Chapter 1 #2
He stares at his splayed hands for a moment, then looks at me, and now I can read him. Now I see the change that’s come over his face.
He’s tormented and torn, and inside of all that, there’s desire. Red-hot, potent desire that I’ve never seen him wear before, never seen on anyone in my sheltered little life.
It makes my breath hitch in my throat, excitement flutter in my chest.
“I don’t know how to deal with my feelings for you,” he finally says.
Oh. Oh!
“Feelings?” I repeat, so scared to let that flutter in my chest turn into full-blown wings and fly away toward hope.
Even though I have tried to ignore the changes between us and I’ve pretended that I still see him as just a friend, it turns out I’ve secretly hoped that one day we could be more, become what we were always promised to each other.
I don’t know what else to say, and it doesn’t matter.
Because Brom leans over and grabs my face in his hands, and he kisses me.
He’s kissed me before, a shy peck on the lips when we were young and sitting under Hollow Creek Bridge, but this is completely different.
This is warm and soft and strong all at once, the press of his lips, the wetness of his tongue.
It shocks me, lightning that jolts down my spine, this sudden intimacy and intrusion.
I don’t know what to do—I don’t know how to kiss him back, but it doesn’t seem to matter.
He’s taken the lead, and I’m following.
His kiss deepens, coaxing me, and he slides his tongue against mine, showing me what he wants.
I oblige, already feeling like I’m being swept away, taken to places I’ve never been before, and drowning in him.
I kiss him the best I can until I feel my entire body grow warm and tense, like I’m hungry for the first time.
But there’s no hiding his hunger for me.
He moves so that I’m falling back into the hay and his body is on top of mine, and it’s all such a blur.
His mouth goes to my neck, kissing and licking and sucking along my skin, the weight of him taking my breath away.
I don’t know where this is going, but even though it scares me, I’m willing to go along because this is our destiny, isn’t it?
The two of us together, married, until death do us part—that’s what we were always supposed to be.
The act of our bodies coming together is inevitable.
We don’t talk as this is happening, as his hands go to my dressing gown and touch my breasts until they ache, as another hand slips up between my legs.
I’m nervous, and I know I could say no, but this is Brom, and I trust him more than anything.
Even though I’m worried I won’t be good enough for him, even though I’m afraid of how much it will hurt, I want him.
I want him.
And all I’ve wanted is for him to want me.
He fumbles for his pants, undoing them, and then I feel him on my thigh, and I’m shocked at how warm he is, how he’s both solid and soft against my skin. My cheeks flush at the intimacy of it all, at this new side of him, my body heating up from the inside.
“Daffodil,” he whispers to me, his voice thick with want.
Then he’s kissing me again, parting my legs farther, and we both take in a sharp breath as he pushes himself inside me.
Hot, sharp pain bursts between my thighs, white sparks exploding behind my eyes as I pinch them shut and try to breathe.
I don’t dare cry out because I don’t want him to stop.
I know he would if he knew I was in pain, and I want him to keep going.
But I’m able to ignore it. Brom continues to push himself into me, soft grunts filling the air, the loft creaking under our movement, the hay sticking to my hair, and I’m enraptured by the look on his face.
The moon still casts his gaze in shadow, black sockets under black brows, yet from the set of his firm jaw, the grit of his teeth, the glint in his eyes, I can see pure wildness radiate from him.
Like he’s both hunting for something and being pursued. Predator and prey.
Where are you running to?
What are you running from?
But those thoughts are taken from me when he slips his hand between my legs again and touches me with slippery fingers, and it’s as if all my pain melts away.
A strange ache throbs, and my body coils as tight as twine, and suddenly, my world explodes.
It’s all bright lights and colors behind my eyes, and I’m gasping loudly while he lets out a low moan that fills the hayloft.
I’m barely aware of his body stiffening above me, the sound of his heavy breathing. I still feel like I’m floating, higher and higher, through the roof and all the way to the moon.
It’s the most delicious feeling in the world, a whirlwind of energy unlike any I’ve felt before, and I never want it to end. I feel powerful, so powerful, as if I could crush the world like rose petals in my palm and take anything and everything I’ve ever wanted.
But eventually, my heart slows, and I feel back in my body again.
I’m smiling. Feeling stunned and stupid.
Until Brom removes himself, and I gasp. I’m going to be in so much pain tomorrow.
“I didn’t…,” I begin, trying to look down as he makes himself decent. “Is my nightgown all right?”
Despite what we just did, I feel too bashful to ask if I had gotten blood on my clothes.
He seems to understand though. He looks down and shakes his head. “You’re fine,” he says, still sounding breathless. “Come on, we should get you back in your room before your mother notices you’ve been gone.”
I nod, feeling a little shaken. I don’t want to go back to the house and be apart from Brom. I want to stay with him. Talk to him. Talk about what just happened. Perhaps even do it again.
But there isn’t time.
We get to our knees, and he starts down the ladder, with me following. With each step I take, I feel sore, but I keep on going.
Brom grabs my hand once I reach the ground, and then he leads me out of the barn and into the field.
The world looks different now. The white paint of the house glows in the moonlight, the windows like dark eyes.
The field itself looks silver, the Hudson River a sparkling ribbon, and the sky above is a velvet cape dotted with stars.
The moon is so bright that it hurts my eyes to look at it.
All around us are crickets and rustling in the grass and other sounds of the night. Everything is so alive.
I feel so alive.
Just like before, we don’t talk, but perhaps we don’t need to. Perhaps we’ve grown so close now that we don’t need to say a word.
When we get to my window, he helps me up inside. I had left it open by mistake, but the chill in the air feels good on my overheated body.
“Good night,” I say to him, feeling awkward as I stand at the window. “I suppose I’ll see you tomorrow?”
“Good night, Kat,” he says, clearing his throat. He opens his mouth to say something else but then closes it.
Then he turns and walks off.
And I’m left wondering if all of that was a dream.
—
The next morning, I sleep in later than normal, my mother waking me up as she pushes the door open without knocking. There’s a hard line between her brows as she bustles into my room before I can even say good morning.
“Have you seen Brom?” she asks, an accusatory edge to her tone.
I freeze, my fingers curling around the edge of my blanket. “Brom? No. Why?”
She knows. She must know. Do I already look different to her? Had I turned into a woman overnight?
“Because he never came home last night. Emilie said he was supposed to let out the cows first thing, and he never did. His room is empty, bed made.” She pauses. “His satchel is missing, and…there’s a general sense that he’s gone.”
The way she says those last words, the weight on them, makes me realize that the energy around us has shifted in some way, like the world feels incomplete, as if a piece of a complete puzzle has been taken away.
“Gone…,” I say uneasily, my heart a thunderous sound in my head.
“That he’s left Sleepy Hollow.”
And even though she doesn’t add anything to that, I can almost hear it in her head.
He’s left Sleepy Hollow for good.
At first, I think it’s me. My fault. That I scared him or that perhaps he took my innocence and ran, that I was used and discarded, or that he discovered he didn’t like me in that way after all, despite how he made it seem last night.
But not only does that not seem like Brom, there’s still the thing he said to me at the start of the night:
“I’ve done a bad thing.”