23. Jacinthe #2
“Jacinthe.” Her whole body is tense now. Even her voice sounds tight. “This is a lot.”
A jolt of anxiety zings through me, making my stomach churn.
I’m fucking this all up.
“I know. I know.” I drop my head into my hands. “Fuck. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have asked.”
“It’s not that.”
I risk peeking at her through my fingers.
“It’s just…” She taps her fingers against the wheel for a moment. “I’m just honored you’d ask me to do that. I know it’s not easy for you to have anyone else involved with the farm.”
My breath whooshes out of me.
“And you’re right,” she says. “It could help my schedule a lot. I thought I’d have more control running my own business, but I didn’t realize just how much time I’d spend driving around out here.
If I could be sure I’d have my late afternoons free, at least most days, that would be so much better for Shel. ”
Relief has me slouching in my seat.
“So you think it’s a good idea?”
“As a business, yes. I actually think it’s a great idea.”
A few pinpricks of nerves start poking at the back of my neck again.
“But?” I ask.
She glances over at me, first at my eyes and then my mouth.
All it takes is that tiny flick of her gaze to make my throat go dry.
“But we….”
She lifts one of her hands off the wheel to gesture between us. She doesn’t have to say anything else.
“Yeah,” I agree. “We.”
She laughs, but there’s no joy to the sound.
“Shit just keeps getting more complicated for us, doesn’t it?” She shakes her head. “How did we ever think this could be simple?”
I squint at the white line running up the center of the highway.
“Did we ever think it would be simple?” I ask. “Or did we just pretend so we could…?”
I can’t say it, but I feel it, and I know she does too. I can taste it—that one delicious word like a forbidden fruit we’re always going to crave no matter how many times we give into temptation.
Did we just pretend so we could fuck?
Something about fucking Tess makes me wish I’d never used that word for anything else. I wish I’d kept it like a secret, like a strum of chords I only play when I want to think about her.
Fucking Tess deserves its own sound.
“I don’t know what we thought,” she says.
Maybe we weren’t thinking at all. Maybe we were just feeling.
She makes it easy to feel, like falling into a current. You can fight the flow, but everything gets sweeter when you just drift away.
We spend the rest of the drive in silence. It’s only another few minutes before we reach La Grange Rouge. Tess parks next to the house, and I hop out and hurry up to the porch.
I remember what happened last time we let ourselves sit in a truck together in the dark.
The house is quiet. I call out for Maman , but there’s no answer. My stomach knots with worry, but it only takes a couple seconds to find her passed out on the couch with a blanket tucked around her shoulders and a news channel playing on the TV.
I walk over to adjust the blanket a little. She mumbles something but doesn’t wake up. I flick the TV off and tiptoe back out to the entryway, where Tess is just about to step inside.
“She’s sleeping on the couch,” I whisper.
Tess freezes, her eyes widening.
“Oh no!” she whispers back. “She must be exhausted. Should we cancel movie night?”
I shake my head. “No way. She’ll kill me if she wakes up and finds out I made her miss all of Halloween.”
I glance over my shoulder and purse my lips for a moment, but I can’t find it in me to go interrupt her nap, not when her pain makes it so hard for her to get to sleep in the first place.
“Maybe we can let her rest until Shel gets here?” I say, turning back to Tess.
“Of course,” she answers. “Do you want to come to the back? I think I have some popcorn and things for us to get ready.”
I agree, and we head to the back. Inside, Tess goes straight for her little kitchen, but I stand hovering in the doorway.
I haven’t been in here since the night that started everything.
“Are you coming inside?”
Tess gives me a curious look from where she’s hunched down in front of the mini fridge.
“Ah, ouais ,” I mutter, yanking the door shut behind me.
“Do you think Maddie and Natalie will want beer?” Tess asks, elbow-deep in the fridge as she shuffles some packages around. “I have a few buried in here somewhere.”
“Probably,” I answer. “I’m sure they will bring stuff too.”
She pulls out a four pack, knocking a few bags of vegetables on the floor in the process, and then stuffs everything back inside the fridge before setting the beer on the table.
I hover behind one of the chairs, gripping the top of the backrest and wondering if I should be helping as she starts digging through her cupboards.
“Ah, here’s the popcorn!” she says.
She pulls out a brown package of kernels and heads for the microwave before whirling around at the last second.
“Oh, hmm. Maybe I should wait if we want it to stay warm?”
She’s flying around at a mile a minute, but all I can do is nod and mumble, “Uh-huh.”
She tosses the popcorn onto the table and plants her hands on her hips, glancing around the room.
“There’s not actually much for us to get ready, is there?”
I shake my head. “Guess not.”
We stand there for a few seconds. Our eyes meet, and I look away. Tess clears her throat.
“Do you want a beer?” she asks, nodding at the four pack.
I need something to do with my hands besides squeeze the life out of this chair, so I reach for a bottle.
“Sure. Pourquoi pas ?”
Tess grabs one too and then digs out a bottle opener from a drawer. We take our first few sips still standing in the kitchen before she motions to the couch.
“Um, should we sit?”
I bob my head. “Probably.”
We sit at opposite ends of the couch. It’s a two-seater, so even leaning up against the arm rests, we’re only a few inches apart from each other.
I take another sip of my beer while I look at the thrift store art on the walls and the framed photos of Shel I remember from last time.
“I guess you haven’t been in here since…”
Tess trails off and crosses her legs. Out of the corner of my eye, I see her resting the lip of her beer bottle against her mouth.
“Yeah,” I say.
It’s almost like the echo of the sounds we made that night are still bouncing off the walls. All we did in here was kiss, but the memory of her hands on my body and her tongue in my mouth is like a brand seared straight into my skin.
The marks she left still glow red hot whenever I’m around her.
I take a swig from my beer, but it doesn’t help. The cold liquid just makes me feel even hotter in comparison. The whole room is heating up the longer we sit here.
“We have to figure this out,” Tess says. “Don’t we?”
I risk looking at her and notice she’s got a death grip on her bottle, her knuckles turning pale.
“Figure what out?” I ask, even though I know exactly what she means.
“Us.”
There it is again: two letters roping us together, tightening like a lasso the more we struggle to break apart.
“Right,” I say. “Us.”
Tess takes a long gulp of beer, tilting her head back and squeezing her eyes shut. I can’t help watching the way her throat moves. I wonder what it would be like to feel her swallow against my palm, my fingers cupping her neck.
She lowers the bottle with a sigh and stares straight ahead.
“I don’t know if we can live together, work together, and…sneak around together,” she says, the words stilted, like she’s forcing them out. “That’s a lot of together for two people who aren’t…together.”
“Right.”
I don’t know why my chest feels hollow all of a sudden. She is right; we’re not together. If one thing has been clear from the start, it’s that.
“So if I’m going to work here for real, I think we have to stop…us.” She motions between our bodies.
She’s making sense. I know she’s making sense, but there’s still blood rushing in my ears at the thought of this being the end of whatever us is.
“Do you think we can?” I ask. “Stop? I mean, we tried that, non ?”
Tess stares down at the floral carpet as she thinks for a few long minutes.
“You’re right. We did try,” she says, “but that was before this idea of running the stables together. It’d be a huge responsibility, and honestly, a huge risk for both of us. We’d be putting a lot of trust in each other.”
Maman ’s question from the other night floats back into my mind.
‘I trust her enough to give her a chance with this, if she wants to take it. Do you?’
I still don’t know the answer.
“La Grange Rouge is important, right?” Tess asks. “Making it work would have to come first.”
That jolts me back to reality.
I can’t put this farm at risk, not after everything Maman and I have been through.
“Of course.”
“So this…this can’t keep happening.” Again, she gestures between us, and I realize we’ve somehow moved a little closer on the couch. “Winding up alone with each other…close to each other… We just can’t.”
She squeezes her eyes shut like even looking at me is off limits, and I take the chance to let my gaze sweep over her face.
She’s just so fucking gorgeous.
She’s hot, of course. She’s one of the hottest women I’ve ever seen, but it’s more than that.
I don’t just see the outside now. When I look at her, I see a woman who cares so deeply about other people sometimes it tears her apart.
I see her fierce devotion to her daughter.
I see her wisdom and quiet strength. I see her sly humor and the way she always seems to have the perfect one-liner to take me down a peg tucked up her sleeve.
I see her wild side, the one that bites and grabs and wants . I see the parts of her she only lets out when she’s under me, or over me, or just holding me as close as she can while we come down from the high.
I want to take her there again. I need to. She’s shown me so much, but there’s still so much more of her to see.
“You know what’s crazy?” I ask.
My voice comes out low and rumbling, but I don’t clear my throat. I can’t play this off. We might never speak like this again.
She takes a shuddering breath and then asks, “What?”
We’re leaning towards each other now, slowly turning, bending, curling towards one another like plants looking for the sun.
“I’ve never even fucked you properly,” I tell her, “and now I’m not supposed to touch you at all.”
Her chest is heaving. The glittery red devil horns she’s still got perched on her head shimmer in the light from the kitchen, and she’s never looked more tempting before.
“P-properly?” she stammers.
I lean even closer, so close I’m sure she must be able to hear my heart pounding.
“I mean with my fingers,” I murmur, “and my tongue.”
She shivers, her eyelids fluttering closed. I know I should stop. We’re crossing lines even faster than we’re drawing them now, but all the reasons not to do this fade away when I look at her mouth, her lips already parted for me.
“I mean stripping you naked…”
I inch closer, my knee bumping against hers. “And touching you…”
I wait for her to pull away, to be the one to end this, but she’s leaning closer too.
“And tasting you…and being inside you.”
She makes a soft, choked sound, and the beer bottle nearly slips out of her grip.
I take it from her and set both our beers on the coffee table. When I turn back to her, she’s still sitting there with her eyes shut. All her muscles are strung tight, like a wolf waiting to strike.
I want to strike back. I want to spring at each other and go down together.
“I never even got to take all your clothes off you, Tess.”
She grips the tops of her thighs hard, sliding her fingertips up them like claws.
“ I never got to take all your clothes off.”
She almost sounds angry about it. The slight growl in her voice makes my stomach clench with anticipation.
Her eyes flick open, and my breath catches when they meet mine.
“God, I wish I could see you like that.” She looks like she’s already peeling my clothes off in her mind. “I wish I could feel you.”
I’ve never wished for anything harder. I need her stretched out, not stuffed into the cab of a truck or propped against a wall.
I need her in bed.
“I wish I could feel you…everywhere,” I admit.
Our knees brush together again, and this time, we don’t break apart. The side of her thigh presses hard against mine, and we lean in until our foreheads are touching.
I can feel the heat of her breath on my lips. I can smell her skin, the mix of sunshine and leather, like a hit of summer in the middle of fall.
“This is exactly what we shouldn’t do,” she pants. “This is what we’re supposed to stop.”
“ Je sais ,” I agree. “I know. I just…I can’t believe I’ll never have you like that. Even once.”
I can already feel the weight of losing this part of her, like a crushing boulder about to tip down onto my back.
“What if it was just once?”
I freeze, the tip of my nose bumping hers. I stay still and wait to see if she’ll take it back, but she doesn’t.
“You want that?” I ask.
“Of course I fucking want that.” Her voice is strained with desperation. “God, this is so fucking stupid. How do you make me lose my goddamn mind like this?”
She trails the tip of her nose down the side of mine. Her lips are just a whisper away from my mouth.
Just once.
“I lose my mind every time I look at you,” I tell her.
She reaches up to cup my cheek, her touch feather-light at first before she makes another choked noise and tightens her grip on my jaw.
“Would you just kiss me?” she asks. “I just…I just want to stop thinking. Please make me stop thinking.”