Chapter 26
TWENTY-SIX
RONAN
IT’S BEEN HERE ALL THE TIME
She smelled like sunshine and the moon at the same time. And me. That killed me most of all. Now she pushed at me with that logic and strategic brain of hers after she’d hollowed me out with sex.
My goddamn brain was on fire with frustration. Add in the fact that I already missed touching her, and I was strung so tight I could barely see around it.
Now she wanted me to test my damn cider?
She lifted the box and left me there vibrating. She was cool as a fall breeze and crisp with it while I was ready to leap out of my skin.
I scooped up the ingredients, reading the jar names.
Blackberry.
Honey.
The flavors were tart and earthy.
Just like us.
I circled my bench, situated in the center of the room. I liked room to spread out while I was thinking. And now the carnage of failed experiments and a very healthy bout of sex taunted me.
Instead of organizing like I usually would, I chucked all the extras I didn’t need into a box and went back to basics.
Jug of cider, glass, and the sweetening agents.
Old school.
I gripped the edge of the scarred bench and stared at the ingredients until my blood stopped boiling in my veins. I twisted the edge of my ring and popped the vacuum on the honey jar and lifted it to my nose. My mouth watered at the notes of lavender and lemon within the viscous fluid.
I dragged my torch over and set it to low under a stainless steel bowl. I only needed to warm the honey so it would dissolve in the cold cider. As I poured the rich, dark honey into the bowl it took on a fragile amber cast.
Like Kira’s eyes.
I dabbed the tip of my finger into it and tasted it. The sharpness was a surprise, but then it was warm comfort. I dug for a dropper and added blackberry in and the tart was too much at first.
“Cherries,” I said absently.
She went to the shelves she’d already ruthlessly organized within the time I’d been messing with the honey. I’d probably never be able to find anything again.
But my Kira was organization where I lived in creative chaos.
She came back to the bench and stood across from me with two jars. I took the North Star cherries and added two drops. Then more honey until it tasted right to me.
I could never quite describe why combinations worked. It was just something I’d always done. But the hum in my brain replaced the wildfire anger and I found my center once more.
I lined up glasses and tried to answer questions when she asked them of me, but the narrowed focus left me muttering more than making sense. I wasn’t sure when she wandered away from me, but I discarded and started over a half dozen times before I got the right mix of cider and sweetener.
“Got it. Holy shit, I got it.” I turned with the glass and found myself alone.
She’d opened up the back door to the workshop and I hadn’t even noticed. But my body certainly appreciated the cross breeze. My back was screaming from standing all damn evening. Not to mention losing myself in Sunshine for a while earlier tonight.
I double checked that I had the formula written down. It might fluctuate when I did a larger batch for pasteurizing, but for now I was happy with it.
Learning about the honey trick made the excitement fizz inside me like a bottle of champagne. I’d have to research that aspect of flavor now that she’d given me my first lesson.
But for the pears and apples, it had hit all the right flavor profiles.
And it was the first time I’d been able to line up the orchard and my own style of flavor combinations to match.
And of course it was because of Kira.
It was always Kira’s taste that brought me around to my center.
Even when she was infuriating.
I took a glass out with me—after I’d tasted it again, because damn, I was good—and followed the path to where I knew she’d be. She was always looking out on the orchard. It was why I’d put the damn swing there, so she always had a perfect seat for the stunning view.
And I planned on sitting there with her for years to come.
I got to the top of the path where it was just slightly elevated, and my breath stalled. She was there in the shadows, her hair was still down and dancing lightly in the breeze. Her back was to me as she used one foot to rock and the other was tucked under her as usual.
She was enough to trip my heartbeat—I had a feeling that would always be the case—but the darkened foliage and trees were alive with thousands of lightning bugs.
Fireflies.
The night glowed around her. The light led me to her and right then it solidified my future as if it were a bolt of lightning, not the mating call of some horny bugs.
Then again, that was us too. I was forever trying to light up the dark spaces that lingered around her. And sometimes I was just trying to show off so she’d laugh and try to get into my pants. Because my Kira needed laughter more than I realized.
My family had always been a constant, but they also encouraged me to go out and find my passions. They were loud and obnoxious, but I never wondered if they loved me. I knew I could go home and recharge, then go back out and find the next thing that excited me.
But Kira was different. She didn’t have that. She had Beckett for support, and me being jealous of that undermined what we could be as a couple. I needed to prove to her that I believed in us.
Right here, it showed me just how much she’d become a singular source of recharge and light for me at the same time.
My home.
My future.
Just like this orchard that challenged me, she was all that and more.
I slowly walked toward her and took everything in. Realizations should be savored especially when the love of your life was involved. The urge to blurt it out burned on the tip of my tongue, but just like the perfect cider, it was all about timing.
I stepped to her side of the swing and she looked up at me. Moonlight highlighted the slightly uptilted end of her nose, her cheekbones, and the line of her jaw. Her eyes glittered in the dark, a hint of gold glinting thanks to the warm glow of the fireflies.
“Did you find it?”
“It’s been here all the time.”
Her eyebrow arched. “We’re still talking cider, right?”
“You tell me.”
She swallowed hard. I could hear it in the quiet of the night. As my eyes adjusted to the night, I noticed more about her. The need and the uncertainty flitted over her face.
I’d wanted to make myself indispensable to her for the last ten days. But I’d been hiding in the busy work at both the taproom and the renovations on my cabin.
I hadn’t been able to dissuade Kain from buying my place. Mostly because he was using it as a project to distract himself from his grief. And I was using the manual labor to exhaust me so I could sleep without her.
Trying to wait her out.
Hoping she’d see that if I proved to her that I was serious about what we were building at the taproom, she’d open up to me again. Right now, I realized where I’d made the mistake.
It was exactly what she was used to with the men in her life.
Holding her at arm’s length.
Making it about work when it really needed to be about her.
I set the glass down on the small table beside the swing. She frowned up at me, then over at the glass. “Didn’t you bring that out for me to taste?”
“I did.” She reached for it and I shook my head, then sat beside her.
“It wasn’t what you wanted?”
“It’s perfect. Probably the best thing I’ve ever made.”
Her teeth flashed in the dark. “Then why can’t I try it?”
I turned toward her. “I want you to. You should be the first one to try it, because as usual, it was made with pieces of me and you. That’s the part I want you to know first. How we work together is one of the best things that has ever happened in my life.”
Her fingers gripped the top of her thighs. “I…wow.”
She looked out on the orchard, then startled a little when I took her hand and brought it up to my cheek. “But work is always going to be secondary to how I feel about you, Sunshine.”
Her head swiveled to me.
I turned her the rest of the way so we were facing one another.
“I made a mistake.” She tensed and I pulled her other hand up to cup the other side of my face, covering her hands with mine.
“The dark may not be the best way to make you see that, but maybe it really is the answer because I need you to feel what I’m saying. ”
“Viking, I don’t...”
My chest eased and the rightness rolled through me. The fact that she called me Viking told me I was on the right path.
I turned my face to press a kiss into her palm, then slid it down to my chest. “I wanted you to see I could be there for you for whatever came at us. To prove that you could count on me.”
She frowned, but before she could speak again, I kept going.
“But I don’t want to be the safe guy in your life. I don’t want to be another Beckett.”
She stiffened. “It’s not like that with Beckett. I keep telling you.”
“I get it.” I laughed. “Finally.”
Her fingertips pressed harder into my bare skin. “You’re confusing me.”
“I’ve been so wound up about your relationship with Beckett that I didn’t see it for what it was.
Safe. We aren’t safe.” She tried to pull her hand away, but I held it fast. “We will never be easy. I’m always going to piss you off because I lead with my instincts and you want definites. But I can promise you one thing.”
She twisted her hand away and out from under mine and stood. “Ronan, I have too much to worry about right now. I don’t have room for this too.”
I followed her up and pulled her back against me, my lips brushing her ear. I breathed in her moonflower scent as the words swirled in my chest like all the fireflies flashing in the distance. “Sunshine, if I waited for after the opening to tell you I love you, it would be safe.”
She twisted in my arms to face me, her mouth slack with shock. “You what?”
“I’m not that guy. I came out here and there you are with a forest of fireflies flashing around you. It may as well have been a neon sign. Yes, some of it was for the cider. The name is going to be Firefly, by the way. At least the one I made for you.”
She shook her head.
“I love you. You’ll get used to hearing it. Of course you’ll be hearing it for the next seventy years or so, I’m sure you’ll believe me one of those times. I’ll wait for you to catch up.”
“Seventy?” she squeaked.
“But that’s beside the point. I’m inconvenient and will drive you insane, but I’ll always love you—you’ll never doubt it.
” I curled my arm around her waist and dragged her into me so I could brush my nose along hers.
“You know it already. Just like you knew to come piss me off in my workshop tonight.”
I brushed my lips over hers. She was stiff in my arms, the need to push me away and run practically vibrating off of her. I waited her out. My hold was firm, but she could back away if she really wanted to.
“Because you know me, Kira. Knew I needed the push to get out of my own way. And you’re right, I was trying to do it all on my own. It’s what I’ve always done, but as I’m learning—I’m way better with you.”
I leaned in for another kiss and this time she opened for me as she relaxed by degrees. Her flavor slid across my tongue and tasted better than any cider could. Even one created with both of us in mind.
Her arms linked around my back as she moaned into my mouth.
I buried one hand into all those heavy ribbons of waves in her hair, and the other slid along her throat.
My thumb slid along the curve of her jaw to tip it up so I could take her deeper.
Her tongue tangled with mine, neither of us willing to submit to the other just yet.
The way she matched me always set my blood firing. The workshop had been a fast and furious coupling of frustration and tension. But here I wanted to show her softness.
I’d believed I’d known love before, but now I knew better. I realized anything before Kira had been a half measure. I gathered her closer, resting her cheek against my chest so I could rest my chin on top of her head.
“You overwhelm me.”
I smiled against her hair in the darkness. “Right back atcha.”
She tilted her head up, her chin still tucked into my chest. “You always seem so sure.”
“Doesn’t stop it from scaring the shit out of me. But I know this is where I’m meant to be. You and me were inevitable from the moment I laid eyes on you.”
“There’s still so much you don’t know about me. About my family.”
“It doesn’t matter. I know you’re a woman of integrity and I know you’ve been hurt by the very people who are supposed to love you the most.”
She sniffed and I felt a suspicious wetness on my skin.
“I’m not going to let you down, Sunshine. You can count on that, even if you need to catch up on the love part.”
“I—”
“Shh. You need to think things through. I know you too Kira. And I’m not going anywhere.” I stepped back and drew her back over to the swing and sat her down. “Now, you need to take the second sip from Firefly.”
She gave me a watery laugh. “Okay.”
I reached over for the cider and swirled it along the bowl of the glass to make sure everything was still mixed then handed it to her.
She put her nose in the glass then swirled it before taking a sip. Even in the dark, I saw her eyes widen and she took a bigger sip. “Ronan…I don’t know what to say. It’s perfect.”
“Of course it is. It’s a blend of us.” I took the snifter from her and tasted it again. The honey and blackberry bloomed on my tongue and the hit of cherries warmed everything up before the final notes of apple and pears made my mouth water for more.
“I guess that makes me a genius?”
I laughed as I handed the glass back to her before I stretched my arm along the back of the swing. “You’re damn right you are.”
She curled into me as I set the swing to rock and we watched the fireflies wink in the distance. For the second time tonight, I embraced the peace of Kira Webb.