Chapter 23
CHAPTER 23
Christine
Manifesting works.
I want Tagger Grange to fall in love with me.
“I think I already am.”
I hadn’t realized my whispers could be heard. My gaze darts to the right of me, where he’s been sleeping or so I thought. Seeing him rub his eyes and look over at me with nothing but adoration has me feeling mushy inside. “You are?” Sure, he told me he was earlier, but a part of me just wondered if it was the appetizer before dinner started, wistful words before having sex.
“Yes, Pris.” Taking hold of my hand between our bodies, he says, “I’m not sure after sex is the best time to discuss these things.”
“True.” He’s right. My emotions are all over the place and spiraling from the activities. “We had sex.” I smile. “Really good sex.”
“Great sex.” His warm hand glides over my stomach, and he rests it in the middle.
“The greatest.”
“This isn’t a competition, is it? Because if that’s the case, it was spectacular sex. God’s honest truth.”
I cuddle to his side. “You win.”
He rubs his hand over my hip. “I usually do.” Redirecting his gaze upward, he asks, “What are your thoughts on long-distance relationships?”
“They’re not great for most.”
He turns to look at me again, and worry wrinkles his forehead. “What about us?”
I don’t rush to answer, knowing this is a sensitive topic that can cause unnecessary concerns. Thinking about how this will work seems to be the biggest obstacle. “How will it work? For us, specifically?” I hate answering a question with another, but I’m curious how he sees this playing out.
“I come back here for visits,” he says as if this is obvious. I feel like this needs to be stated, loud and clear. For me, at least, so it’s good to hear. “You come to New York when you can.”
“So traveling back and forth? Calls. Emails. Texts?”
An ember glows in the pupil of his eyes. “Video for when we want to get off.” I love how hopeful he sounds.
“Okay.”
“Yeah?”
“Yes.” Rolling half on top of him, I kiss his chin. “I want to try this with you.”
I feel his breathing stop as if he’s holding his breath. His eyes study the ceiling, and then he looks at me again. “Do you hear that?”
Confused about what I’m supposed to be listening for, I ask, “Me saying I’ll do a long-distance relationship with you?”
“No, though I love to hear it. No rain.”
I stop to listen. He’s right. “It’s stopped. I didn’t even notice when.”
“We were preoccupied.”
Sitting up, I’m both happy and disappointed at the same time. I look back at him still lying next to me. “I guess we should get dressed.”
“Yeah.” The ember dies out, and he sounds just as conflicted as I do. “Your dad will probably be looking for you.”
I turn back around and silently nod, though I doubt he can see it. I climb off the mattress, needing a shower more than ever. But it was nice for a short moment in time for only us to exist in this little universe. After a few hours of hanging on the rail, my cotton dress is made of thin enough material to be dry most of the way. Unfortunately, the stains appear to be there to stay.
I don’t bother with the bra, and I’m definitely not putting my underwear back on. I’ll be tossing those anyway. The material of the dress is cool as it slips over my body, revealing my nipples pressing against it. “What if we don’t work out?” I ask, gathering my socks and other garments together.
His head pops through the hole of the shirt, and he pulls it down. “No harm. No foul.”
“We pretend nothing ever happened?” I pick up my boots in the other hand and return to where he’s attempting to pull on jeans that are still wet, though not soaking anymore.
He stops, his eyes narrowing. “Does that mean you’re thinking we keep this quiet?”
Kind of dumbfounded, I hadn’t thought of that. “A secret relationship?” I hate the way shame creeps into the corners of my psyche.
“That’s not what I had in mind, Pris,” he says, coming closer and lowering his voice as if the tempered tone will make me feel better. “I don’t want to hide you or what we have.”
So many thoughts merry-go-round in my head, but two come to the forefront. “My dad?—”
“And Baylor,” he says, the same look of defeat dragging his expression down. “He’ll kill me.”
“He’d bury you alive somewhere on the property to never be found by me or anyone else ever again.”
With a slack jaw, he stares at me. “Um, that’s quite the visual. First time having that thought there, babe?”
“No. But it didn’t involve you, if that makes it any less worrisome.”
Seemingly shaking off that imagery, he says, “It does.”
“But now we’re back to hiding again.”
He strokes my cheek with the back of his hand. “We don’t have to hide. I’ll face the music for you.”
“The Death March.” I look down between us at our bare feet, thinking how I felt like I was on cloud nine just five minutes ago. Now, I’m thinking it’s best to keep things undercover. “Maybe we work through the kinks secretly? I mean, what if I discover you snore, and I murder you with a pillow in the middle of the night if I don’t get rest?”
“I think we need to slow the roll on the different ways I can be murdered and get back on track to what will work best for us. You and me. That’s all we should be considering right now.”
“That’s simple. We keep it a secret until we’re ready to share with everyone.”
He tugs his jeans on the rest of the way and secures the button. “How do you figure?”
“Whether we tell everyone or just show up together, then the relationship becomes a thing—of gossip, scrutiny, and dealing with the fallout.”
“Instead of enjoying what we have.” He drops his socks and underwear in his boot, then grabs the other. “Dooms us from the start.”
“Because it becomes about them instead of us.” I rest my head on his arm, closing my eyes. I’m not quite ready to leave this little paradise we created. “I don’t want that.”
His arm comes around me, and he kisses my head. “Me either.”
I shift in front of him, looking up and seeing how this isn’t what he wants. He’s agreeing to keep me out of the line of fire, knowing I’m the one who will have to deal with them here in Peachtree Pass. Though, it wouldn’t be a walk in the park to break the news to my brother either. So we’re screwed.
“One positive is I get you all to myself.”
“You already had me. You just hadn’t realized it yet.” He heads toward the other side of the loft, tossing his boots to the ground before he takes a step down onto the first rung of the ladder. “I’ll go down first.”
“A girl can dream.”
He shoots me a look that says I might get a tongue-lashing if I’m not careful. The thought makes me tingle. I decide to be reckless in hopes of receiving that reward, erm, I mean punishment.
At the bottom, he holds the ladder steady for me after I toss my boots to him, and asks, “Whatever happened to you and that guy in Denver? You never tried the long-distance thing?”
This time, I’m the one shooting the glare. “You sure you want to talk about exes?”
“I’m not threatened.”
“Good.” I step onto the ladder. “You shouldn’t be.” I take a few steps and then say, “He dumped me as soon as I told him I was moving, so it was never a discussion. Guess I wasn’t worth the effort.”
I try to step off the ladder, but his arms hold me in place. When I turn to face him, his hands hold my hips, and he says, “He was a fucking idiot for not fighting for you. You’re always worth the effort, Pris.”
I try to play off the compliment by rolling my eyes, but he’s just so swoony I can’t resist him. “If you wanted to kiss me, all you had to do was ask.”
“Can I kiss you?”
“Absolutely.”
I’m given the kiss of all kisses—sweet with embracing pressure, gentle caress of our tongues, and he holds me in his arms like I might slip away if he doesn’t. The one in the rain was pretty damn good as well. The man knows how to make me swoon. I’ll give him that.
“You ready?” he asks as we approach the doors of the barn.
The night fell a while ago, but the light outside the barn shone bright enough to keep things visible through the dark. From here, I can see the lights on in the house and some movement in the kitchen.
I rub the muzzle of each of the horses, then catch up to him. “It’s probably best if you head out from here. My dad will start with a whole line of questions. I can dodge them and go shower, but you could be stuck for the next hour trying to explain what we’ve been doing.”
He scratches the back of his neck, eyeing the house. “You’re probably right.”
When I close the gap, standing next to him, I’m swept up in his arms and taken to a darker corner where no one can see us. Tagger kisses me once, and then again before whispering, “This was one of the best days of my life.”
I grin. “It was winning at the rodeo for me. What am I competing with?”
“The birth of my son.”
I surrender on the spot, throwing my hands up in front of me. “It’s no competition, then.”
“No. Two different events, important in different parts of my life.” He sets me down on my bare feet, the hay both irritating and tickling. The mud can suck it. I’m sick of it after today.
“You’re an amazing dad. Beckett’s fortunate to have you.”
“I’m fortunate to have him. He’s changed my perspective on pretty much everything. I put importance on things that were never worthy in the big picture. Now I value things that really matter—my son, happiness, and living a life that feeds my soul.” His gaze drops as if he needs a second to collect his thoughts. When he looks up, that determination he’s always carried in his eyes is at the forefront. “Come to New York. I’ll book you on a first-class ticket.”
“When?” Clearly, it only takes hearing first class to get me to say yes. I’m not that bad. I can afford my own first-class ticket. The truth is, I’d go anywhere for him and sit in the cargo hold if I had to. Desperate much? I now know what dreams taste like, so I’ll never get enough of him.
“When can you break free for a few days?”
I know I’ll have to lie to my dad. Since I’m more transparent than glass, I’ll have to come up with something good and a story that won’t raise red flags. “Give me two weeks.”
A smile splits his cheek wide open. “Two weeks it is.”
We share one more kiss before I run for the house. I’m more than happy to distract my dad to help Tagger’s quick getaway. I stop on the porch to drop my boots and look back at the barn, knowing it will always hold a special place in my heart.
I smile, then walk inside to find my dad at the stove. He glances at me. “You got caught out in it?”
“Yeah. Cats and dogs.”
“Cows and horses,” he says, smiling over a joke we’ve always shared to make storms less scary for me when I was growing up. Then he sees the dress. In my heart, I know he’d never be mad at me for wearing it, but I do hate seeing the pain it causes him to see it so dirty as if I didn’t care at all. “Your mother’s dress.”
I look down as it sinks in again that it’s ruined. “Sunrise was under a tree at the back of the cornfield. I waited with her.” I don’t say more because what is there to say? It was careless of me to wear it at all.
When he turns his attention back to the stove, he says, “You go clean up. I have some chicken noodle soup almost ready.”
I stand there a second more, feeling his pain from across the room, and now feeling worse for wearing it in the first place. By the time I’m ready to go to sleep a few hours later, I look out the window, but there’s too much cloud cover. I climb into bed, some new aches arising where I didn’t know I had muscles. Or thought had long ago atrophied from lack of use and attention. Tagger cured me.
I giggle at my own joke. I must need sleep because I’m obviously delirious after the day I had. And that’s when my phone lights up with a message on the nightstand as if it knew I needed saving from my ridiculous self.
Rolling over, I grab the phone and hold it above my head, instantly grinning like a loon when I see it’s from Tagger, my boyfriend. Secret or not, we’re the real deal, and one day, I just know in my heart I’m going to marry that man.