Chapter 16 #2
“But not me,” she said, trying to turn again, and this time he allowed her.
Her hands were on his cheeks, but he kept looking out the glass door at the snow falling.
The flakes, so tiny, were accumulating and would be a good few inches in the morning.
Just like these little emotions that Ava stirred in him.
He liked her smile.
No big deal.
She sassed him and made him hard with just a flick of her hair over her shoulder.
Also a tiny detail.
She was competitive.
She teased him about Bad Boys.
All these tiny snowflakes falling around him.
A man who’d been used to a barren landscape and coping with it the only way he knew how.
Building his house far from town. Making a life for himself where he couldn’t really get too chummy with the other residents of the Navajo Nation because he might have to arrest someone or give them a ticket.
Until Ava.
Falling around him and surrounding him while he wasn’t paying attention. It was easy for him to pretend that he could ignore the feelings she stirred in him, but he hated to lie to himself.
He could no more ignore her than he would be able to drive to work in the morning without first shoveling out his truck.
He was busy trying to debate rational thought and emotions, but it was too late. Once emotion took hold, it was all over. Something that he wasn’t sure how to proceed with.
Tension swirled around her like the snow outside Chay’s home. He was so brutally honest that she couldn’t help falling for him that little bit more, which was dangerous. He wasn’t like Greg, who she’d loved when she’d been young and had just the smallest bit of damage.
At almost thirty she had baggage. Lots of it.
Chay did, too. They were both coming to each other battle hardened from their twenties, as most people did.
Life wasn’t all sunshine and happiness. She got that.
She’d known it for a while now. But somewhere in the back of her mind was the belief that it should be.
Now she wasn’t sure.
She wouldn’t change one thing about Chay…maybe his stubbornness when it came to thinking of himself as a father to Gracie, but even that she knew was deeply rooted in his childhood, and she couldn’t blame him for his reluctance.
No one wanted to be responsible for screwing up a little person’s life…well, any person, really.
She got that more than he’d understand. She’d felt that way when she’d first been approached to foster.
But fostering was temporary. A nice, sweet spot where she could allow herself all the feels knowing that one day the baby or child would be in their forever home and she’d be a memory of a transition.
“That promise is one I know you can keep,” she said to Chay. “You aren’t your mom.”
“Obvious, right? But there’s still a part of me that can’t shake the feeling that it’s only because I haven’t been around kids, haven’t tried to have a long-term partner that I’m not.”
“Oh, Chay. If only you could…” An idea popped into her head. “Turn and face the glass door again. Can you see yourself in the reflection?”
“I’d rather look at you.”
She shook her head to keep from being distracted by that low, rumbly, seductive tone he used.
“First let’s look at you.”
“Are you therapy-ing me?”
“Maybe. Trust me?”
He nodded and then turned until he faced the glass door. She went to turn off one of the larger living room lights so they were bathed in a small pool of illumination. His reflection was clearer this way. He held himself still.
His jaw was tight, his muscles tense and his expression that serious, I-mean-business look that she knew so well.
“What do you see?”
“Myself.”
“Stop it. When you look at yourself, what do you see? Is it your mom? Your grandmother? Your dad or some version that has little bits of them but is mostly you?” she suggested.
He was quiet beside her, and she stepped up next to him, realizing she might be pushing him way too far out of his comfort zone.
“I see a little bit of my mom in the way my eyes are and the shape of my nose. I see my dad in the freckles across my cheeks and Ryan in this tiny scar on the bottom of my jaw that I got when I tried to save him from a tree in the backyard,” Ava said.
Chay took a long, deep breath. “I’m older now than my dad ever was. I have his hair, though, and his eyes. My jaw, I guess, comes from him, too. In fact I look a lot like him. On the outside I’m all Benally.”
“And on the inside?”
“Grandmother, probably, and my mom. There are times when I shut down and retreat up here. I don’t socialize at the station or even go out with friends.”
“That’s fair. My parents are both loud people, and there are times when I have to be alone.”
“Yeah, that’s good. But for me, I think about leaving like she did. I remember how she said there was no privacy on the rez. That’s what she called this place. It always was a place to escape from.”
Ava stepped around in front of him. “This place is your home. You can’t convince me you think of leaving.”
Trying to be nonchalant, he started to shrug, but then he shook his head. “I don’t. The time I spent in Salt Lake was enough for me. I missed the Navajo Nation.”
“One way you’re different from her. This place feels like home,” Ava pointed out.
“It does. The only one I’ve ever known.”
“Dark Canyon is like that for me. College was nice, and I really wanted to stretch my wings and show the world I was independent. But coming back here, I realized I didn’t need to be out of Dark Canyon to do it.”
“I’m glad. So what do you see?” he asked.
“I already told you.”
“No, when you look at me,” he said.
“Oh,” she said softly. Suddenly she wasn’t bossy, and the shyness that she’d never really acknowledged she had flexed its wings.
“Well, I see your strength and these laugh lines around your eyes that let me know there is more to you than the stern expression you give when you are trying to get information.”
“Stern? That’s my serious don’t-mess-with-me look.”
“Oh, it makes me want to mess with you,” she said.
“Yeah. How?” he asked.
She twined her arms around his neck, going up on her tiptoes and whispering what she wanted to do with him.
Just thinking about it made her hot. He cupped her butt and lifted her off her feet.
She wrapped her legs around his waist and brought her mouth down on his.
Taking the kiss that she hadn’t realized she’d been missing for what felt like a lifetime.
This was where she was meant to be.
That scared her, because independence had been the hallmark of these last few years. Living on her own despite the shadow of Daniel Wayne. But with Chay she knew she could be her own woman and be with him. There was nothing she wanted more than that.
Nothing except his body moving over hers in front of the fireplace while the snow fell around them.