Chapter 48
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
The first sound I hear is birds singing outside my window. I cringe. It doesn’t fit.
I lie still, blinking at the ceiling, my limbs too heavy to lift. I should get up. I should want to get up. But I don’t. A pit has dug deeper into my stomach. Leaving this bed feels impossible, like pushing out of wet cement.
Eventually I force myself upright. The blankets are wadded at my feet. Maybe I fought something in my sleep. I drag myself to the door. The house is silent, the pullout already folded away. Maybe I should be relieved, but all I feel is tired.
I paw for my phone and see my song link still came last night. His gesture means even more since I earned a red Sharpie F for my girlfriend performance yesterday.
Austin
Song of the day
“Start Nowhere” by Sam Hunt
The track starts as I curl around my pillow on the bare bed. A yellow tractor maneuvers around trees on the other side of the pond. More Bangladesh.
I send Austin a text.
What happens now?
Be there in five
Teeth brushed, I skip the rest. Crazy hair, bare face—it doesn’t matter. And yet … it does. Because somehow I can fall back into bed as I am. He loves me like this. However I look, even as I fail him. I squeeze the pillow—his pillow—like it will keep me afloat.
This bear den is a refuge, even without any of his stuff on the walls. Out there, Bangladesh is terrifying. I don’t know how I’ll manage when his family returns from church. I need my grizzly in here with me.
Downstairs, the door clicks open and shut.
The clunk of boots against the floor. Four steps up the stairs.
And there he is, pulling off his hat, running a hand through those wild brown curls, scenting the room with Austin and a twist of cedar and hard work.
The motion shows off the underside of his arms, the vulnerable part of the bear I like so much.
His neck and forehead shine with sweat. The graphic on the front of his thinned white T-shirt is faded beyond recognition and smeared with dirt.
Holes line the seams. Jeans as old as that shirt wrap around his strong legs.
Farmer Austin. Absolutely the most irresistible I’ve ever seen him.
I lift to my elbows. My lips part, but no words.
He stops at my side of the bed, a questioning smile curling his lips. His eyes skitter down my shorts pajama set like I’m a work of art. A scary work of art. “I was working on a dead tree.”
“Oh.” No idea what that means, but I want to watch him do it. I yank the front of his grungy shirt so he’s leaning over me.
His eyes flash with fear. “We can’t. I can’t.”
It only fuels my need to kiss him.
“Just for a minute,” I beg.
My greedy lips take in his. His jaw, his neck.
His skin is a balm, a buoy, the sweetest comfort.
His hands brace on either side of my shoulders, but his foot stays planted on the floor.
He moans. Something in the back of my mind screams to pull back the reins, to slow down. I weave fingers into his hair.
Sophie, this isn’t freedom.
“I love you, Austin,” I whisper between kisses.
His lips crush into mine uninhibited, like I always want and never get. Intoxicating, transcendent, a tornado of pleasure and want—
He bolts out of the room. Not a word. Gone.
I lurch up and watch the door, knee bouncing.
Sophie.
No. I need this.
Two minutes later his footsteps return, slow this time. He stands in the doorway. Eyes down, jaw tight, hands in his pockets. “My parents won’t be home for another hour at least. C’mon, we’ll get some breakfast.”
His lips are a dark red, and his chest rises and falls too fast. I did that. His gaze flits to his hat on the floor, but he doesn’t move.
“You’re so far away.” I reach toward him. “Come back?”
“Sophie.” So stern. So serious. “I can’t kiss you on my bed with zero accountability.”
No. I love him. I’m scared. I need him close.
I crawl closer to his warmth and safety.
He doesn’t budge, so I slide off the bed and plant myself against him.
My body and heart are in crooked alignment, conspiring against my mind.
I need this. My hands slide up his chest. I know better, oh I know better, but my mouth goes to his ear and the words tumble out, just a whisper. “Austin, please.”
“I can’t,” he chokes out. But he trails a kiss down my neck.
His feet hit the floor, and he stares at his hands for what feels like an hour. When I graze his arm, he flinches. He hides his eyes and escapes. The bathroom door closes. Opens. Four steps down the stairs like as many claps of thunder.
What have I done? My bracelet crawls down my wrist.
I try pulling my knees in, as if I could shield against my guilt, but I can’t stay in this bed another minute.
Clothes. Suitcase. Thank-you note on a scrap of paper. I think I saw that on a movie once. I center it on the island as if a perfect ninety-degree angle will make up for what I’ve taken.
The gravel road crunches beneath my tires. Hands shaking on the wheel. Even my Jeep is hollow without him. It knows.
There he is.
Pushing over a dead tree with work-gloved hands. That tree must be forty feet tall. And the tractor—that’s his?
An ember of hope lights at the sight of him.
Hope that I can make amends, that our closeness just twenty minutes ago will argue on my behalf, that maybe the newly desperate longing swirling through me is reciprocated or okay somehow.
I throw the Jeep in park and unbuckle. But when he catches sight of me, the whole tractor jerks.
I recoil like I was slapped. His gaze snaps to the steering wheel, and his head shakes once, hard.
Maybe in communication. Maybe in disgust.
Something heavy and dark fills my chest, suffocating the pathetic hope. Something worse than dread.