He got it on his arm because he carried me with him even when he was away. I got it on my back because I always...”
The words stick to my throat, and as I try to breathe through the stabbing pain in my chest, Primrose’s small hand finds mine. She squeezes, and I glance up to see a compassionate look in her eyes—a patient understanding.
Her hair blows softly with the wind, and the strands trapped under my jacket frame her round face and rest along her neck. There’s a reddish hue over her cheeks, probably because of the cold, and her plump, heart-shaped lips look delectable in that pink lipstick, like the candy she loves so much.
God, she’s so beautiful it hurts. So close that if I leaned forward, I could press my mouth to hers. I could cup the back of her neck, feel her melt against me, and sink my teeth into her.
So perfect, I bite my tongue hard to make sure I’m not dreaming.
“Logan?” she whispers, and my eyes abandon her mouth. But she’s not staring back—her gaze is on my lips.
It looks like the same thoughts running through my mind are going through hers too. Like whispering my name wasn’t her calling my attention and reminding me I promised her the meaning of my tattoo, but an invitation. To kiss her, to take her.
“Because I always have his back,” I mumble. “That’s why I got the tattoo there.”
She blinks, meeting my eyes. “You two were that close, huh?” she asks.
Yeah. We were that close before he ruined my life.
Glancing at the view of the farm, I move a hand to my chest. It starts with a subtle shift, almost imperceptible at first. A tingling sensation prickles at the back of my neck, then a spot in my chest begins hurting. Before I can do anything about it, it’s throbbing as if I’ve been stabbed.
I breathe, but it feels like air can’t move past the lump in my throat. As I set a hand on the ground for support, the world spins around me in a dizzying blur.
I think it’s happening again.
I’m suffocating, trapped in a whirlwind and unable to stop it.
I close my eyes, trying to steady my ragged breathing, and Primrose’s voice feels miles away. Much louder is my brother’s voice, then the two of us shouting at each other as my mom cried and tried to keep us apart. The weight of it all presses down on me like a twenty-pound blanket, leaving me gasping for air.
A soft “Hey” reaches me, but I can’t get my breaths to steady. Prim’s sitting on her heels in front of me, terrified wide eyes and pale skin.
“You’re okay,” she says. I can’t hear her, but I read her lips, then shake my head.
No, I’m not okay. I’m dying.
It’s happening again, and I don’t understand why. I don’t know what’s wrong with me, except that something is. I can’t breathe—can’t speak. Sweat gathers as I attempt to inhale, and I wish I could peel my skin off.
“Logan?”
When her hand gently grasps my arm, I cringe as if it’s burned me, my wide eyes meeting hers as I open my mouth and inhale the biggest breath I can.
“I’m here. I’m right here with you.” Her brows are taut, her lips twisted into a sad frown. “Remember the trick I taught you? You can do it.”
Yes. Three things I can see.
I let my eyes roam over her, then jerk my chin toward her ear. “Ice cream cone earrings,” I croak, My gaze dips down. “Yellow dress.” Then down again. “White boots.”
“Good. Great.”
Aaron’s voice echoes in the depths of my mind, nausea twisting my stomach as my head begins pounding. “I’m a fuck up—he’s right,” I say as I look up at Primrose. Though my eyes are open, everything’s blurry. “I killed my relationship. I killed the farm. Everything I touch turns into failure and heartbreak.”
I bring my shaky hands to the side of my head, pressing hard as if I’ll get the noise to die out. But it doesn’t work. It just gets louder and louder.
“You’re worth everything.”
My eyes meet Primrose’s sad but determined gaze, and only then do I notice I’ve been repeating the very opposite out loud.
“I’m worth nothing.”
“That’s not true, Logan.”
Yes, it is. If I was worth something, my brother wouldn’t have betrayed me. Someone would have taken my side. I wouldn’t have been dumped in such a callous way.
When everyone leaves you behind, you have to wonder if you’re the problem.
Sitting beside me, she tentatively moves her arm around my shoulder, then pulls me closer. My muscles are stiff, and the thought of being hugged makes me claustrophobic, but I let her drag me down until my forehead rests against her neck, my ear to her chest.
Her smell is distracting, and as I focus on it, I hear the thumps of her heart too. “Your heart.”
“Yes,” she whispers, the word trembling out of her lips.
“Your voice.” I hold back a sob, because I can’t cry in front of her. But she sounds so sad, and it’s because of me. “Your pain.”
Her fingers run through my hair, and I wish I wasn’t wearing it pulled back so she could do it all the way to the tips. It’s calming. “Three movements now.”
I raise my head, meeting her gaze from up close. The last time we did this, I kissed her. I’d love to do it again, and this time, I wouldn’t stop there either. Goddammit, I haven’t wanted to kiss a woman like this in the last five years.
“Three movements, Logan. You can do it.”
When I wrap one arm around her, then the other, she looks up at me, her chest heaving. If I kissed her, she would melt against me like she did yesterday. Maybe I’d get her to moan again, to pull my hair.
But I don’t want her to think she’s a cop-out. I want her to know that I crave her all the time—not just when I’m going through shit.
Before I can make up my mind, she pulls me into a hug and whispers. “Come on, third movement.”
I rub my hand on her back, run it up her shoulders and to the back of her head, pulling her closer. I stay in this twisted position, enjoying our hug, for far longer than it’s appropriate. And then some more.
When I pull back, she carefully studies my expression, and I must be looking much better, because she smiles.
I squint down at the farm, the vast expanse tinted with an orange glow now that the sun is setting. “We used to have Sunday lunches on a big table in the backyard,” I mumble. I don’t know what exactly made me think of it. “The whole neighborhood would come to the farm. Sometimes, uncles, aunts, and cousins who lived far away. Kyle, Simon, and Josie. Aaron and me. It was the place that brought us together.” I think back to the barbecues, Christmas lunches, and how my parents made it feel like everyone’s home.
“You didn’t keep the tradition alive?”
“No. Things changed.” I press my lips together. “And they’re about to change even more.”
“When you sell the farm?”
I don’t want to talk about this, but she deserves someone who isn’t afraid to speak the truth. Even when it’s hard and has the potential to ruin everything.
And there are a few truths I’ve been keeping from her.
Letting out a slow breath, I clench my teeth together to stop myself from tearing up. “It’s done, Primrose. I sold the farm.”