Chapter 9
Jodi Castle
He wasn’t there.
Now, admittedly she’d turned up an hour early, but she liked to be punctual. Arriving late for things, especially important things brought on her anxieties. Although so too did standing around in the dark on her own looking like a moron.
Maybe she could walk back towards the band enclosure and meet Nash en route, suggest to him that they invite some witnesses after all.
She’d like for Lee and Balin to be there.
Jez too, if they could winkle him out of his hole.
She’d have liked it if Rune had been present too.
Deeply romantic, he’d love this. Beautiful too, both inside and out.
What on earth had gone wrong between him and Jez? She couldn’t figure it.
Jodi turned the carnation in her hand. Now where had that come from?
Maybe she’d get changed. The other couples had been dressed up.
Some in their Sunday best, others in a carnival style, one pair were kitted out like mediaeval nobles.
None of them had rocked up in the old clothes they’d spent the day in.
What if Nash put on a shirt, and she still had her ancient rags on?
Maybe she could find more flowers and make herself a crown, so it seemed as if she’d tried.
Not that it was about appearances, it was about the vows they’d exchanged.
Damn, she still needed to think about those, too.
Maybe rushing into this wasn’t the best of plans. All the other couples seemed to know exactly what they were doing.
There were people roaming the pasture downhill of the standing stones.
Well at least she wouldn’t look out of place while she hunted out some flowers.
Daisies… there were bound to be daisies.
She could weave them into a chain, maybe add in a few buttercups and this lovely carnation.
Not that she was seeing much other than clover and some pointy-hatted mushrooms. No doubt Rock Giant would have been able to tell her what they were.
Duh, people were picking them, and not, she suspected, to throw into a pan with some bacon in the morning.
A shadow appeared before her. She’d barely had time to lift her head before someone had scooped her off her feet and she was being kissed.
The moment her lips were free of the onslaught, she squealed.
“Found you,” he said.
Nash! Fuck, her heart was pounding. Fuck, wait. Nash couldn’t lift her. Nash did not smell like this or taste like this or have beautiful hazel eyes that were peering at her as if she were a long-lost treasure.
Rock Giant!
He kissed her again igniting memories and sparking fireworks in her veins. Damn that man could kiss. Still, yes, Rock Giant. This wasn’t appropriate. She wriggled free of his grasp, or at least enough that he set her on her feet again.
“You,” she said.
“Yes, me.”
“How are you here? I knew your band were playing but…” But Black Halo were a big deal, she figured they’d be staying off site somewhere posh. Also, quelle surprise, evidently, he did remember her.
“Jodi Castle.” The way he said her name sent a pleasurable shiver through her limbs. He kept on staring at her, like he couldn’t quite believe she was real, and if he let go of her, she might vanish. Seeing the way he was eyeing her lips, she planted her hand in the middle of his chest.
“I got engaged.” She waved her ring at him, so he’d understand.
“Why the fuck would you do that?”
Okay, that was a non-standard response. Most people opted for congratulations. Then again, most people weren’t Paul “Rock Giant” Reed, or ought that to be Paul “Rock Giant” Reed wasn’t most people.
“The usual reason – love.”
“Riiighht! Why?”
Why was this so confusing for him? “Well, you’d pissed off, so I had to write that possibility off.” She meant to sound jokey, but the crackle in her voice nixed that.
“You left me.”
“I left you my number.” She’d scrawled it on the glass along with a farewell message.
Sticking around hadn’t seemed such a stellar plan in the cold of the dawn.
His band had been bound to turn up, and then she’d probably wind up in handcuffs, and not the sort with fuzzy linings. Not that it’d been easy to go either.
Before Nash, she’d often dreamed about how things would have worked out if she’d stayed tucked against Rock Giant’s side, head on his shoulder.
Fantasies that had seen her through a few low points, that’s all. Reality would likely have been way crueller.
Still, “I thought… I figured you might call to check up on the kittens.” And other reasons. There was that false hope rearing its head again.
Paul mumbled something that sounded suspiciously like if he’d had her number, he’d have totally hit her up, and that made her heart hiccup. “…but seeing as we’re both here now, fancy making up for lost time?”
Cue him cupping his hand over hers where it still rested on his chest soaking up the thunder of his heartbeat and bowing his head again. And her, despite her galloping pulse, having to remind him that she was engaged, ergo, off limits, again.
“I’m meeting him in half an hour to tie the knot. I was just looking for some things to put in a flower crown.”
Traitorously, her mind conjured an auditory hallucination of him saying, “Then that’s half an hour I have to prove how big a mistake you’re making.” What he actually said, was, “What are you using as a base?”
A base? Oh, for the crown. “Um, I haven’t got very far.” She showed him the carnation and explained about her hunt for daisies.
“Hawthorn, and maybe some rosehips,” he said, taking her by the hand and leading her across the field to its western edge where it was bordered by a hedgerow. “Maybe some harebells, too.”
“I’m not sure what they look like.”
“Bigger bluebells.” He plucked a few and handed them to her, before returning to his hunt through the hedgerow.
“Paul are you high?” she asked after observing him for a few minutes. He seemed to be alternating between states of obsessive focus and standing still staring at nothing in particularly with a dreamy expression on his face.
“Hm, maybe a little.”
“On what?”
“Life,” he jogged on a few steps seemingly in pursuit of something in the hedgerow that was making a getaway.
“Not mushrooms?”
“I do like mushrooms.”
“I know.”
“But you don’t. You’re very strange, Jodi Castle.
Strange but very, very bounteous.” Usually, she’d have shrivelled inside if someone had described her in such a way, given she’d worried about her weight her whole life, but how Rock Giant said it?
It was like he was bestowing her with a mark of excellence.
“Well, I’ve never tried the sort you’ve obviously been eating.”
“Can’t claim they’re tasty. Better made into a brew, but…
” He shrugged, then hunted through his pockets.
Having failed to find whatever it was he was searching for, he bounded back across the field a way, before bending and plucking something from the grass.
“You didn’t see me do that,” he giggle-whispered into her ear when he returned.
“Got some boom boom in here somewhere, to help wash them down.”
He produced a metal flask from inside his boot.
“Yeah, I’m not sure that’s gonna help,” she said as he added the mushrooms to the assortment of foliage and berries in her hands.
“Help with your anxiety.”
“I’m not anxious.”
He scoffed at that. “Course you are. That’s why you’ve been through my pockets three times already.”
“I have not.”
Paul just smiled. “There, I think we have enough. Just need a bit of… Where’s my knife?”
Jodi handed him the multi-tool she found in her pocket, which he used to cut the thorns off some twigs he’d harvested. He sat cross-legged where they were and began weaving the bits of foraged hedgerow together, even including a few mushrooms in her crown.
“Have you figured out your oaths?”
“Not yet.” She joined him on the grass. She’d forgotten how magnetic he was, and how he seemed to suck her closer purely by being present.
He’d changed. There was a seriousness coupled to his practicality that hadn’t been present three years ago, and a harder edge to him, as if someone had taken a chisel to his softer edges.
“Cutting it a bit fine, aren’t you?”
Apparently so. Although there was still no sign of Nash.
She was keeping half an eye on the path up to the stones.
Then again, he never worried about punctuality.
He sauntered through life, and no one ever seemed to mind if he was a bit late or a little early.
She wished she could say the same about herself, but everyone—literally everyone—mentioned it and never let her forget it if she was late.
It happened more often than she liked, which is why she always set out to be early.
“What would you say?” It was interesting seeing him without the spikes of coloured hair he usually sported. The shorn look suited him though. He had the bone structure to carry it off, plus, it looked invitingly soft.
“Me?” Rock Giant lifted one brow. He smiled at her when she ran her hand over his head and leaned into the touch just like Flugwhump did when she scratched between his ears. “You’ll have to be there when I get hitched to find that out.”
Just the idea made her heart pang.
Stupid really. Of course, some girl would snatch him up someday. The real miracle was that no one had done so already.
“No hints that could help a girl out?”
His smile withered a little, though his pupils remained dilated. “Hints at what you should promise a guy I’ve never met. It is a guy, right? It’s not a sapphic snuggle party I’m making this for?”
“Nope,” she confirmed. “And you have met him.”
“Really? He can’t have been very memorable.”