Chapter Eight #3
She stepped back to let him in and that was when she noticed what was in his other hand. A small bunch of wildflowers, purple and yellow, the kind that grew along the fence line.
She stared at them.
“I rode past them on my way back from the pond,” he said, holding them out. A little self-conscious about it, which she found completely disarming. “Thought you might like them.”
She took them and looked down at them for a moment, then back up at him.
“Nobody’s ever brought me wildflowers before,” she said quietly.
Something moved across his face. “Then it was overdue.”
She turned to find something to put them in, blinking once before she got herself together. She filled a glass with water at the sink, set the flowers in it, and placed them on the windowsill where the evening light caught them.
She turned around.
He was watching her.
“Thank you,” she said. “I love them.”
He nodded. She crossed the room, rose up on her toes, and kissed him. He wrapped his arm around her and kissed her back. She knew the nervousness had been completely unnecessary.
When she finally pulled back she looked up at him.
“Are you hungry? I could make something.”
“I ate.” His arm was still around her. “You?”
“Serena and I had lunch at the diner.” She tilted her head. “So, we have no reason to go anywhere.”
“No reason at all.” He looked down at her and her stomach did that thing again.
She took his hand, led him to the sofa, and sat down. She snuggled against his side, his arm around her shoulders. It felt natural. Easy. Like they’d been doing it for years.
“How was the fishing?” she asked.
“Good. Caught three, threw them back.”
She looked up at him. “You throw them back?”
“Every time.”
“Then why do you fish?”
He considered that for a moment. “Same reason you ride alone. Just to be out there.”
She nodded. She understood that completely.
They sat in comfortable quiet for a while, the evening light coming soft through the windows, and she thought about what she’d been worrying over before he arrived and how little it seemed to matter now that he was here beside her.
She looked up at him.
“Ethan.”
He looked down at her.
“What are we doing?” she asked quietly. “I mean, what is this?”
He held her gaze for a long moment.
“I think you know what this is,” he said.
She searched his face. “I want to hear you say it.”
He was quiet for a moment, his thumb moving slowly along her shoulder.
“I’m falling for you, Naomi.” He said it simply. “That’s what this is.”
She felt something loosen in her chest that had been wound tight for a long time.
“I’m falling for you too,” she said. “I just didn’t want to assume.”
He looked at her like that was the most unnecessary thing she’d ever said. “You weren’t assuming.”
She smiled and laid her head back against his shoulder.
They sat like that for a while, the evening going quiet around them, the wildflowers on the windowsill catching the last of the light.
She thought about the woman who’d left him years ago because she couldn’t handle the life. She thought about the man who’d cheated on her because she’d loved horses more than she’d loved staying home.
She thought that sometimes the wrong roads were the only way to get to the right place.
“Ethan,” she said.
“Mm.”
“About that surprise.”
She felt him go very still beside her.
“I haven’t forgotten about it,” he said carefully.
She lifted her head, looked at him, and the look on his face made her laugh.
“The surprise can wait,” he said, standing and holding out his hand. “Come with me.”
She took it. “Where are we going?”
“You’ll see.”
She grabbed a light cardigan from the hook by the door, followed him down the stairs and to his truck. He opened the passenger door, helped her in, then drove them out through the back gate and across the property, the headlights cutting through the dark.
He drove until the barn lights were just a faint glow in the distance, then pulled up on a rise she hadn’t been to before and cut the engine.
The silence was immediate and complete.
He got out, came around to her side, helped her out, then dropped the tailgate. He stepped up into the bed, turned, then lifted her up beside him like she weighed nothing.
She laughed softly. “A little warning next time.”
“Where’s the fun in that.”
He shook out a blanket he’d had rolled up behind the wheel well and spread it flat, then sat down and patted the space beside him. She sat down. He took her hand and laid back, pulling her gently down with him.
“Look up,” he said.
She looked up.
She stopped breathing for a second.
The sky was enormous. More stars than she had ever seen in her life, spread from one horizon to the other in a wash of white and silver, the Milky Way cutting across the middle of it like something out of a dream.
“Ethan,” she whispered.
“I know.”
“I’ve never seen anything like this.” She couldn’t look away. “How is this real?”
“No light pollution out here. Nothing between you and all of that.”
She lay there staring up at it and felt very small and very lucky at the same time. She turned her head to look at him. He was already looking at her.
“Thank you for this,” she said quietly.
He laced his fingers through hers and looked back up at the sky.