Chapter 14
Fourteen
Ally forced her stare to hold Chip’s, her heartbeat thundering like a thousand wild horses charging dry ground. She’d exposed her deepest wish. To love. To be loved . And all her insecurities over having neither. Now, even though she lay comfortably beside him, the Mirabelle’s burble colluded with the sun’s soft flicker through the trees, painting a calming scene that laughed at her misery over not being able to read his thoughts.
For so long, she’d worried there was something wrong with her. Something everyone else but her could see. Like she missed some crucial piece that made her strike out on love time and time again.
So maybe Chip could provide some answers. He’d be leaving soon, so what risk did he have in telling her the truth?
Or maybe he’d offer more of the same. Rejection. Indifference. Her vulnerability in this moment once again amounting to nothing.
His attention drifted over her face before he leaned in and kissed her forehead. “There’s nothing wrong with you.”
His gentle delivery lingered in her ears, and he went on to stroke the pad of his thumb over her cheek, giving his words more weight than any hollow platitude. “You’re perfect, Ally. To me anyway.”
Her breath stilled, and she blinked at him. Numb. Stupidly silent. Her muscles warming at his sentiments while her fingers coiled into the soft grass beneath her hand. “Well then, maybe there’s something wrong with you too?”
He gave a soft laugh, and though she told herself he might be just like the others—only meaning to be nice—the slow smile at his lips didn’t say nice. Nor did his steady eye contact. All signs of emotions he refused to utter out loud.
Or maybe that’s just my wild imagination again.
He blew a hard breath and rolled onto his back, his stare pinned to the sky. “Okay, let’s figure this out. Why do you think relationships just aren’t happening for you?”
Though his diversion snaked cold reality through her body, the fact he blinked at the great blue yonder, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallowed, offered some comfort that he too felt heartsick at not being able to simply suggest himself as the remedy.
“I don’t know.” She rolled onto her back, too, once again using his arm as a pillow. “Despite what you’ve seen from my quarrel with Sarah, I generally avoid conflict and try my best to be the fun girl. I’m not that bad to look at.” She peered up at him and shrugged. “Fun and at least a little attractive, shouldn’t that be enough?”
He stroked a hand over her hair, returning his focus to the sky. “On a surface level, sure, but maybe the timing just hasn’t been right?”
She spluttered a small laugh and shook her head. “I doubt it. Look at Laila, twenty-six and already divorced with a kid. Meanwhile, I never even left the starting block.”
“Don’t tell me you’re jealous of Laila?” Through his flat delivery, his attention returned to her with a raised brow. “Sarah’s told me a little about your sister’s troubles and—”
She laughed again, fuller this time, and she gave him a light shove in the ribs. “Not jealous in that way. Laila’s had a rough time, that’s for sure, but there was a time when she and Mike were unmistakably in love. I look at her with Whitney now, and on a personal level, she still has so much more than I do.”
“I still think she’d trade places with you in an instant.”
The gleam in his eye held an air of confidence that compelled her to concede. “Maybe.”
Meanwhile, despite her list of confessions, she still seemed to know so little about him.
“And what about you?” She nudged her chin at him and tried not to think about how he’d ravished her not that long ago. How she still wanted him to ravish her. “Any past significant others?”
He twisted his focus back to the sky. “Nope.”
She kept her attention on him and frowned, even though he likely couldn’t see. “I would have thought you’d have your pick of women.”
He shrugged again. “It’s not that straightforward. Besides, having a pick only helps if you’re looking for nothing in particular, which is nice enough, sometimes. But there’s something to be said for quality over quantity.”
She nodded at the sky, burying the sting within her chest at how much she didn’t want him to expand on his indiscriminate picks.
“We should go.” The words fell from her without much thought, although those words made up one of her few mature decisions in living memory.
She and Chip only tortured themselves here. If recent months had taught her anything, she needed to keep her feelings to herself, especially when the odds pointed to disappointment.
She sat and dusted loose grass blades off her legs, ignoring the way his stare burned into her, giving him her back as she left for the picnic blanket and her sheer blue wrap.
Chip followed and soon helped clear the blanket, her heart twinging at the reminder that they’d never even gotten around to having that picnic.
So she set to filling the sorrowful silence. “If you could be anything in the world, what would you be?”
He straightened and stared at her, the bend of his brow denoting confusion though his glower soon lightened, and a smile graced his face. “That’s easy. A mantis shrimp.”
He shrugged and went about shaking out the plaid blanket, folding, then rolling it into submission, as though his answer somehow came with an implicit explanation.
Willing to put her usual ignorance on display, she tugged her fat beach bag off the ground and onto her shoulder, then spoke again. “Why would you want to be a shrimp?”
“Not just any shrimp.” He chuckled, turning toward the car though his attention lingered on her. “A mantis shrimp.”
“Yeah. I’m sure that makes all the difference.” Having expected a more meaningful answer, she rolled her eyes at his turned back.
“Hey, a mantis shrimp is the meanest sea creature there is.” He slowed, bringing his stride level with hers.
Meanwhile, she pressed a button on her car keys, the indicators flashing in reply, the vehicle now unlocked. “Somehow I doubt that.”
“Hear me out, okay?” He ran in front of her and pressed his hands to her shoulders to stop her stride, although the pure joy on his face alone could have done that. “While human eyes have only three color receptors, the mantis shrimp has sixteen . Not only can that badass see colors we can’t even conceive of, but they have these two raptorial appendages at the front of their bodies that enable them to strike their prey at a velocity equal to a bullet.”
“Reptile appendages?” She wrinkled her nose and reeled back a step. “Eww.”
He held a stunned silence, then laughed, and swatted in a dismissive gesture. “ Raptorial appendages. Never mind. Anyway, they strike with so much force that they can set off a process called supercavitation .”
His unmistakable joy didn’t fade, but his persistence hinted that she should have understood his line of thought here, all while she tried not to gawp, because she most definitely did not understand. “Super what now?”
“Supercavitation.” His smile softened, as did his tone, as though he found her confusion endearing. “Mantis shrimp move so fast and with so much force, the water around them boils and sends a shockwave strong enough to, even if they miss, still kill their prey from the resulting shockwave alone.”
She blinked and shook her head. “Wow. Okay.”
Her breathless answer had less to do with mantis shrimp and more to do with Chip unleashing full geek-mode on her, an ability she’d forgotten about over the years, which still carried the power to leave her in his intellectual dust.
His smile faded, and new shadows formed below his eyes. “That wasn’t the answer you were looking for, was it?”
“No, it’s fine.” She cleared her throat and forced a reassuring smile. “I just didn’t expect mantis shrimp to be your answer.”
Nor did I expect being left in his intellectual dust to be so arousing this time around.
His eyes narrowed as though he analyzed her reaction, his shrewd stare only deepening the wild flutter blooming low in her tummy. So, she did the one thing that would save her and stalked around him, only stopping when she reached her car.
“What about you?” His voice followed her before the man himself appeared at the passenger side door. “What would you be?”
She took her time tossing her bag through her door and onto to the backseat, umming as though she hadn’t considered her answer a million times before. “A drop of water in the ocean, I guess.”
“Water?” He slid into his seat, and she followed into hers behind the steering wheel, his focus holding while they buckled seatbelts.
“Yah know, so I could travel to lots of places?” She played at casual and started the engine, commencing the short drive toward his house, even though her nails dug into the steering’s leather, once again. At this rate, her car would soon be sporting claw marks. “Every time I made it to a river, I’d see different lands. That’s kind of cool, right?”
“Or you might just evaporate.” He sent forth his endearing smile, and she chuckled as she refocused on the road.
He probably figured he had her there, but she’d accounted for evaporation too. “Even better. I’d float to the sky and become a part of the clouds. For a while, I’d be closer to the stars before turning into rain and falling back to earth to start the adventure all over again.”
“Wow.” She didn’t look at him, but his voice had a breathy and bright edge. “Miss Egan can science.”
Laughter burst from her, and she caught him chuckling back.
“But seriously, is Harlow really so bad these days?”
His long silence signaled a genuine desire for an answer. So, she stifled a frown at the sight of his driveway and gave him what he wanted. “No, and that’s the problem. Nothing’s changed since you left. Nothing. Literally everyone I know and love is here, and my family is so great that separating myself from them, in any way, feels like betrayal. So, apart from a few short trips around Minnesota, I’ve never really been anywhere else.”
Despite the ache of offering that admission, she pulled into his driveway and set the handbrake, turning to get a full look at him. “What was it like, Chip? Yah know, leaving?”
He squinted against the glare through the windshield, his face otherwise lax and heartbreakingly still, as though he contemplated all that she’d said, along with his answer.
“It was tough.” He pressed his lips together and gave her a weak frown. “Everything was unfamiliar. The people in Boston had a completely different way of doing things. The pace was fast, and no one ever had time. I guess that’s the thing about Harlow. Home was always less about the location and more about the people, and that’s what I missed most.”
She tried to ignore the muscles bunching in her throat and offered him a joking sort of smile. “Did you miss me?”
His gaze didn’t leave her, and he didn’t blink, his face not at all mirroring her humor. “More than anyone.”
More silence took over, heavier than before while neither looked away, and her heart pounded hard against her ribcage.
What to say next? What to do ?
She knew what she wanted to do, but they’d already decided against that, hadn’t they?
Though she could barely breathe, she focused on her hand resting on the center console and searched for more words. Words being the safer option.
“I missed you too.” Her voice cracked a little, and so she fought to distract from that small weakness by meeting his gaze, the depth of what she had to say growing with every second. “I guess that’s how I ended up latching on to Sarah. Every conversation with her returned little pieces of you. I wish I could have gone up to visit, but you just seemed so far away.”
“You could have called.” He held a pause that wrenched her heart. “You could have asked to swing by anytime. I would have found a way to get you to Boston.”
She shrugged and gave a tight laugh. “You coulda called too.”
But she understood that the years had a way of escaping. That imposing on another person, even just to say, “Hello” wasn’t always as simple as picking up the phone. “Anyway, I guess the years got away from me too, and I figured you’d moved on from everything to do with this little town. Can’t say I blame you.”
“Ally”—the heat of his hand caught hers, and she blinked down to where their palms met, his fingers now interlocked with hers—“you were always welcome.”
Her lips parted, but for the longest time, she couldn’t speak through the deep ache just begging for him to pull her close. She wanted to drown in the details of who he’d become. To lose the fear of what would happen if she did. As well as the fear of what would become of her when he inevitably left.
“It’s not fair.” That whisper crumbled past her lips, but his hand clasped hers a little tighter, like he understood. Like he wanted her to explain further. So, she scoffed and continued, “Up until a few days ago, you were just some kid from my past. Someone I learned to live without and merely thought on from time to time. And just as I’d come to figure I’d survive fine on my own, with my feet planted firmly on the ground, here you come along again, changed, and still a little the same. All too quick to turn my world upside down.”
“That was never my intention.”
“I know.”
His brow dipped lower, even though she couldn’t decide what emotion ran through him. Guilt? Annoyance? Maybe he still figured she blamed him for upending her life? Maybe, despite her assurances, she did and he had.
“We’re in the same boat, Ally.” His fingers slipped from hers, and the lost connection gouged a hollow high in her tummy—none more so than when he turned and pulled himself from her car.
She stared out at his stalking gait across the dry rock of his driveway and onto the short wooden steps of his front porch. Stunned into silence, her body moved of its own accord, hands shoving at her car door, her legs storming after him.
She didn’t know what she would do when she reached him, but that decision fell out of her control as he spun around and captured her in his arms.
The satisfying crush of his lips gave her no time to gather her senses. He cradled her head in his hands, deepening and directing the kiss until she went with what he offered, only stopping so long as to utter what she’d yearned to say all along. “I don’t want to miss out on you.”
He pulled away, his stare darting about her face—his breaths exploding, hard and punishing. “What you said back there, it isn’t true. I never moved on from everything to do with Harlow. I didn’t move on from you.”