Chapter 36
KENT
Iwasn’t sure where the hell Sylvie was taking me, but she was driving Brom’s old pickup truck down a narrow, tree-lined forest road that seemed to lead straight into pitch darkness.
If it had been anyone but Sylvie, I would be freaking out.
It felt like no one was around for miles.
A person could disappear easily into all this darkness.
“Should I be scared?” I asked.
She giggled. “Maybe.”
“Are you planning to ravish me?”
“Also maybe.”
“Well then I’ll take my chances with you out here.”
The headlights carved out a narrow tunnel of visibility ahead of us, but beyond that cone of light, the world might as well not exist. If those headlights went out, I wouldn’t be able to see my hand in front of my face.
I had not been anywhere this dark ever. I didn’t know places like this even existed in the world. Maybe in the outback of Australia, but in the US?
Sylvie was completely unbothered by the isolation, humming along cheerfully to Mariah Carey belting out what sounded like a Christmas song on the ancient cassette tape playing through the truck’s crackling speakers.
She navigated the winding forest road like she’d driven it a thousand times, which she probably had.
“Okay, but for real, are you taking me somewhere to murder me?” I asked, only half-joking. “Because this is exactly what the beginning of a horror movie looks like.”
Her laugh was a bright sound that never failed to make something warm unfurl in my chest. “Trust me, City Boy. Have I steered you wrong yet?”
“I’ve never been in the middle of nowhere before,” I said.
“We’re not nowhere,” she said. “I know exactly where I am.”
“This is somewhere you’ve been before,” I said. “You bring all the boys out here?”
She rolled her eyes and said nothing.
Was I jealous? What the hell? Did I get jealous? I honestly couldn’t remember a time when I’d ever been jealous. Jealous meant I cared.
That was definitely new.
In my world, it wasn’t arrogant to say getting a woman was pretty easy. I could walk into a bar and pick a woman I wanted and that was that.
Sylvie made me work for it.
And that was what made the situation so much worse. How the hell was I supposed to destroy her life and then ask her to let me be with her? It was never going to happen. I knew how much the farm and lodge meant to her. There would be no coming back from that.
Which meant I needed to appreciate every minute I had with her.
We drove for another ten minutes through what felt like the absolute middle of nowhere before the trees finally opened up into a clearing. It seemed like an old forestry route, probably used decades ago for logging operations. Now it was just a wide, flat space surrounded by towering evergreens.
“Get out,” Sylvie said, killing the truck’s engine and plunging us into sudden silence.
I climbed out of the cab, immediately struck by how quiet it was out here. No traffic sounds, no city noise, no human activity of any kind. Just the soft whisper of wind through the trees and the distant call of some night bird I couldn’t identify.
“Now what?” I asked.
Instead of answering, Sylvie walked around to the back of the truck and lowered the tailgate. Then she climbed up into the bed and lay down on her back, looking perfectly comfortable on the cold metal surface.
I frowned at her. “What are you doing?”
“Come on, City Boy,” she said, patting the space beside her. “Trust me.”
I hesitated for a moment. Lying in the back of a pickup truck in the middle of a forest in winter wasn’t exactly my idea of comfort but something about the way she was looking at me made it impossible to refuse.
I climbed up beside her and stretched out, trying to find a position that didn’t involve metal digging into my spine.
At first, I was only looking at her. How could I not? Even in the dim starlight, she was magnificent. The curve of her nose, the soft swell of her lips, those long dark lashes that cast shadows on her cheeks. She was beautiful in a way that made everything else fade into the background.
She must have caught me staring because she smiled that bright, teasing smile that never failed to scramble my brain. “Look up,” she whispered.
“Huh?”
“Up,” she said more insistently, turning her own gaze toward the sky above us.
I followed her lead and looked up. What I saw made me forget how to breathe.
“Wow.”
The night sky was absolutely insane. I’d never seen anything like it in my life.
With no city light pollution to wash out the darkness, the sky was crystal clear and absolutely dancing with what had to be a billion stars.
I could see the Milky Way stretched across the heavens like a glowing river of light.
I could make out constellations that were nothing but vague suggestions in the New York sky.
I had only ever seen stars like this in movies or there was a museum once.
What I was staring up at was absolutely stunning.
It was so beautiful, so overwhelming, that I was actually at a loss for words for the first time in my adult life.
“Pretty cool, right?” Sylvie said softly.
When I glanced over, I realized she’d rolled onto her side and was propping her head up on her hand, watching me stare up at the night sky.
“Cool is an understatement,” I managed to say. The view was incredible, but looking at Sylvie watching me with that gentle smile, I realized that she was just as beautiful as the night sky above us. Maybe more beautiful because she was real and warm and right here beside me.
Fuck. I was going soft for this girl in ways that should have terrified me.
“I thought you might like it,” she said. “I’m guessing you don’t get to see stuff like this living in the city.”
“You miss a lot of things that are right in front of you where I’m from,” I said, and I wasn’t just talking about stars anymore.
In New York, people moved through their lives at breakneck speed, always focused on some future goal instead of appreciating what they had in the present moment.
But here, lying in the back of a pickup truck with Sylvie in the middle of nowhere, watching the stars, I felt more present than I had in years. More connected to something real and meaningful.
“What was your childhood like?” she asked suddenly, catching me off guard with the change of subject. “Growing up with all that money?”
I settled back down, keeping one arm around her as she snuggled against my side. “It was good,” I said carefully. “I’m not complaining. But it was also pretty chaotic.”
“How so?”
“A lot of boys, no mom, and a father who was always working. It was like living in a fraternity house most of the time.” I chuckled, remembering some of the mayhem.
“Hudson once convinced Isaac to help him launch a remote-control airplane from the third-floor window. It crashed straight through the neighbor’s house. ”
Sylvie laughed. “What did your dad do?”
“Bought them a new window and grounded both boys for a month. But the next week, Austin and Isaac decided to build a slip-and-slide down the main staircase using garbage bags and dish soap.”
She burst into laughter. “Why do I have a feeling that ended badly?”
“My brother Dane was convinced he could do it standing up.”
“And?”
“And he broke his arm. We tried to hide it from my dad but Dane was in so much pain. When my dad realized the kid had a broken arm, he freaked a little. He hired three nannies after that. He said his life flashed in front of his eyes. I never really understood what that meant until I got older.”
She laughed again. “Did you grow up in a penthouse in New York?”
“No, actually, we’re from Vancouver.” I stared up at the sky, visions of my childhood running through my head. “We had a big estate. Big. Trust me when I say a group of boys ranging in age from two to fifteen can get up to no good.”
“Your mom died when you were young?” she asked softly.
“Yes. I was five. My older brothers, I think I’ve always been jealous of them because they got so much more time with her. Me and my younger brothers, we don’t remember her as well. Reese and Jett, they never wanted to talk about her because it made them sad.”
“Older brothers?”
“Yes,” I answered.
I thought about inviting her to meet them, but I knew it wasn’t going to happen. Not in the way that would be any good. She might meet a few, but it would be because they were in town to survey the area the company was set to destroy.
“Can I ask you something?” I looked at her.
“Sure.”
“Is this a make-out spot?”
She burst into laughter. “What?”
“Do you bring all your boyfriends out here?”
She grinned. “Only the ones I like.”
“Hey!”
I was about to tease her back when something caught my eye, a bright streak of light shooting across the star-filled sky above us.
“Holy shit,” I breathed, pointing upward. “Did you see that?”
Sylvie followed my gaze just in time to catch the tail end of the shooting star as it blazed across the darkness and disappeared. “Make a wish,” she said softly.
I stared at the spot where the star had been, completely mesmerized. “I can’t remember the last time I saw one of those. Maybe when I was a kid? Twenty years ago, at least.”
“Really?” She sounded genuinely surprised. “We see them all the time out here.”
“City lights wash out everything,” I explained, still looking up at the sky in case another one appeared. “You’re lucky if you can see the Big Dipper on a clear night.”
She shifted closer to me in the truck bed, close enough that I could feel the warmth of her body against my side. “So what did you wish for?”
“Can’t tell you,” I said, turning my head to look at her. “Doesn’t it not come true if you tell?”
“That’s birthday candles,” she said with a grin. “Shooting stars are different.”
“Oh, well in that case.” I rolled onto my side to face her properly, now only inches apart. “I wished for more time.”
“More time for what?”
“More time with you,” I said honestly. “More nights like this.”
Her breath caught slightly. I could see her pupils dilate even in the dim starlight. “Kent.”
“What?” I reached up to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear, my fingers lingering against her cheek. “Too cheesy?”
“Maybe a little,” she said, but she was smiling. “But I like cheesy.”
I leaned closer, drawn by the warmth in her eyes and the way her lips parted slightly. “Good to know for future reference.”
And then, without really thinking about what I was doing, I was kissing her.
She responded immediately. The kiss was hungry and desperate, filled with all the longing I’d been trying to suppress since the moment I’d walked away from her after our wild night together.
This was dangerous territory. Kissing Sylvie under a canopy of stars and feeling her body warm and pliant against mine was making it impossible to remember why I was really here.
Making it impossible to think about anything except how right the moment was.
I wanted to stay in the now. I wanted this moment forever.
But forever wasn’t an option for someone like me. Our time together wouldn’t last much longer, and I was a selfish bastard because I was going to take it anyway.