Chapter 18 #3
As the crowd parted, Kell appeared, locking eyes with her, pain etched in those gray eyes, his arms loose, his face open and worried.
“You’re here! I’ve looked everywhere for you. I checked the trailer, I asked Kenny, I went to the coffee shop. Checked the town hall. Finally, I found your car out back but you weren’t there. I was worried something bad had happened to you.”
“Oh, it sure did. You.”
“Oh, burn,” Colleen said under her breath.
“Rachel, please. Can we not do this?” Kell begged.
“Why not?” Rachel challenged. “You made it perfectly clear you don’t want me in your life.”
“BECAUSE I AM AN IDIOT!” Kell blasted back.
“Moore,” Colleen said, “go order the big appetizer platter. This is getting good.”
With a two-finger salute, Moore did as told. Luke finished his beer, eyes on Kell.
“Keep going,” Rachel said, rolling her wrist. “That’s a good start.”
“Why didn’t you tell me you told my mother about–”
Deanna leaped to Kell, slapping her hand over his mouth.
He craned his neck back and peeled her palm away. “About, you know. And how your job is in jeopardy. All of it.”
“Would you have listened?”
“You didn’t give me a chance.”
“If I’d said at the camp why I was really there, you’re telling me you’d have had an open heart and stayed curious instead of jumping to judgment and getting angry?”
Colleen, Luke, and Dean all snorted at the same time. Deanna whapped Dean, who choked on his beer.
“Yes. Maybe. I don’t know,” Kell faltered.
“Can we talk about this elsewhere?” she asked.
“No! I’m not delaying it, and I’m not going to take a chance that I’ll just screw this up again.
Don’t leave. Don’t stay quiet and don’t lie to me.
Don’t assume I’ll judge you, or lock you into some past version of you that I have in my mind.
I won’t do that. Not anymore. All it does is hurt us both.
I can handle my own pain, but I cannot stand to think that I’m hurting you.
And that’s what I’ve been doing all along, except I couldn’t see it, Rachel.
I’ve been hurting you, and I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”
The din of the crowd made for a very odd backdrop of sound for this conversation. He paused for a second, then went on, the sour scent of beer and liquor, along with humid shared air, making it harder and harder for her to think.
“I can’t breathe at the thought of letting you go.
For the last two hours, I’ve been walking, and walking, and walking.
I walked, wandering the town until the sidewalks ran out, then I walked the trail around the hot springs.
I’ve retraced every moment with you since I found you on the old logging road.
I’ve been trying to figure out why, with all the joy you’ve brought into my life, I’m just fixated on my fear of something that isn’t real. ”
He reached for her hands. His were so warm. Hers were ice cold.
“I am so grateful for you, Rachel.”
“Grateful?”
“Yes. You came here like a whirlwind, going toe to toe with me, pushing me to look at my own life through a different lens. You said you see and like all my versions. I think you see versions of me I don’t even know about. And some of them are raging assholes.”
Colleen and Luke clinked beer bottle necks and drank to that.
“You deserved to be treated so much better than I behaved toward you in D.C. And when your car broke down. And when I threw you in the hot springs. And–”
“Got it,” she said softly, conflicted eyes boring into his. “I just don’t know if this is going to work.”
“Rachel. All I want to do is kiss you and pray that I’m not pushing you away.
I hope you want to bridge the gap between us as badly as I do.
That you can try to understand that I’m growing, and growth is not linear.
Sometimes it’s really screwed up and messy–I’m screwed up and messy.
I should never have treated you the way I did at Lucinda’s–”
As their mouths met, she didn’t melt into him. That would have been so easy. Instead, she turned into a firestorm in his arms, her kiss hard and insistent, demanding, fully equal.
Abruptly, she pulled back, and he looked at her like he half expected to be slapped, but she kissed him again, this time with a full, whole-body embrace, catcalls and whistles around them making it impossible to concentrate.
Someone poked Kell in the ribs, and he broke the kiss.
“Son,” his dad said. “You live upstairs. Do this without an audience.”
“DAD!” Colleen called out. “Moore’s getting appetizers so we can watch.”
“He’s your brother, not the Red Sox.”
“But it’s the ninth inning with two outs and the bases loaded.”
“I think you’re loaded. How many beers have you had, kid?” Dean asked Colleen. She threw a breadstick at him.
“Can we talk?” Kell asked Rachel. “Really talk? We can go wherever you want. My place. The trailer. Your car. It’s all on your terms.”
“My car’s broken down in the back, so let’s do this the easy way. Let’s go upstairs and ask Calamine what to do.”
“That sounds very risky.”
“If we don’t like her advice, we can pretend we don’t understand her.”
“Works for your mom,” Dean quipped, earning a smack from Deanna. He just patted her butt and smiled.
Taking Rachel’s hand, Kell led her outside and around back, the air so cold now. As they climbed the outside stairs, she was a bit wobbly.
“You okay?”
“I had a double shot back there.”
Kell paused on the step below her. “Oh. I don’t want you to think I might take advantage of you.”
“Kell?”
“Hmm?”
She leaned down for a kiss, bending into him, the wind picking up, a few flakes starting. It was the coldest hot kiss she’d ever had.
Without another word, they went inside, the cozy living room so inviting, and before he kicked the door shut, she was in his arms, kissing him again.
“My beard,” he murmured between kisses. “Sorry.”
“What beard? You shaved it off.”
“I meant this.” He rubbed his stubble. “It’s going to chafe.”
She laughed. “Of all the reasons for chafe marks, this one is the best. My face can handle it.”
“I wasn’t talking about your face.”
Her low chuckle stopped as he kissed her again, the feel of his mouth on hers making her pulse quicken as his words sank in. Getting naked felt liberating, the time she’d been in town leading up to this moment as his hand moved to her breast, thumb teasing her nipple.
“I’ve wanted this for so long,” he confessed, eyes burning with desire. “Wanted you since D.C. I’m sorry I’ve never been clear enough to say that. It’s my fault.”
“It’s mine, too,” she said, happy to talk freely, even as heat coursed through her, concentrated between her legs. As her fingertips found any patch of bare skin on him, she felt a tantalizing thrill of what was to come, anticipation as delightful as the promise of sex. Oh, how she wanted him.
Needed him.
Had him.
Finally, finally she really did.
And he had her right back.
“But it’s more mine,” he said, stroking her shoulder, kissing one cheek, then the other, his words heavy with meaning. “I can’t ask you to sleep with me without asking you to forgive me.”
“Forgive? What do I need to forgive?”
“That I didn’t believe you.”
“Done. Long ago, I forgave you.”
“When?”
“The part of me that’s wanted you for years, I guess. I came here afraid to see you, but desperate to see you, too. And when you rescued me on that logging road, I felt like fate had intervened. This project was never about the chocolate company. It was about you. Always you, Kell.”
“You’re my always, too. Let me love you right, Rachel. Let me right all the wrongs. Let me listen and be present. Let me make love to you. You deserve all my attention, all my love, all my... everything. I want to be your everything.”
Suddenly, she was off the ground, feet mid-air, as Kell carried her into his bedroom, kissing her as he laid her out on top of the thick comforter, Calamine making a hasty retreat out of the room. Kell kicked the door behind her, then stood and watched Rachel, coming in for a kiss.
“I just want you, Kell,” she whispered before his mouth took hers, his body spreading over her, the heaviness of him mingling with the heat of her desire. Soft and pliable, the comforter beneath her made her smile, his woodsmoke scent filling her with content.
Not longing.
Grounding.
She was his. He was hers. All the uncertainty was gone.
Finally.
“You’re so big,” she murmured as he unbuttoned his shirt, pulling it over his shoulders, chest and arms bare now.
“You like big?”
“I love big.”
“That happens when you climb as many trees as I do. And you – oh, Rachel. You’re perfection.
” His fingers moved to the hem of her shirt, tugging gently until it was up over her head, flung aside by his controlled movements, her silky bra stroked by his hands.
“I love your body. Love what you do to me when I look at you. When I listen to you find a solution to a problem. When you appreciate a great cup of coffee. When you find a way to make something better. But most of all?” he said, moving his hand behind her to unclasp her bra, freeing her breasts.
“I love looking down at you like this, with your chocolate hair spread like ribbons on my bed, your gorgeous naked body all mine, in my bed. In my apartment. In my town. All mine. You’re all mine now, exactly the way I want you. ”
“I want to be yours,” she whispered as he pressed his body against her, her hands on his ass, his fingers in her hair, cupping her jaw. “It’s all I’ve wanted, all these years.”
“Let’s give us both what we want. We deserve it.”
The look on Kell’s face told her he needed her. Wanted her. That everything he said was true, and the steady hold he had on her as he kissed her again, mouth slanting over hers, tongue parting the seam of her lips told her this was real.
No more almost.
No more close enough.
No more maybe.
From here on out, every moment with Kell Luview would be certain. Known.
Complete.