Chapter 20
Evie
“Get in here,” I yelled from the back door. The man was being a stubborn ass.
It was one thing to sleep outside when it was cold.
But in an absolute downpour? Hell no. Once the thunder started, I expected him to show up at the back door, but he remained hunkered down in that tent.
Up here in the mountains, the weather could get extreme quickly, and even though it was only June, the stifling summer humidity had already begun.
So I pulled my raincoat around me and trudged into the backyard.
“Jasper.” I was an asshole. Night after night, I climbed under the blankets in my warm, cozy house, and he was outside.
With a storm like this, it would be downright cruel not to invite him in.
Inside, the lantern was on, and his shadow moved over the tent wall. Then he unzipped the flap a few inches and peeked out.
“Come inside,” I yelled over the rain, gesturing with one arm.
He disappeared, and then the flap was fully unzipped and he was hopping out, barefoot.
And shirtless.
Oof.
He sprinted into the house wearing only mesh athletic shorts, but he pulled up short at the door.
“You sure you want me inside?” he asked.
Holy hell. As he stood before me, water droplets slowly rolled down his chest. And it was a chest, that was for sure. Wide and muscular and a bit hairy.
I blinked several times, chiding myself for my lack of control, and pointed into the house. “Hold on. I’ll get you a towel.”
With a smirk, he held the door open for me.
I scurried to the linen closet and returned quickly with a fluffy mint green towel.
When he took it, I should have walked away. That’s what a normal person would have done. Instead, I watched as he toweled off, making sure each inch of tan, muscular skin was dry.
“Thank you,” he said. “But if you’d rather have me out there, that’s okay. The tent’s technically waterproof.”
“You’re not staying out there in a storm.
” At this point, between my crying in his arms, our bonding over Vincent, and the argument we’d gotten into where he forced me to accept more help, any pretense had been dismantled.
This man had seen me at my absolute lowest. I wasn’t going to let him get soaked.
He nodded, giving me a grateful smile. “I won’t get in your way.”
“Oh my God.” I wanted to scream. I wanted to slap myself. “You’re not in my way.”
Was I really that bitchy. That intractable?
This guy, who had done nothing but show up every minute of every day, would rather sleep on my lawn than inconvenience me, even a little.
Fuck, I’d turned into my mother.
That was a chilling thought.
Over and over, I’d replayed our argument the other night. It had been eating at me. I’d been in survival mode for so long that I hadn’t even realized how badly I’d been treating Jasper. He wasn’t a deadbeat baby daddy. Not even close.
Hit with the overwhelming need to apologize, I took a step toward him. “Jas—”
A gurgling cry echoed down the hall, startling me.
I pinched the bridge of my nose. “Oh shit, I woke him up.”
“I got it.” With his signature lopsided grin, he bounded toward the nursery.
He came out a few minutes later, Vincent cuddled to his chest, happily sucking on his binkie.
“He just needed a fresh diaper. Right, little dude?”
This was not fair.
He was shirtless.
Holding my baby.
In my living room.
And I was wearing stained sweatpants, and my hair was stringy and dirty.
The universe was punishing me. And I deserved it.
After a week like this one, I had no energy left to bother with a shower or clean clothes.
I’d worked from home while caring for Vincent, I’d done the grocery shopping, and I’d visited the daycare where he’d start part time next week.
I’d overdone it, and now I was paying for it.
“I should shower.” I patted the messy bun on the top of my head. It might have looked cute three days ago, but it had almost calcified at this point.
“Can’t shower during a lightning storm,” he said.
A hint of annoyance flitted through me. While that was very logical, I hated it.
“Safety is kind of my thing, remember?”
Sighing, I searched his face. Underneath that little bit of frustration, I was dumbstruck. Because despite my gremlin-like appearance and demeanor, he was once again being kind and helpful.
“I’m gonna rock this guy and see if I can get him back to sleep,” he said, making a silly face at Vincent.
I cringed. “Do you want a shirt.”
“Sure.” He lifted one shoulder. “But I don’t want to stretch anything out.”
I surveyed his taut, toned body, then peered down at my own lumpy, dumpy one. “I’m sure I can find something.”
In my closet, I snagged an oversized NYU T-shirt from a hanger. Then I ran a brush through my hair and slapped on a thick layer of deodorant.
A few minutes after I’d returned to the living room, he emerged with the baby monitor, smiling happily.
“I can’t believe how big he is now,” he marveled. “It was like yesterday he could practically fit in my hand.”
“Eighty-fifth percentile,” I bragged, my heart lifting.
He chuckled. “I’m convinced he’s a genius.”
“Of course he is.”
“The way he makes eye contact and listens to me when I talk to him about how to tap a maple tree.” Jasper shook his head. “He gets it. Sometimes I feel like we should tell someone, but I like keeping our super baby genius to ourselves.”
“Me too.” I laughed.
He crouched and plucked two baby toys from the floor. “He must get it from you. I’m dumb as a box of rocks.”
My stomach twisted at the seriousness in that comment. That was absurd. “No you’re not.”
He looked up at me, his expression sweet and trusting, like always.
“Nah. But it’s okay. School was never really my thing.
Josh is the super smart one. Brilliant even.
But me?” He lifted one shoulder and dropped the toys in the basket where they belonged.
“I could never sit still long enough. I wanted to be in the mountains or jumping into a cold pond. Not doing calculus.”
“Nothing wrong with that,” I said. “You’re a paramedic. Work like that takes real brain power.”
“Eh. Maybe. I had to study like hell. Took all the prep courses, Jenn and Josh quizzed me constantly, and because I already worked for the fire department, I got to shadow a few folks.”
“Don’t talk down about yourself,” I chastised. “Vincent will hear that, and we can’t allow it. You’re his hero.”
He laughed.
“I mean it,” I urged. “You’re his dad, and his face lights up when you’re here.”
Jasper smiled. “He’s four months old, Evie.”
I crossed my arms, head tilted. “I’m his mom. I can decode all his looks and cries and giggles. Yet he is obsessed with you. It’s annoying.”
“Okay, mama bear. I believe you.” Once he’d gathered up the rest of the toys and put them into the basket, he stood to his full height, smoothing down his shorts. “What if I got him a tiny hatchet? So we could be twinsies.”
I scoffed. “Absolutely not.”
He took a step toward me, his eyes dancing. “Pretty please?”
“Not on your life, Lawrence. No weapons. He can’t even roll over yet.”
“He will soon. Baby genius and all. He’ll be tapping trees and climbing mountains next week. You’re raising a Vermont boy, so you better watch out. We’re kind of feral.”
The way he said that last part made my insides heat. Especially when he was sitting in front of me shirtless, that thin line of hair that trailed down his stomach and disappearing into his shorts, distracting me.
“Here,” I threw the T-shirt at him, then shuffled to the kitchen to hide the way my face burned. God, what was wrong with me?
I hated being wrong. Despised it.
But I couldn’t deny any longer just how wrong I’d been about this man. I’d written him off as a fuck boy. A hot guy I let myself have a single night of fun with.
Yet every day, he showed me that he was so much more. It had taken me this long to appreciate it all, but along with the appreciation came a good deal of confusion. About how I felt about him. About the way he looked at me.
“Want some dinner?” I asked, desperate to move on.
“Sure.”
I busied myself in the kitchen, making turkey sandwiches. Basil had dropped off fresh bread and Brie, so I could get fancy.
Jasper continued picking up the living room, folding the pile of laundry on one end of the couch and digging a binkie out of the cushions. He had put on my NYU shirt, and each time he lifted his arms, it rode up to reveal his abs.
Not that I noticed or anything.
While we ate in the living room, he filled me in on all the personalities at the fire station, including Keanu, the cat they had adopted who liked to sleep in the coiled-up hoses.
By the warmth in his voice, it was clear he enjoyed his work and loved this town.
“Make it make sense,” I said, waving an Oreo at him. We’d raided my secret snack stash and were sitting on the couch, waiting for Vincent to wake for his late-night feeding. “It seems so dumb to me. They killed themselves.”
I could not for the life of me figure out why everyone in this town was obsessed with a couple of dumbass teenagers who’d lived here centuries ago.
“Because though they were on opposing sides of the war, they couldn’t live without one another. And they probably would have been killed anyway.”
“Flinging oneself off the top of a waterfall at nineteen years old is the definition of dumb.”
“Wow,” he huffed. “Didn’t figure you for such a romantic.”
With a slow blink, I gave him an unimpressed look.
“True love? It’s worth dying for.” To punctuate the sentence, he shoved an entire Oreo into his mouth.
“Nope.” I shook my head. “That’s where you’re wrong. Love is about living. Fighting and surviving and making it work.”
Though my tone was sharp, he grinned at me.
Somehow, we’d managed to inch closer together on the couch. Unintentionally, of course. But I couldn’t help but angle myself toward him as I argued.
“Why is this town so obsessed?”
He blinked, genuinely surprised by the question. “With Nathaniel and Cora? First, the Revolutionary War is kind of a big deal around here.”
“Okay.”
“No, really. It’s not like Mass or Connecticut. Vermont was its own country for years before joining the United States. that’s why we were the fourteenth state, despite the rest of New England being most of the first.”
He dove deeper into the story, clearly relishing the opportunity to teach me something.
“And everyone knows the Green Mountain boys, an independent militia, helped win the war.”
I cocked a brow. “Oh, really?”
“Yes. That’s the thing about Vermont. We’re weird.
We do our own thing. We don’t handle authority well.
The state’s history is filled with stories about people who went against the grain.
So Cora and Nathaniel mean a lot to us. Her father would have killed him first, and when she was discovered to be a spy, she would have been done for too. So they took the leap.”
“And they were never found?”
“Nope. Never. They got to be together forever. And we got our waterfall legend.”
“Dumbasses,” I muttered.
“Romantics,” he countered, his voice low and his green eyes dark.
My heart thudded heavily under his scrutiny, my skin prickling with awareness.
When had he slung his arm along the back of the couch? At what point did our thighs begin touching?
I opened my mouth, wanting to break the tension, but no words came out.
Instead, the air crackled around us.
Finally, feeling a bit dizzy, I forced myself to speak. “I don’t think love should hurt that much.”
He leaned forward, his eyes locked on mine. “Sometimes it’s supposed to.”
This close, I could feel the heat of his breath on my skin. The urge to reach out and touch his face, run my fingers over the ridge of his jaw, feel his warmth was all-consuming.
Could I? Should I?
One of us moved. Him? Me? I couldn’t be sure. Either way, we were pulled together like magnets with opposing poles.
Our lips met in an impulsive kiss. Half defiant and half surrender.
Not slow. Hard and fast and open-mouthed. We jumped right into the deep end of the ocean without a life preserver.
Messy and frantic, lips and tongues and teeth. Not smooth, not gentle.
This was Jasper. No polished edges, no holding back, just pure energy and enthusiasm. I wanted to get closer, so much closer. He slid his hands down to my ass, gripping tightly. I clung to his too short T-shirt like I was ready to claw it off his body.
I was mindless. Absorbed in Jasper. In his mouth, his hands, the scent of him everywhere. It was natural, falling into this, into him. Turning my brain off when he was touching me.
He shifted, the movement causing his hardness to brush against my stomach.
An alarm went off in my brain then. This could go way too far too fast. And I couldn’t do that again. Losing control once was enough.
As I pulled back, his grip tightened on my hips.
God, what I wouldn’t give to throw caution to the wind. But the heaviness in my breasts reminded me that I had responsibilities now.
“Sorry.” I pushed against his chest. “I’ve got to feed Vincent.”
Releasing me, he looked away. “Of course. Right. I’ll just… um. I’ll sleep on the couch.”
Heart racing, I debated just jumping him. But only for a second before I thought better of it.
“Okay, great. Blankets are in the hall closet.” I got to my feet and dashed toward the nursery on shaking legs, my thoughts consumed by that kiss.