Chapter 9
Chapter Nine
Samuel
Iwas staring at Farley’s hands again.
This had become a problem.
Somewhere between Charlottesville and the winding mountain road back to Ashford Gap, I’d developed what could only be described as an obsession with the way his fingers curled around the steering wheel.
Elegant. Precise. The hands of someone who edited manuscripts and probably owned multiple fountain pens and definitely knew how to do things with those hands that—
Stop it, I told myself firmly. You’re a grown man. You’ve had sex before. You’ve had lots of sex. You should not be this undone by someone’s knuckles.
But God, those knuckles.
The drive back from Charlottesville had been.
.. something. Something I didn’t have a name for yet.
We’d talked about our exes, our jobs, our existential crises—the type of raw, honest conversation that usually took months to reach with someone, if you ever reached it at all.
And through all our misfortunes, we’d come out the other side laughing.
Not the polite laughter of people making nice. Genuine laughter. The kind that made your stomach hurt and your eyes water.
I hadn’t laughed like that in years.
Now Farley was telling me about the time he’d accidentally sent a very detailed rejection letter to an author—meant for his colleague’s eyes only—that included the phrase “this manuscript reads like it was written by a golden retriever with a thesaurus,” and I was trying very hard to listen instead of cataloging the exact shade of brown in his eyes when the afternoon light hit them.
“—and of course, the author was the wife of our biggest distributor’s CEO,” Farley continued, his mouth quirking into that devastating half-smile. “I spent three months sending apology fruit baskets.”
“Fruit baskets?”
“It was all I could think of. My assistant eventually had to intervene because I’d run out of fruit combinations and was moving on to exotic cheeses.” He shook his head. “Roger never let me forget it. He called me the Fruit Basket Queen for two years.”
“Roger sounds like an asshole.”
“Roger is an asshole. Was. Is.” Farley’s jaw tightened momentarily, then relaxed. “But that’s a topic we’ve exhausted for today.”
I watched his profile as he drove—the sharp line of his nose, the stubborn set of his chin—and felt something dangerous bloom in my chest. This wasn’t supposed to happen. I’d come to the mountains to figure out my life, not to develop feelings for a prickly publishing editor with a wounded heart.
And yet.
The Range Rover slowed, and I blinked, realizing we were pulling into Shifflett’s General Store parking lot. The same parking lot I’d fled from in a panic just days ago, leaving Hope from the church choir in my rearview mirror.
“Why are we stopping?” I asked, probably too quickly. My voice had that slightly strangled quality it got when I was trying not to sound nervous.
“Eggnog,” Farley said, as if this explained everything. When I continued to stare at him, he elaborated: “I forgot to get the ingredients at the grocery store. Shifflett’s has fresh eggs and local cream, which makes all the difference.”
“You make your own eggnog?”
“I make Ollie’s grandmother’s eggnog. It’s the only holiday tradition I’m keeping after—” He stopped, and something flickered across his face. “After Ollie.”
The admission hung between us, small but significant. Another crack in the armor. Another glimpse of the man underneath all that sharp wit and careful distance.
“I’ll wait here,” I said. “In case any church choir members are lurking.”
Farley’s eyes crinkled. “A wise tactical decision.”
He climbed out of the Range Rover, and I absolutely, definitely did not watch him walk toward the store.
Okay, I watched him. Sue me.
Farley Davenport moved like someone who’d never questioned his own coordination—efficient, purposeful, completely unaware of the effect he had on other people. His coat hugged his shoulders perfectly, and his jeans did something criminal to his—
His ass, my brain supplied helpfully. You’re staring at his ass.
In my defense, it was an amazing ass.
The door to Shifflett’s swung shut behind him, and I slumped back in the passenger seat, pressing both hands over my face.
“What are you doing?” I asked myself aloud. “What are you fucking doing?”
The empty car offered no answers.
I hadn’t been this attracted to someone in.
.. God, how long had it been? Years, probably.
My last few relationships—if you could even call them that—had been more about convenience than chemistry.
Fellow actors who understood the schedule, publicist-approved dates for red carpets, the occasional encounter with a discreet trainer or makeup artist who knew the rules of hooking up with a celebrity.
Nothing that felt like this.
This felt like standing too close to a fire—warm and dangerous and completely addictive.
Every time Farley looked at me with those sharp eyes, every time he said something cutting and brilliant, every time he let his guard down just enough for me to see the hurt underneath. .. I wanted more. I wanted everything.
But what was I supposed to do about it?
I stared at the ceiling of the Range Rover, running through the options. Option one: do nothing. Play it safe. Enjoy the banter and the friendship and the weird cat-custody situation, and go back to LA in three weeks with some nice memories and no complications.
Option two: make a move. Risk everything. Potentially ruin the only genuine connection I’d made in years by letting my libido drive the car.
Option one was sensible. Mature. The choice a functional adult would make.
But when had I ever been a functional adult?
I’d made a mustache out of my own hair this morning. Functional adults did not do that.
Maybe, I thought, maybe a fling was exactly what I needed.
No complications, just... heat. Farley was clearly attracted to me too—I’d caught him looking, caught the way his breath hitched when our hands accidentally touched reaching for the same bag of coffee in Charlottesville.
He wasn’t indifferent. He was just being careful.
We were both careful. Two wounded animals circling each other, too scared to get close.
But what was the worst that could happen if I tried? He’d say no. He’d politely decline, and we’d have an awkward few days before falling back into the simple rhythm we’d developed. It would sting, but I’d survive. I’d survived worse.
And if he said yes...
The store door opened, and Farley emerged carrying a small paper bag, the late afternoon light catching the auburn highlights in his hair that I hadn’t noticed before.
He was almost smiling—not quite, because Farley Davenport didn’t do anything so obvious as a full smile—but close.
Relaxed. As if the trip to Charlottesville had loosened something in him too.
I was going to do it. I was going to make a move.
The decision settled into my chest like a stone—heavy but certain. No more circling. No more careful. Life was too short for careful, especially when careful had gotten me seven years of playing a fake doctor and a real identity crisis.
Farley climbed back into the driver’s seat, bringing with him a gust of cold air and the faint scent of something woodsy—cedar, maybe, or pine.
“Success,” he announced, holding up the bag. “Fresh eggs from Mabel Shifflett’s chickens and cream from her neighbor’s dairy farm. My grandmother would approve.”
“No church choir ambushes?”
“Not a single one.” He started the engine. “Shall we?”
“We shall.”
The drive up the mountain was quieter than the drive down—not awkward, but contemplative. We’d talked ourselves out in Charlottesville, spilled secrets we’d been holding for months, and now there was a comfortable silence between us.
I trusted Farley Davenport. The realization hit me somewhere around the third pothole, unexpected and undeniable. I trusted him with the real parts of me—the scared parts, the confused parts, the parts that didn’t know who they were without a script to follow.
That was terrifying.
That was also, I suspected, why I was about to do something very stupid.
We were passing the entrance to Pine & Dandy Resort when I saw her—Gladys Pritchard, bursting out of the office cabin like it was on fire, waving both arms over her head.
“Is that—” Farley started.
“That’s Gladys.”
He was already pulling over, the Range Rover crunching onto the gravel shoulder. Gladys rushed toward us with an urgency that made my stomach clench—had something happened? Was there a problem with the cabin?
Then I saw it.
The bag of cat food. Sitting there in the back seat like evidence at a crime scene. Farley saw it at the same moment I did. Our eyes met in a moment of pure, shared panic.
I moved without thinking, yanking my coat off and tossing it over the cat food just as Gladys reached the driver’s side window. The coat landed in a heap that didn’t look remotely natural, but it was better than the alternative.
Farley lowered the window. “Gladys. Is everything—”
“Storm’s coming,” she announced, slightly out of breath. Her puffy vest was half-zipped, like she’d thrown it on in a hurry. “One of those freak blizzards. The weather service just updated the forecast—we’ve got less than twenty-four hours before it hits.”
“A blizzard?” I leaned forward to see around Farley. “In December?”
“Welcome to Virginia, city boy.” She scowled. “Mountains don’t follow your California weather rules. We could get two feet by tomorrow night—maybe more.”
Farley’s grip on the steering wheel tightened. “What do we need to do?”
“Stock up. Food, water, batteries. Make sure you’ve got enough firewood inside.” She paused, squinting at both of us. “You two been shopping?”
“Charlottesville,” Farley said smoothly. “Supplies.”
“Good. Good.” But her eyes narrowed, sliding past us to the back seat. To the suspiciously coat-shaped lump. “What’s that?”
“My coat,” I said, too fast.
“Just got warm,” Farley added.
“It’s thirty-eight degrees.”
“Great heater in this thing,” I said.
Gladys’s expression suggested she wasn’t buying a single word of this, but she moved on. “There’s something else. That damned cat—the white one—have you seen it?”
My heart stuttered. “Cat?”
“What cat?” Farley asked in the most unconvincing tone I’d ever heard from him.
“The stray. Fluffy thing, white as snow, eyes that don’t match.” Gladys pulled a tissue from her pocket and dabbed at her nose preemptively. “Been skulking around the cabins all month. I’ve been trying to catch it before winter really sets in.”
“No,” I said. “No cat. Haven’t seen any cat.”
“Not a single one,” Farley agreed.
“What would a cat even be doing up here?” I added, which was one sentence too many, because Gladys’s stink-eye intensified to a level I hadn’t previously known was possible.
“Uh-huh.” She looked between us like we were two children who’d clearly stolen cookies and were still holding the jar. “Well. If you do see it, call me. I don’t want the thing freezing to death in this blizzard. I’ll take it to the shelter in town.”
“The shelter,” I repeated.
“That’s what I said.” Gladys was already stepping back from the car. “Stay safe up there. And for God’s sake, don’t do anything stupid like try to drive down the mountain once the snow starts.”
She marched back toward the office, and Farley raised the window. Neither of us spoke as he pulled back onto the road, continuing up the mountain toward our cabins.
The silence was different now. Heavy with unspoken words.
“A shelter,” Farley said finally.
“She can’t—Purrsephone can’t go to a shelter.”
“I know.”
“She’s not a stray. She’s—” I stopped, because what was Purrsephone, exactly?
Not ours. Not technically. Just a cat who’d decided we were worth visiting, who slept on my bed and sat on Farley’s coffee table and looked at us with those mismatched eyes like she’d chosen us for reasons only she understood.
“She’s ours,” Farley finished quietly.
The word ours hit me somewhere in the chest and stayed there.
We pulled into my driveway first—Farley’s cabin was another hundred yards up the road—and I saw her immediately.
Purrsephone, sitting in my front window like a queen surveying her kingdom.
The late afternoon light turned her white fur golden, and her mismatched eyes—one blue, one green—tracked the Range Rover as we parked.
“There she is,” Farley said.
“There she is.”
We sat there, engine idling, watching the cat watch us. My coat was still crumpled over the illicit cat food in the back seat. Gladys was probably already planning her shelter call. And in less than twenty-four hours, we were going to be trapped in our respective cabins by two feet of snow.
“We can’t let her take Purrsephone to a shelter,” I said.
“We absolutely cannot.” Farley turned to face me, and something in his expression had shifted—softer, more open, like the careful walls he’d built were starting to crack. “We’ll figure it out. Together.”
Together.
The word hung between us, full of possibility.
I looked at Farley Davenport—sharp-tongued, wounded, beautiful Farley Davenport—and thought about option one and option two and all the sensible reasons I should keep my distance.
I thought about the three weeks I had left in Virginia and the career crisis waiting for me in LA and the fact that I still didn’t know who I was without Dr. Brock Blaze.
And then I stopped thinking altogether.
I leaned across the center console, closed the distance between us, and kissed him.
It wasn’t a careful kiss. It wasn’t a tentative, testing-the-waters kiss. It was the kiss of someone who’d spent days wanting and waiting and wondering, and had finally run out of patience for all three.
My hand found the back of his neck, fingers sliding into the soft hair at his nape. He made a sound—surprised, hungry—and then he was kissing me back with an intensity that sent electricity sparking down my spine.
Farley kissed like he did everything else: precisely, thoroughly, with complete attention to detail. His hand came up to cup my jaw, tilting my head to a better angle, and I melted into him like I’d been waiting my whole life for exactly this.
Had I been?