Chapter 23
Twenty-three
Before Connor and I walked back to the Annex, Christian asked if I was free for lunch tomorrow. “It would mean so much to talk more,” he told me. “I would love to hear how Annette is, and if you have any questions…”
I had so many. We hadn’t really returned to the reality of Annie and Christian after Connor had done a double take at the artist’s identity. Christian mostly spoke about his creative process, and I caught his drift. His history with Annie felt a little too intimate to share with anyone else.
“Yes,” I told Christian. “I’m free tomorrow.”
We agreed to meet in Edgartown, and I tried not to let thoughts of tomorrow preoccupy my brain for the rest of the night.
Both excitement, nerves, and dread coursed through my veins.
The former for obvious reasons, and the latter because I knew I had to tell Christian about Annie’s dementia.
I had to tell him that we were losing her.
I’d all but forgotten about Connor’s final surprise until I asked how we were getting back across Oyster Pond. Would Meredith take us back in the boat? Had Nick and Sage been given a pick up time? What time even was it?
Connor’s raised suggestive eyebrow made my stomach flip-flop. “Who said anything about going home?” he said, then he turned to grab a Coleman lantern off the Annex’s porch.
A flush crept up my neck; I hoped Meredith and Wit were brushing their teeth and not watching us from the kitchen window.
Okay, Olivia, I told myself. They’re mature adults, not middle schoolers.
“Where are we going?” I asked Connor once we’d set off hand in hand. “The beach?”
“Mmm…” he mused. “Beach is a bit of a cliché, wouldn’t you say?”
I laughed and grinned when he twirled me around while humming a familiar song. “I thought you didn’t like Taylor Swift,” I said.
“I am ambivalent,” he replied. “But that doesn’t mean she can’t get stuck in my head.”
He continued to hum, and I softly sang along. We might’ve been totally off-key, but we sounded perfect to me.
“This is one of Annie’s favorites,” I said after totally hitting—or entirely missing—the bridge. “She asked me to cue it up every time she picked me up from school. She also loved all Taylor’s outfits in the music video.”
“Set on safari in Africa, right?”
I raised an eyebrow.
His shrug was visible in the lamplight. “Liam.”
“Of course.” I smiled, then I heard myself say, “I’d like to meet him sometime.”
“I think we can arrange that.” Connor smiled back at me before we broke into another harmony.
But after a bend in the trail, my breath caught. A green tent waited patiently for us in the moonlit meadow. It was so simple, yet everything about it made me ache. I gave Connor a look. “Your summer snapshots,” he reminded me. “You need more than one.”
I bit my lip. Part of me was tempted to ask if Connor watched The Bachelor, since this did kind of follow the famous one-on-one date formula, but most of me was too busy feeling like the luckiest girl in the world.
It was like a windowpane shattered in my head. Would any other guy plan this romantic an evening? If I’d let them?
Thinking so much about Annie tonight, I was starting to understand why I didn’t.
“Connor, it’s not like I’m leaving tomorrow…” I tried to joke before being hit by a sharp realization. “Oh my god, wait, my dad—”
“Don’t worry, he knows you’re here,” Connor said quickly. “I spoke with him.”
“You spoke with him?”
“Yeah, we had a talk yesterday.”
A talk.
Connor coughed. “It went well,” he assured me. “I said they were my specialty, remember?”
“Vividly, but I didn’t totally believe you…”
He put a hand to his wounded heart.
“Until now.”
Because any conversation must have gone well if I was allowed to be here overnight. I mean, Connor and I were camping together. Alone.
My dad wasn’t a romance reader, but had he really never heard of the tent trope?
Blushing hard and fast, I moved to unzip the tent flap. Pillows and sleeping bags were inside, as well as a smaller cooler with water bottles and a retro plaid thermos. “Did you make this too?” I asked Connor. My mouth watered when I unscrewed the lid to smell hot chocolate.
He nodded. “Lee’s recipe.”
“Lee?”
“One of Mads’s dads.”
“Ah.” Not wanting to think about Mads, or our tête-à-tête earlier, I suggested we sip while staring at the stars.
Connor grabbed one of the tent’s thick wool blankets and spread it out on the grass before we snuggled together.
“Hold on,” I said after a few minutes, wriggling away from him.
“I need to get my phone. I want to take a video of this.”
The sky was so hypnotic tonight.
“So you can show Annie?” Connor guessed, his voice laced with an unfamiliar something. It sounded like sarcasm, but it couldn’t have been, right?
Just in case, I tossed my phone across the blanket once I’d captured the brilliant night sky on video. “This really is an incredible night,” I murmured, a montage playing in my mind. Our delicious dinner, the tractor ride, discovering Annie’s ties to Christian, and here and now with Connor.
“It is,” he whispered back. “I’ve never been so grateful to Erica.”
“Erica?” My eyelids fluttered when his hand slipped up the back of my sweatshirt, fingers dancing across my bare skin.
“Yeah,” he breathed. “She told me you love to camp.”
“Um…” I didn’t know what to say, because back in ninth grade, Erica had jokingly bought me an all-weather air mattress and a legitimate hot-water bottle for my mandatory freshmen camping trip.
My family knew I didn’t like to rough it.
Usually.
“Relax,” Connor said when I tensed. “I know she was bullshitting me.” He knocked his foot against mine. “I’ve met you, Olivia.”
My laughter was loud in the gentle night. “But you’re okay with that?” I asked as he resumed drawing circles on my skin. I melted into him again. “Her bullshitting you?”
“Definitely not, but there’s a silver lining to almost getting got…”
Grinning, I rolled over to pin Connor to the blanket. His blue eyes were bright in the moonlight, something flashing in them before I leaned down and kissed him. “What’s the silver lining?” I murmured, able to feel his heart beating against his chest.
It dared my pulse to match his.
In response, Connor tangled our legs together and used his strength to flip us over so that we were side to side. “Must I really spell it out?” he whispered, our foreheads now pressed together.
“Of course,” I teased. “To ensure we’re on the same page.”
As if the heat building between us wasn’t proof enough.
His hand found mine again, but instead of lacing our fingers, Connor stroked the inside of my wrist with his thumb. It sent ripple after ripple up my spine. “The silver lining,” he began, voice low and a little strained, “is…”
I didn’t let him finish; instead, I grabbed his face and kissed him so he would see more stars.
Half a heartbeat later, he kissed me back, and then we were kissing each other like we were running out of starlight.
Connor’s tongue slipped inside my mouth, sweet but persistent, and it sent my pounding pulse straight up to the sky.
My fingers tangled themselves in his hair, trying to pull him closer than close.
Distantly, I heard a dog bark.
Please, I thought. Please stay far away from us.
We shifted so that Connor was on top of me, the weight of his body a calm but also exhilarating feeling.
Every inch of me was alive, my senses in overdrive.
He tasted like hot chocolate, and I was consumed by the amazing but indiscernible scent of his shampoo, citronella candles, and the briny island air—and best of all, something that was just Connor McCallister.
His five-o’clock shadow rubbed against my skin, but I didn’t care. I couldn’t get enough of him.
“Do—you—want—to—go—inside?” he asked when we finally pulled apart to breathe.
“Oh.” I blinked, my mind moving a hundred miles a minute. “Oh.”
“We don’t have to,” Connor said quickly.
“I know the timing is—well, we’ve only known each other two weeks.
” He started tripping over his words. “And I don’t want to rush—I mean, pressure—you, and despite what some people believe, I never move this fast. I don’t want you to think that, but we’re here and we’re alone and—”
“Connor.” I covered his mouth with my hand. “Calm down.”
He nodded, then he melted into a smile against my palm when I flicked my gaze toward the tent. He was right; we might’ve had a long history, but we’d only truly known each other two weeks. Less.
It was safe to say the upstanding young woman somewhere inside me was not impressed.
But I wanted this. Spellbinding magic had been sprinkled in my veins, and my expanding heart felt like a balloon about to pop. From my head to my toes to the depths of my core, I wanted to make the most of this moment with Connor.
I removed my hand from his mouth, and said, “Ask me again.”
He was quick. “Do you want to go inside?”
I answered him with a light brush of my lips, then unzipped the tent myself.
* * *
Afterward, our limbs were entwined in a single sleeping bag.
My body had liquefied at Connor’s touch, and now my pulse felt faint, in tune with his slow and steady breathing.
What a wonderful way to fall asleep, I dozed, my head against Connor’s chest. I wanted nothing more than for his heartbeat to lull me to sleep.
If only that dog weren’t still barking.
Someone was out looking for it now. “Loki!” we heard a man and woman shout every other minute. “Loki, come!”
Their calls and whistles seemingly went unanswered.
“So,” Connor ventured once it was clear we weren’t drifting off to dreamland anytime soon. He yawned. “What’d you and Mads talk about earlier?”
“Earlier?” I asked, because dinner now felt like three years ago.
“Yeah, while I visited the outhouse.”
I willed myself not to clam up, Mads’s words haunting me all over again.
Dream girl…
Got away…
Saving his heart for you…
“Oh, you know,” I stalled. “Girl stuff.”
“I’m surprised.” Connor playfully zapped my waist. Goose bumps burst on my skin. “She didn’t ask about your intentions?”
I knew he was only teasing, but my body reacted before I could tease him back.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa…” he said, incredulous. “She did ask?”
Shit, I thought. Shit, shit, shit.
I didn’t want to get Mads in trouble, because even if her words worried me, I knew she meant well. And she technically hadn’t asked after my intentions. The tractor’s cinematic arrival had made sure of that.
Connor prodded me. “Olivia?”
“Mmm?”
“Jeez, don’t mmm me…”
“No,” I said, wincing at my voice. It sounded a little too firm. “No, there was no interrogation.” I bit the inside of my cheek. “She’s a really great friend, Connor.”
“I know,” he said as he shifted to prop himself up on an elbow. We made eye contact in the lantern’s dim light. “Can you please loop me in here?”
My heart twisted. “Only if you promise not to get upset at Mads.”
“I promise,” he said, no hesitation. “Mads usually has a method to her madsness.”
Mads-ness.
If the night were less charged, I would’ve laughed. “Okay, it’s not a big deal,” I said, stupidly making it sound like the opposite. “We were just talking about you, and Mads mentioned how much I mean to you, and that you’ve haven’t felt this way about any other girls.”
Connor didn’t even blink. “I don’t understand. What’s the problem?”
I opened my mouth, but he fit puzzle pieces together too fast.
“Unless the issue is on your end,” he said. “You mean a lot to me, but I don’t mean as much to you.”
I shook my head. “That’s not what I’m saying. Not at all. It’s just…”
“It’s just?” he prompted when I trailed off. “It’s just what?”
“It just wasn’t supposed to be like this!” I blurted, sitting up and suddenly feeling very naked. Too naked. “We’re supposed to be having fun together—we are having fun together—but what does that mean to you, Connor?”
He didn’t speak for a second, so I took the silence to snatch my shirt off the floor and pull it over my head.
“It means exactly that,” he finally said as the nighttime breeze rustled our tent.
“We’re having fun together… It’s the truth, but to me, it’s also an understatement.
” He ran a hand through his hair. “I think about us picking up where we left off when I get back home next month. I want to invite you over for dinner so you can meet my family. I imagine us taking turns visiting each other at school. You know Notre Dame is only a hundred miles from Northwestern, right?”
“That’s so Troy Bolton,” I mumbled, thinking of the corny but still swoony High School Musical line. “Thirty-two point seven miles away from you,” Troy pointed out to Gabriella, when telling her about his college choice.
But I didn’t hate hearing it.
Not at all.
Quite the opposite.
Yet…
There was this knot in my stomach, and I didn’t know if I could untangle it.
“What do you think?” Connor asked. His eyes had grown glassy. “How does that sound to you?”
“I think that sounds really nice,” I said truthfully, because I couldn’t find the strength to agree or disagree. “Connor, you are the most—”
“LOKI!” came a call, and I nearly jumped out of my skin at the sharp whistle that followed. It sounded like the dog’s owners were right outside our tent.
“Jesus Christ,” I mumbled, heart thudding hard.
“You can say that again,” Connor said, then sighed. “Should we walk back and sleep in the Annex? I don’t think Meredith will mind if we crash in the sitting room.”
Wanting out of this tent and away from my guilt, I agreed.
Loki barked our whole way back.