Chapter 13 #3
While I’m lying there, letting this avalanche of reality hit me full-on, Beckett has gotten up and gone… somewhere. He comes back a minute later with a warm, wet cloth and starts to clean me off.
“I’ll do it!” I croak, grabbing for the washcloth. “I’m perfectly capable of—”
“Of course you can, but I want to,” he says, not stopping. “So let me.”
He says let him like it’s no big thing. I don’t think he understands that for me, it really is.
When he’s done, he throws the towel aside, flops beside me in the bed, and pulls a soft blanket up to cover us, tucking us in for the night.
I should move. I should get up and walk myself home.
No part of me is drunk anymore, and my thoughts are buzzing around my head like gnats.
I’ve never had a panic attack come out of nowhere before, but if I had, I imagine this is what it would feel like.
A creeping cold, starting at my extremities and moving toward my heart, while I can’t remember how to move or even how to breathe.
“Griffin,” Beckett says, rolling into me and laying one huge arm over my middle. “Stay.” He presses a kiss to my hair and whispers, “Just… stay.”
For a while? For the night? For… longer?
I should know the answers to these things. I shouldn’t keep doing this until I know what I’m doing. But god, the warmth of him pressed up next to me seeps into my skin and deeper, into my bones. It pushes back the cold. It stops the buzzing.
“Okay,” I whisper. “Yeah. Okay.”
I wake up early the next morning, needing to pee.
My mouth is dry as the Sahara, but my head’s surprisingly clear, considering how many Dandies I downed.
Someone—Beckett, clearly—left a light on in the living room and plugged my phone into a charger on the nightstand, which is really freaking sweet.
When I grab the phone, the display reads 4:47 AM. Even Beckett, who I assume operates on some rise-at-dawn lumberjacky internal clock, is dead to the world beside me, his arm thrown over his face, his breathing deep and even.
I read a book once where the author described someone’s face as being “relaxed in sleep,” and I thought I knew what it meant.
But Beckett’s face is somehow even more appealing when he’s sleeping.
He looks vulnerable. Gorgeously, entirely mortal.
His mouth is pouty, without the usual tension that keeps it smirking or scowling, and I have the most terrifying urge to trace his bottom lip with my finger. Or my tongue.
And this, friends, is why I don’t do sleepovers. Way too much opportunity for mushiness. I can feel the mush taking me over.
I slip out of bed quietly, trying not to wake Beckett, and find my discarded clothes on the dresser. I grab them and head for the bathroom.
The guy in the mirror looks nothing like me. Not only did my brain decide to stop functioning last night, but so did my hair product. My hair is a horrifying mess of dandelion fluff sticking straight off my head. Thank fuck Beckett didn’t see me asleep.
One more reason I don’t do sleepovers.
I retrieve my shoes from Beckett’s room and creep toward the door. I’ll text him later. I’ll explain my early departure… somehow.
But as I pass through the living room, I notice that under the guitar is a little gallery of photos hung in a line. All the frames are matching, and they’re arranged in a cute pattern that makes me think Vivian had a hand in this.
I dart a glance at the bedroom, then pad closer to the pictures to take just a quick peek.
My reward is immediate because the first picture is of a man standing in front of an Axford Lumber sign, holding an adorable baby who’s obviously his copy/paste miniature, right down to their jeans and flannel shirts.
The baby’s got four teeth, and they’re all on display as he scowls ferociously at the camera from his father’s arms, and I snicker because I’d know that scowl anywhere.
The next is of a teenage Beckett with an axe thrown over his shoulder and a mop of brown hair flopping over his forehead like he was trying for emo rocker and ended up serving Justin Bieber.
He’s standing in the woods with his arm slung around another Axford, while a littler boy with a sunshiny grin—Ames—hams it up in the foreground, and their father looks on with a smile.
The next is of Beckett in a cap and gown at college graduation, flanked by beaming parents.
Mixed in with these are other shots—Beckett and Eliza with a blue-ribbon pumpkin, all the Axford siblings in Red Sox T-shirts, dangling from tree branches.
And inexplicably, there’s a photo of what appears to be a very tall sugar maple wearing a ranger hat, which makes me bite my lip to keep from laughing out loud.
But it’s the ones of Beckett and his dad that get me for some reason. Beckett says his dad doesn’t like how he’s running Axford Lumber, and it’s hard to reconcile that with the pride and love in these pictures.
“I swear to god, if you make fun of my teenage hair, I’m resigning as your bodyguard. Vermont can have at you.”
I jump a foot and whirl to find Beckett, wearing only a pair of low-slung pajama pants, leaning against the doorway. His dark hair is messy, and his smile is so relaxed and happy it makes my breath go wonky.
“Hey,” I say. “Did I wake you? I was just…” I glance down at the shoes in my hand.
“Spying?” Beckett quirks an eyebrow. “Trying to dig up dirt on your Big Dill competition?”
I laugh despite myself. How does he do that?
“You caught me,” I say. “I was looking for evidence of your guitar-playing days and the boy who broke your heart—”
“Jesus. I don’t think I’ve thought about Thad Gates as much in twenty years as I have since you came to town.” Beckett yawns and scratches his chest before pushing off the doorframe. “You want some coffee?”
I follow him to the kitchen, still clutching my escape shoes, because I can’t not. Because I like him so much it overwhelms my common sense.
He heads for the coffee maker, and I drop my shoes and sit at the table, nudging aside the laptop and papers scattered across the surface. “I have a fascination with Thad Gates. I imagine him moving to Boston is where your dislike of city folk began. Your poor broken heart.”
Beckett laughs, the sound warm and genuine. “Remind me again what you do for a living? Because you could totally write for a soap opera.”
“Drawn from the pages of my own life,” I agree. “Marketing professional from the big city loses job, becomes TikTok scandal, inherits weird treehouse in a tiny town, meets local lumberjack—”
“We prefer the term forestry professional,” Beckett corrects. He winks, and then his expression grows more serious. “You, ah, mentioned something the other day about being… unemployable? But then yesterday, that presentation you came up with was amazing. So… what happened?”
I suck in a breath. Beckett Axford seems like one of the few people in the world who hasn’t seen the billboard video trending on social media. But that also means he’s one of the few people I can tell this story who doesn’t already have any preconceptions.
So I pour out my tale of billboard woe, and the words come easier in the pre-dawn quiet of Beckett’s kitchen, with coffee brewing and his patient attention focused entirely on me as he leans against the counter.
I tell him about my years of work and my dreams of making a big splash.
About how I’d poured my heart into the Rise campaign, and I’d been so sure I was getting a promotion.
How it felt when that big splash started with a forty-two-story fall from grace.
How I’d felt betrayed by Erick and Alan… hell, by the whole city of New York.
“I loved that job,” I say, because that’s the part that still hurts the most. “I know it sounds stupid, loving marketing of all things, but I was really good at it. And now I’ll forever be remembered as the guy who greenlit the most expensive dick joke in Times Square history.”
Beckett’s expression has darkened as he listened, and when I’m done, he growls, “Jesus, I want to find this Erick kid and beat the crap out of him until he tells the truth.”
Hearing that feels better than it should.
“Yeah, well, even if Erick came clean tomorrow, I can’t imagine an employer would believe it.
Not enough to hand me a million-dollar ad campaign.
I’d still have to prove myself again. Rebuild from the beginning.
Or build something new.” I meet his eyes and admit, “I got a job offer yesterday. Or at least an offer to talk about the possibility of a job.”
“You did? Back in New York?” He studies my face and frowns. “Wait, that’s… that’s a good thing, right?”
“Yes. Probably?” My hands flail a little.
“An old friend from college is starting an image consulting company. It’s more PR than creative marketing and would mean starting at the very bottom again.
Maybe lower than the bottom, if people remember my name.
And we haven’t talked salary yet. But… it might be fun.
And would get me back to New York. So… I don’t know. ”
Beckett pours two cups of coffee and brings me one, settling in the chair across from me.
“I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing,” I admit. “It’s like I took a wrong turn somewhere, and I have no map for getting where I want to go.”
“I understand,” Beckett says quietly, his gaze drifting toward the living room, where the pictures of him with his father hang.
Something in his voice makes me look at him more closely. “Your dad?”