Chapter 26 #2
Yes. Yes, he needs to tell her exactly that.
That she needs to find someone else, because I know she wasn’t actually looking for anyone.
Even if she was, she has plenty of options to choose from—like a real company that does this kind of work.
He needs to tell her no, because this is just Gran meddling.
My head shakes, though, when I go to respond, and the words that come out of my mouth aren’t the ones that my brain is screaming at me to say. “You don’t make me uncomfortable.”
My heart’s truth.
“Look at me.”
The words hold a command, even though he’s soft with them.
They leave no room for argument, and I couldn’t deny him his request if I tried.
It takes me a moment, but my gaze slowly drifts up the length of him, taking in his jeans, the t-shirt that hangs loose around his trim hips, knowing exactly how his entire body feels when I sleep against it.
How warm and safe it is. I’d love nothing more than to slide my hands over his chest, around his neck, and let him kiss me.
To taste the orange and pine that seems to encompass him.
Finally, my eyes meet his, and the breath leaves my lungs in a soft puff of air. The green depths are swimming with earnestness, open and free, willing to give whatever I ask for. There’s no huge grin taking over, no crinkle at the corner of his eyes.
“What do you want?” he asks with a gentleness that makes my heart feel like it’s on a pillow, floating through the breeze.
He’ll do whatever I want, which comes as no surprise. But it makes it so much harder to listen to the battle raging inside of me.
Him. I want him. Desperately, especially when he looks at me like that. Willing to give me the world.
“I don’t want to lead you on,” I tell him, finally sliding my hands along the front of my tank top to smooth it out. There’s a small release of tension in my body when I do, like I’m taking a hit of a drug I’ve been denying myself.
The corners of his lips hitch upwards a fraction. “We’re just friends. I know. You didn’t answer the question, though.”
Swallowing the word ‘you’ deep into my throat, I exhale with enough force that my lips rattle. “I want Gran to be happy.”
Wyatt chuckles with a shake of his head. He takes another small step towards me, close enough that I can feel the heat of his warm body. “B, put everyone else aside for one second. What do you want? Selfishly.”
Unable to face his green eyes any longer, I turn away, looking towards the backyard. “I want to sit back here and sip on lemonade, eat Moon Pies, and listen to the waterfall in that stupid fountain.”
He steps beside me, his arm brushing against mine. It sends goosebumps racing up my skin, all the way to my neck.
“Fountain? B, I’m pretty sure there’s supposed to be a whole pond and cascading waterfall with this thing.”
He’s not wrong. There is a pond, or there was before my grandpa died, and rocks stationed all around it with foliage behind those.
The rocks are different levels, but they all lead to a top pool where water should pour over and into the bigger pond below.
With the thing sitting empty, though, and not being kept up for the last couple of years, it all looks drab and run down.
It’s worse than I remember. In fact, the whole backyard looks worse than I recall from the last time I was back here. Was that really so long ago?
“The fountain used to be my grandpa’s pride and joy,” I explain. “He built it from the ground up years ago. And when he died, he seemed to take all the secrets of running it with him, because no one has been able to make it work since.”
I feel Wyatt’s eyes turn on me. “You’ve had people come look at it?”
Nodding, I wrap my arms around myself, remembering when we had three different companies come out a few months after he was gone. “Yep. More than once. They all said we’d have to rip it up and start new.”
He leaves me standing there to walk around the pond, assessing what he can see without getting into the thing. Which can’t be much from the little I know about it. After he moves around the entire area, he returns to me.
“Let me try.”
“If a professional can’t fix it, what makes you think you can?” I ask curiously.
He shrugs, but there’s a gleam in his eye that wasn’t there earlier. “Sometimes professionals don’t want to put the work in. Plus, if they can sell you something new, it’s usually money in their pocket.”
Looking over his shoulder at the pond, I know he’s right. I had the same thought when each of the companies was here. No one seemed truly interested in trying to fix it.
“It’s like Betty,” he continues, bringing my attention back to him. “A labor of love.”
My stomach flutters, and for a moment, I stop breathing. My grandpa used to call it that.
Maybe this is some weird sign from the universe nudging me to say yes to Wyatt helping. To allow Gran to get her way with him being her handyman and whatever that’s supposed to entail.
I press my hand to my stomach in an effort to calm the butterflies. Wyatt tracks the movement, his eyes darting down, and I watch as his throat bobs with a swallow. I’m not sure what it’s all about, but it creates even more of a reaction in my belly.
Slowly, like he’s drinking in every inch of me, his eyes trail skyward, lingering for a moment too long on my mouth before he reaches my eyes. The air between us feels charged, just like it did the last time I saw him at 10-42, and my breathing quickens.
“Let me try,” he repeats, but this time his voice has dropped an octave. The sound is like a thrown lasso that snares me, pulling my feet a few inches towards him. “Please.”
Only inches separate us, and I’m forced to tilt my head back to look up at him.
The rim of his hat shields me from the sun that’s peeking through the trees overhead.
No humor lives in his eyes right now, which doesn’t look right on his face.
He wants this, and I want to give it to him, but I need to make sure our boundaries are in place.
“Just friends?” I ask, and curse how sultry the words come out.
But Wyatt doesn’t even blink. He only nods. “Friends. Always.”
I note the way he doesn’t say ‘just friends,’ but I let it go.
“Okay,” I say, holding out my hand for him to shake. “I guess you’re our new handyman.”
He slides his hand into mine, and the charged air that’s grown between us seems to zap us both as a current runs up my arm and has goosebumps skittering down my spine and along my arms.
The grin that’s been missing on Wyatt this whole time appears in a flash and damn if it doesn’t make me feel weak in the knees.
“I won’t let you down.”
That’s what I’m afraid of.