Chapter 14 Austin
FOURTEEN
AUSTIN
Winnie stood on the back step with her hands on her hips and glitter on her forehead like war paint.
“Three rounds,” she declared. “I’m the seeker. No take-backsies.”
Selene blinked at her. “Lovebug, what’s a ‘take-backsie’?”
Winnie narrowed her eyes, deeply offended that neither of us knew the rules to a game she had just made up. “It means no changing the rules once we start.”
Selene and I shared a look—equal parts amusement and exhaustion. It had been a long day. Our morning routine, school drop-off, work, and a post-school spilled bottle of blue glitter that had turned the kitchen into something out of a disco ball crime scene.
Thankfully Winnie and I had cleaned it up before Selene could stress about the blue streaks across the wood floor.
When she’d emerged from the carriage house, blinking at the afternoon sun, I’d bent down to whisper into Winnie’s ear, suggesting she ask her mom to take a break for a quick round of hide-and-seek.
“I’m going to count,” Winnie announced, already turning toward the porch post like she’d done this before. “You better run and hide somewhere good.”
“I didn’t stretch for this.” Selene groaned as she arched her back. My mouth went dry at the sight of her perfectly round tits straining the fabric of her shirt.
“You’ll be fine,” I said, tugging the hem of my shirt lower and readying myself. “Just don’t pull anything.”
“I’m wearing ballet flats, Austin. This is not a regulation sport outfit.” She smiled, but once Winnie started counting, Selene bolted across the yard with surprising speed.
I took the opposite route, circling toward the back of the property, behind Selene’s office in the carriage house.
The afternoon air was thick with lake humidity, the earth still soft from yesterday’s rain.
My boots made almost no sound against the moss and mulch as I slipped into the narrow gap between the brick wall and the wooden fence.
It was tighter than I would have guessed, overgrown with ivy, and shadowed in a way that made it feel like stepping into a pocket of time.
I crouched, breath steady. My heart wasn’t pounding from running. It was thumping hard from what this felt like—how easily the three of us played house. How quickly this place, these routines, had become mine too.
Somewhere behind me, I heard Winnie call, “Thirty! Ready or not!”
Then the thump of her feet pounded across the yard. I smiled, ducking lower into the darkness.
And then—a soft sound. A whisper, not much more than the hush of fabric against skin, “Is she close?”
That voice. Selene.
I turned just as she ducked in beside me, nearly brushing her forehead against mine.
“Jesus,” I muttered, shifting back a hair. “You scared the hell out of me.”
She grinned, unbothered. “You’re hiding like a criminal.”
I smirked. “I’m hiding like a man who doesn’t want to get caught by a five-year-old with no mercy.”
“Scooch over,” she whispered again, shifting her body as we crouched against one another in the too-small space.
I didn’t move. “I am scooched. I’m six foot three.”
Selene smiled but stayed quiet as her eyes darted, searching for Winnie. I studied her profile.
“She’s ruthless,” Selene whispered. “I swear I don’t know where she gets it from.”
“She’s strong . . . just like her mother,” I murmured, my eyes landing on Selene’s lips.
We stayed there, still and pressed close in the space that barely held us both. I could feel the heat coming off her body, her figure just brushing mine again, like a live wire.
It would’ve been easy enough to shift or step away, but neither of us did.
Her arm was bare, pressed lightly against mine.
The afternoon sunlight filtered through the slats in the fence, casting her face in warm shadows.
I could smell her—something green and sharp from her perfume, humidity in her hair from the lake breeze, and the warm, almost sweet scent of her skin.
My body tightened in response, involuntary and insistent.
My cock thickened against the zipper of my jeans, and I shifted to ease the ache.
I could’ve sworn the air got thicker between us, like time was holding its breath.
I couldn’t look away from her mouth. The words were soft, but her lips were so close I could almost taste them. My entire body responded before my brain could catch up, lighting up like she was the sun and I was pulled into her orbit.
The brush of her thigh near mine, the way her chest lifted when she took a breath—I registered all of it with painful precision. It was too much, too close, too easy to imagine what would happen if I just leaned in and pressed my mouth to hers.
Not until she exhaled a shaky laugh and shook her head. “This is insane.”
I cleared my throat. “Yeah. Probably.”
Winnie was circling the lawn, jumping behind bushes and peeking under the porch. She was dangerously close to finding us, but I didn’t move, and neither did Selene.
Her gaze slid to me and her expression shifted—barely, but I caught it. Something flickered behind her eyes, a mix of uncertainty and something else she wasn’t ready to name. Her gaze dropped to my mouth and lingered.
The silence between us stretched, pulling tighter.
Somewhere across the yard, Winnie shouted something about bunnies in the hydrangeas.
But there, in this sliver of shadowed space, the world narrowed to the sound of Selene breathing beside me and the roar of my own pulse.
She turned to look at me again, slower this time. Her face tipped up toward mine, her breath brushing my jaw. My hands twitched at my sides. I wanted to touch her.
God, how I want to touch her.
I shifted, barely. The toe of her shoe grazed mine. She didn’t pull back.
For one full second I thought we’d do it. I thought I’d finally say screw it and close the space between us. I wanted to let my hands memorize her face, her waist, the slope of her hips. I thought I’d feel her sink into me like she did in every version of my dreams.
A cackle rang out. “Found you!”
Winnie burst into the space with triumph smeared all over her cheeks, her braid unraveling like a flag of war. Selene jumped, startled, and I blinked hard, the moment evaporating like steam off pavement.
“You shouldn’t hide together.” She laughed. “It makes it too easy to find you.”
“Win,” Selene said, breathless, pressing a hand to her chest. “You are terrifying.”
Winnie beamed like it was a compliment. “I told you I was good.”
“You were born for this,” I said, unfolding myself and stepping into the sunlight.
“I’ll have to find somewhere even trickier next time.
But right now I’ve got to run. I have a rescheduled game tonight.
” I ruffled Winnie’s hair, and just like that the spell dissolved, but it didn’t really fade.
It stayed under my skin, crackling and hot.
I caught Selene’s eye one last time as we walked back toward the porch, her hand brushing lightly against her hip like she could still feel the space where I’d almost touched her.
She moved toward her daughter with that careful ease she used when she didn’t want me to see she was flustered.
I just watched her, my hands still balled at my sides, realizing that pretending got harder by the day.
The sun had dipped low by the time we wrapped up the game, the whole field awash in a burnt-amber glow that stuck to our skin like sap.
Hayes had sweat slicked down the back of his neck and Brody was nursing a beer like he’d just run a marathon instead of half jogged through six innings.
Cal was the only one still energized—too competitive to pretend it was just a small-town league game.
Collectively the team voted for tailgating in the parking lot instead of making the trek to the Lantern.
We dragged lawn chairs out of the back of Hayes’s truck and let them scrape across the gravel like we were staking claim.
Music played low from Hayes’s phone, all scratchy classic rock, and someone had cracked open a cooler that smelled like hops and melted ice.
I grabbed a beer, still cold enough to sting my palm, and sank into the folding chair across from Brody. The plastic sagged under my weight. It was the first time all day I felt still.
“Domestic bliss looks good on you, kid,” Hayes said with a smirk, peeling off his batting gloves with too much flair. “You’re showing up early, remembering the snacks. Was that a wet wipe I saw you use earlier?”
“The man’s folding laundry too.” Brody lifted his chin, happy to join in the teasing. “You can see it in the shoulders.”
I laughed, slow and easy, because it was better than saying what was true—that they weren’t wrong. The towels in Selene’s bathroom had creases in them from my careful folding. My boots had found a home just inside her front door.
I shrugged like I hadn’t memorized the way her mouth looked when she was half asleep and curled on the couch, pretending she wasn’t exhausted from a long day hunched over her desk. “She’s my boss,” I said.
That earned me a round of side-eyes.
“Sure, man,” Brody said, dragging the words out slowly. “Keep telling yourself that.”
“No, really,” I added, and the words felt like chewing on gravel. “I’m there for Winnie when Selene needs to work. That’s the job.”
Nobody said anything for a beat. Just the low clink of a bottle against teeth.
Then Cal said, “She definitely seems less stressed out.”
I didn’t answer, only swallowed past the gravel in my throat.
“And that,” Hayes said with a laugh as he clinked his bottle against Cal’s, “is a damn miracle. My sister has been all go and no whoa since the minute Winnie was born.” His eyes narrowed on me and I tried—and failed spectacularly—not to squirm in my seat.
“What’s she paying you anyway? I’ll double it as a thank-you. ”
“Uh—” I cleared a scratch in my throat. “Nothing, actually. I’m just helping out.”
“You see that?” Brody leaned in to punch my leg. “A Good Samaritan.”