Chapter 32
Leah
They’d all start piling in for the wedding in a few days. All my old friends, the ones who’d cut me off quicker than they could run off a rat-infested boat in the middle of a surge of plague.
There were footsteps and then a pair of broad shoulders filled the doorway of the old barn, the moon shining behind him. Didn’t matter if I couldn’t see his face. I’d recognize him anywhere, in spite of wanting to forget.
Kade walked over, stopping right below me. “What are you doing up there?”
“Just checking out the old place.”
“Can you come down? The wood up there hasn’t been checked in ages. This whole building is rotting and about to collapse.”
“Yeah, I noticed. Surprised you haven’t torn it down.”
“Haven’t gotten around to it.”
That seemed almost unfathomable when I looked around and everything else had been redone around it. Maybe it was like that old swing on the porch he’d saved. Some things seemed to hold a soul of their own and it wasn’t so easy to toss them away.
“Come on, come down.” He was holding his hands up to me the way he used to. How many times had I climbed up here just so he could catch me? I was glad it was dark and he couldn’t see me well up, or the heat infusing my cheeks at the memory of how much I used to want him. Actually, I couldn’t really think of it as “used to” after the way I’d reacted when he kissed me yesterday.
“I’m fine. I swear.” I leaned, and a piece of wood groaned.
“I’m not leaving you up there.”
I shifted and another round of creaking wasn’t helping my argument. He might have a point about this place.
“I’ll climb down.” I got up and the wood creaked again, like an old man gasping his last breath. There’d been some rotting boards I’d stepped around, but it was getting hard to see where they were now that the sun had set.
I tested a step and realized I’d found at least one of the rotted spots.
“Jump. I’ll catch you. There’s too much rotten wood up there.”
“You can’t catch me,” I said. This hadn’t been one of my better ideas for sure.
“Why? I’ve done it a million times before.”
This was like one of those exercises where you fell backward and hoped whoever was behind you would catch you, except worse. Ten years ago, I would’ve fallen blindly.
“Leah? You can’t walk around up there,” he said.
Was I really afraid of his dropping me, or was I scared of his catching me?
“You’re too old to be doing this.” It was a bit ridiculous, since he was probably stronger than he’d been at nineteen, or at least his arms were thicker, like he’d been toting logs around on his back for these past ten years.
“I think I can manage,” he said, with some earned arrogance.
Dammit. But I did want to get down sometime tonight. “Fine. But if you break your back, don’t blame me.”
“Leah, shut up and jump already. I swear I just heard more creaking.”
I shimmied to the edge. “I’m jumping,” I said.
“Any day now.”
I pushed off the side and he caught me, just like he used to. But he didn’t put me down right away like he used to.
“What are you doing?” I asked, my voice already growing raspier at the contact.
“Is it the wedding?” he asked.
“It’s not the wedding.” My voice had come out so harsh that I might as well have written a confession. “Or it’s not just the wedding.”
“I wouldn’t have offered if I’d known you didn’t want it.”
The nicer he was, the worse this situation grew. The physical attraction had never gone away, but I’d been able to cling to his being an asshole. If he was going to take that away, what shield was I left with now?
I chewed on my lower lip as his gaze narrowed in on my mouth in a way that made it feel like my ribcage had been shrink-wrapped around my lungs. “Don’t do that.”
“Do what?” he asked.
“You know.”
“Fine. Maybe I do, but I can’t seem to help it. I want you.”
I’d craved those words for so long. I’d wished on stars, blown out candles, and tossed coins into wells. Now, when my world was on its ear and the cost could be the small amount of freedom I had left, he’d said them. It was the definition of bittersweet.
“We can’t do this. We both signed contracts saying we wouldn’t.” In spite of my words, I hadn’t made so much as the simplest attempt to get out of his arms. Why now? Why did he have to do this now ?
“We could be discreet,” he said.
“I’m a thief, remember?” I said, trying to get the dick in him to wake up again.
“You are the most beautiful woman I’ve ever known. I want you and I don’t think I can shut it off.”
“But I’m a thief and spoiled and a princess,” I said, reminding him of all the things I’d been called lately, some of which he’d cosigned.
“ Spoiled and princess are redundant. That’s really just one, not two.” He smirked. “If we tallied it up, I think you dislike more things about me than I dislike about you, and yet I don’t care about any of them.”
“If someone finds out, they’ll send me to prison.”
“No, they won’t. No one is taking you off this ranch and throwing you in prison. No one.” His arms tightened around me, as if he were fighting off some invisible threat already.
“We both know there’s a risk.”
He held me in silence for another moment before his arms loosened. I slid down his body, fighting my own urge to wrap myself around him.
He took a step back, as if giving us both the buffer we needed to not take this to the next step.
“We should head back to the main house,” he said.
I took a few steps, waiting for him to come. He was standing there, watching me.
“Aren’t you coming?”
“I’ll follow in a few,” he said.
I nodded, leaving him in the barn and walking back alone, letting my mind once again wonder what things might’ve been like if I’d never left this place.