26. Dove #6
“We’re all set,” he announced, gaze shifting between us with suspicion. Josh knew our antics well, considering he’d had to deal with us as sneaky teenagers. I hadn’t told him yet that Reverie knew about us, but I would imagine it wasn’t hard for him to guess what we’d been talking about.
I flushed under his scrutiny and cleared my throat. “Awesome.”
Zeke placed the empty canisters in the back of his truck before heading over to us.
It’d been a while since I last saw him, but he was still as gigantic as I remember.
As if to appear smaller, he walked with his shoulders slightly hunched, but it was like an elephant trying to appear unthreatening to a mouse.
He even dwarfed Josh, standing beside him.
He was the largest of the Gallardo brothers, and the youngest.
“Ready?” he asked Reverie, curling an arm around her. He looked like he had all those years ago when they’d been dating. Smitten.
How Rev couldn’t see it was beyond me. But my best friend had a knack of ignoring the things she didn’t want to acknowledge. She wanted a good time with Zeke while she was back in Haven, and she’d have it. I just hoped she didn’t break his heart after it was all said and done. Again.
“Thanks for the rescue, Zeke.” I smiled up gratefully at him, and he gave me an answering nod, a twitch of a smile on his lips. He was only ever animated with Rev, or so she told me, otherwise he was stoic and quiet.
“Hey,” Reverie squawked indignantly, “I came to your rescue, too!”
“He did all the work,” I pointed out.
“I filled the canister up,” she argued. “That’s got to count for something.”
As much as I loved Reverie, she wasn’t a hands-on gal. Unless it came to all thing’s beauty. But I didn’t question my best friend's alleged involvement, not when Zeke was gazing at Reverie like she’d cured cancer instead of pumped gas.
“Then thanks to you, too, Rev. I’m sure Zeke never would have managed to fill the container himself, so really you did the most important job of all.”
She scoffed at my sarcastic tone. “See if I come to your rescue again.”
My snarky reply got lodged in my throat as Josh moved behind me to prop his arm up on the truck bed.
Every part of me was aware of how close he was, and despite the fact he wasn’t touching me, I could feel the weight of it.
The pull to lean back into his chest was so strong my muscles tensed, yearning for him to drape that strong arm across my shoulders in a deliberate mirror of the couple in front of us.
I coughed around my dry throat and Rev smirked from her place under Zeke’s arm, an all-knowing twinkle in her eye as her gaze volleyed back and forth between me and Josh.
I widened my eyes pointedly, using our near-telepathic abilities to tell her to knock it off .
Thankfully I was saved by a truck passing by. It slowed to a crawl, boasting “ O’Leery Farms” on the side. Instead of Mr. O’Leery himself in the driver’s seat, however, it was one of his farm hands, a sweaty-looking teenager sporting a farmer’s tan and a fresh driver’s license.
Bill O’Leery was known for hiring local kids.
He paid a fair wage, and it gave them something to do over summer break.
There wasn’t much to do in Haven when school let out, and trouble could be found just about anywhere.
Parents wanted their kids occupied, and the farmers needed temporary help during their busy season, so it worked.
Gareth used to do the same thing, before Josh left. Then after...he hadn’t bothered, and it wasn’t long after that mom got sick.
He stopped beside us, leaning out his open window to ask if we were okay, but the green-around-the-edges look he sported said he wouldn’t have known what to do if we weren’t anyway.
His relief was visible when we waved him on, reassuring him everything was fine.
He tipped his straw hat and continued on, the back of his truck filled with ripe produce he was likely delivering to the grocery store.
“That reminds me,” Reverie said, “are you two planning on going to the fair? Or ,” she cooed suggestively, “maybe you have something else you’re busy with?”
Something in the tone of her voice had me narrowing my eyes suspiciously, wondering what she was up to.
“Reverie.” Josh bit out warningly from behind me.
The terse, abrupt rebuke had me throwing a questioning look over my shoulder at him, but his focus was on my friend.
The stern expression on his face took me by surprise almost as much as her question, mostly because I had no idea how what she said had managed to upset him about as much as I had no idea that the Strawberry Festival was coming up.
“That’s already?” I couldn’t believe we were in the middle of July. Had it really been over a month since our parent’s deaths? Since Josh came back? Somehow it simultaneously seemed like the blink of an eye and an eternity had passed at the same time.
She nodded. “This Saturday.”
Josh took a step closer to me. If I took a deep enough inhale, his chest just barely brushed my back. I forced myself to stand still so my body wouldn’t betray me by swaying backward.
“Do you want to go?” His question was softly murmured in my ear, sparking tingles to rush down my spine.
Nothing sounded better, but doubt swirled in my head.
We’d be surrounded by the whole town, everyone’s eyes on us.
It wasn’t like we could walk hand in hand, enjoying homemade goods and playing games like a normal couple.
Not to mention the fact we still had so much to do yet for the harvest next week.
Instead of answering him, I asked them, “Are you two going?” I felt more than heard Josh’s tiny huff of laughter when my voice came out breathier than I’d meant it to. He totally knew what he was doing to me. Jerk.
Zeke shook his head. “Workin’ most of the day,” he answered regretfully. “We’re catering the festival. Plus we always get a bunch of city slickers stopping by while they’re in town, so we’ll be swamped.”
“But we might head over after,” Reverie tacked on. “Probably not until later in the evening, though, because I’ve got something important to do after work.”
Something important she hadn’t mentioned to me? She was being purposefully vague, but I could always tell when Reverie was being secretive. “What are you?—"
“Alright, big guy,” she interrupted quickly, patting Zeke on the chest. “We better get going, we’ve only got so much of your requested day off left, and I don’t plan on wasting a minute of it.
” With that she took his larger hand in hers and tugged him back towards his truck, throwing a hasty farewell over her shoulder.
When we were nothing but tiny specks in Zeke’s rearview mirror, Josh curled himself around me. “Don’t take this the wrong way,” he muttered in my ear, “but your best friend is weird.”
I laughed, finally allowing myself to lean back into him like I’d wanted to do all along. “She’s unique ,” I corrected, “and you act as if you didn’t already know that.”
Despite our teasing, something still niggled at me with how she’d been acting, at least towards the end. “She was acting strange, though,” I admitted, biting at my bottom lip in thought. “But I think maybe it’s because she’s with Zeke again.”
Josh wrapped an arm around me, resting it across my collarbones. “You said she isn’t staying?”
I blew out a heavy sigh. That topic was something Rev kept avoiding with me. “So she says, but I don’t think she wants to go back to California, either. Reverie will fight tooth and nail against admitting that what she really wants is to be here in Haven.”
He hummed, arm tightening around me. “LA wasn’t all it was cracked up to be, then?”
A pleased warmth spread through me as he held me, despite it being too hot for the embrace.
I wanted nothing more than to stay in this spot forever, but in the back of my mind I couldn’t shake my awareness that it was only a matter of time before someone passed by.
Again. Clearly this road was frequented more than both of us had thought.
“I think it was everything she imagined it to be and more. I just don’t think it’s what her heart really wants. ”
He leaned in, subtly inhaling, nosing at my temple. “And what does her heart want?”
The brush of his lips against the shell of my ear stole the breath from my lungs. His low, seductive purr had me shivering in his arms despite the heat. “Someone it shouldn’t,” I admitted in a shaky whisper, knowing he was no longer talking about Reverie, and that neither was I.
The hand that had been resting on my hip slipped lower, his fingers flirting with my waistband. “We don’t need anyone’s approval. What we have shouldn’t be labeled wrong just because people won’t understand it.”
I wanted to believe his words so badly. Wished it was easy for me to live without a care for how people might view our relationship, view us , but despite my best effort, I did care.
Haven had been just that for me, and Josh had saved me from what I imagine would have been a very lonely, depressed existence.
Eclipsed with the grief of survivor’s guilt and loss, a small, welcoming town and a lonely boy gave me the light I hadn’t had within me to chase the shadows away, and I didn’t want to lose either of them.
But if I had to, there was no doubt who I’d choose.
My eyes fluttered closed involuntarily as he kissed my neck, right along the spot under my ear that had my spine turning to liquid. I all but melted back into him.
“There’s no way something that feels this right is wrong,” he whispered, pressing the words into my skin between kisses. His hand drifted lower, and I wanted nothing more than to let it reach its goal, but I stilled him with a hand to his wrist.
“Josh,” my voice came out hoarser than I intended, and he shuddered behind me.
His arousal was pressing into the small of my back, making his interest known, reminding me that while I’d found my release, he hadn’t.
Guilt coursed through me, and it took my all to force the rest of the words out.
“I want to, I do, but I don’t have it in me to get interrupted again. ”
Plus, it was his turn now. I know Josh wasn’t keeping count, but I was.
He’d taken care of me far more than I had him, and I wanted nothing more than to return the favor, but we still had too much to do today.
Since we were only two people preparing for hundreds of acres worth of crop to gather, the days were long and tiring. But it wouldn’t be much longer.
I turned in his arms, bringing my arms up to rest around his neck. Looking up into his darkened brown eyes, I declared, “Soon. After the harvest things will settle down and then we can…” I glanced away, losing my boldness. Then we can do what we haven’t yet . Everything but, it seemed.
He bent down, slotting his mouth over mine perfectly. At the touch of his tongue, my lips parted without hesitation. Josh had a way of quietly consuming me, making me crave more until were so tangled up in one another I had no idea where I began, and he ended.
When he drew back, we were both out of breath. The truck was digging into my back where he’d spun me to press me up against it, and my hands had migrated into his hair.
“Soon,” he agreed huskily.
That one simple word sounded like a promise.