Chapter 6
CHAPTER SIX
BIANCA
Two days since I drove off his mountain, and I've cried in three separate grocery store aisles.
My flight's Sunday. The cabin's mostly boxed. Friday night I sit on the floor with a glass of wine I'm not drinking and let myself feel every ugly inch of it.
Renata calls instead of texting, which means she means business.
"Okay," she says. "I'm gonna say the hard thing because I love you.
You're heartbroken, and you have every right to be, that man was a coward to you.
But babe. You were already leaving. You had a realtor.
You had boxes. You moved the line on him and then you needed him to be braver than you about it. "
"He called me a liar, Ren."
"He did. He was wrong and he was scared and you can be furious about that forever." A pause. "But what do you actually want? Take him out of it completely. Pretend he moved to the moon. What do you want?"
The answer's been sitting in my chest the whole time, and I've been too busy bleeding to look at it.
I want the storefront on Birch. I want my name on the glass and my food on the plates and a kitchen that's mine, in a town where people wave at you on the street.
I wanted Crimson Hollow before I ever wanted the mountain man.
I let one good thing turn into the only thing, and the second it broke I started packing my whole self up to follow it out the door.
I do that. I make a person my whole life and then disappear when the person does.
Not this time.
"I'm not getting on the plane," I tell her. "I'm signing the lease."
Renata screams so loud I have to hold the phone away from my ear.
Saturday, Crimson Hollow throws its summer festival, and Main Street's shut down for it, food carts and string lights and half the county milling around.
The realtor meets me outside the Birch storefront with the keys and the paperwork on a clipboard.
My hand shakes a little when I take the pen, then steadies.
This is mine. Whatever else burns down, this is mine, and I built it. I'm about to sign when a ripple of silence passes through the crowd. Kieran is coming down the middle of the closed street.
The man who never comes to town. The one everybody calls the scary Shaw brother because he hasn't shown his face at this festival in years.
He's moving through the whole staring crowd toward me, jaw set, carrying something wrapped in a moving blanket, and his ears are going red at the tips with every eye on him.
He stops in front of me. Sets the thing down. Pulls the blanket off.
It's a sign. Carved walnut, sanded smooth, oiled to that deep brown I'd know in my sleep. My name's worked into the grain in clean letters, and under it, smaller, Crimson Hollow. Days of work. He started it before I ever signed a thing.
There's a folded card tucked into the frame.
I built this the night you left, because I couldn't sit still and I couldn't call you yet. I didn't know if you'd want it. I made it anyway. Hang it or burn it. Either way it's yours. — K
My eyes blur. The realtor very wisely steps back.
"You came to the festival," I manage.
"Hate the festival." His voice is rough, low, pitched for me even with the crowd leaning in.
"Whole town's watching me make an ass of myself.
Figured that was the point. You put your truth on the table in my workshop where it was safe and quiet.
Least I can do is put mine out here where it costs me something. "
"Kieran."
"Let me get through it." A breath, his hands flexing at his sides.
"A woman I trusted once turned my own control into a weapon and left me sure I couldn't be trusted with anyone soft again.
So when you handed me the real thing, I called it a lie, because a lie I knew how to survive.
You weren't her. You were never her. I made you into her so I'd have an excuse to push first." His jaw works.
"I had six days left with you and I set them on fire so they couldn't burn me.
Dumbest thing I've ever built, and I build for a living. "
"I was leaving," I say, because he gave me his, and he gets mine.
"I do that. I pour my whole self into someone, then I disappear behind them until there's nothing of me left.
I came up here to find out what I want when nobody's asking me for anything, and I found you, and I almost handed you the same empty bowl I hand everyone.
" I touch the sign, the letters he carved before he knew if I'd stay.
"I'm not doing that anymore. I'm signing this lease for me. Whatever you decide."
"Sign it." He steps closer, gravel under every word.
"Sign it, and build your kitchen, and live your whole loud life on this street.
I'm not asking you to make me your everything.
I'm asking to be one of your things. The one who carries the heavy stuff and feeds the dog and holds you down when you want to be held down.
" His hand comes up, careful, thumb at my jaw.
"Stay because you want the town. Keep me because you want me.
Two separate yeses. I'll take whatever you give. "
I sign the lease against his chest because my hands won't work otherwise.
Then I kiss him in the middle of the closed street while the whole town pretends not to cheer.
He gets me back to the cabin before either of us can speak again. The door barely shuts before he's got me against it, mouth on my throat, hands shoving my dress up my thighs.
"Two days," he growls. "Two days I thought I lost you."
"You didn't. I'm right here."
He drops to his knees on the floor of the half packed cabin and pushes my underwear aside, and his mouth is on me before I can breathe, tongue working my clit, two fingers curling deep until my knees buckle and I fist his hair to stay standing.
He builds it fast and rough, no patience left in him tonight, and when I come against his mouth he doesn't ease me down.
He stands, spins me to face the door, and bends me forward by the back of the neck.
"Hold on."
He's inside me in one stroke, both hands gripping my hips, and the angle has me crying out against the wood.
Every thrust is deep and claiming. His chest covers my back, his mouth at my ear telling me whose I am, how good I take him, how he's never letting another summer talk him out of this.
One hand slides around to my clit and works me in time with his cock, and I shatter a second time around him, clenching so hard he loses his rhythm and follows me down, buried to the hilt, my name breaking out of him rough.
We end up on the floor in a tangle of moving boxes, both of us laughing, his arm heavy over me, my back to his chest where it's been all along.
"Color," he says into my hair, out of habit, and I feel him grin.
"Green forever. Frame it." I lace my fingers through his over my heart. "Your dog's gonna be insufferable about me coming back."
"He's already at the bottom of the stairs waiting."
I turn in his arms. The scary Shaw brother who walked through a whole festival to put his heart on Main Street is looking at me, soft around the eyes, wrecked and certain.
"Sit," I tell him, and pat the floor beside me.
He huffs a laugh, the first easy one I've heard from him, and pulls me into his lap instead.
"Make me," he says.
So I do.