Chapter 27
PEYTON
I’m mid-sentence when I realize he’s not listening. His eyes are unfocused, his attention bouncing between me and the corn behind me.
“Hello?” I snap my fingers in front of his face.
His gaze jerks up, and he steps back. Liam lifts his hands in surrender.
“You’re right,” he says.
I blink. “What?”
“About the directions. Lead the way, I’ll follow.”
The words land wrong. I narrow my eyes. “Why are you saying I’m right?”
His jaw tightens. “Because you are. Isn’t that what you wanted?”
“No.” I step closer, refusing to let him retreat. “I want to win the argument fair and square. Not have you roll over… for mysterious reasons.”
His nostrils flare. “I’m agreeing with you. What’s your problem now?”
“My problem is that you don’t really agree with me.” I jab a finger at his chest. “You think I’m wrong. That we should’ve gone left at the fork. So why are you suddenly acting like I’m the expert navigator?”
“Does it matter?”
“Yes, it matters. You don’t get to pretend I’m right when we both know you’re just—”
“Just what?” He steps forward, crowding my space. The stalks rustle behind me, hemming me in.
“Patronizing me,” I finish, but my voice comes out smaller than I intended.
His eyes darken. That muscle in his jaw twitches.
“I’m not patronizing you.”
“Then why?” I demand. “Why are you agreeing with me all of a sudden?”
“Because.” The word is clipped.
He takes another step. Then another. I retreat until my back hits the wall of corn, the stalks scratching against my coat.
Liam cages me in. “For the last five minutes,” he says through gritted teeth, “I’ve been considering kissing you just to shut your pouty mouth.”
The air turns thin in my lungs; it no longer carries enough oxygen.
“So unless you want the afternoon to end that way”—his gaze drops to my lips, deliberate this time—“you’d better shut up on your own.”
I shiver, trembling with a chill that has nothing to do with the fast-lowering temperature.
I should push him away. Duck under his arm and put space between us.
Instead, I lift my hands to his chest.
The leather is warm beneath my palms.
I don’t push.
Like yesterday at the stadium, I grab his jacket and pull him an inch closer.
“What are you doing?” he rasps.
“Maybe we just need to kiss it out of our system.” The logic sounds flimsy even to my own ears, but I cling to it. “If we kiss enough times, it’ll become dull. We won’t feel anything anymore.”
His breath catches. “Peyton, I—”
“Kiss me,” I interrupt. “Please.”
I’m literally begging him. And in the second that he holds my gaze without moving, I’m the most pathetic woman on the planet. Desperate.
But then his focus drops to my mouth.
And the gray of his eyes becomes darker. Storm clouds gathering. Thunder rolling in.
“Kiss it out of our systems?” he repeats.
I nod.
In a flash, one of his hands goes to the small of my back, yanking me flush against him. The other tangles in my hair, fisting at the nape of my neck, tilting my head back.
He bends me backward slightly, and then his mouth crashes over mine.
The kiss is nothing like the stadium.
His lips move against mine with a demanding pressure that borders on angry. There’s no hesitation, no polite exploration. His tongue sweeps into my mouth with a possessiveness that makes me want to climb him right here in the dirt.
I grab fistfuls of his jacket, hauling myself up, pressing closer.
Kissing while standing is so much worse than in the stadium.
Now we’re free to press our bodies together, and Liam’s body, oh, it’s hard in the best way.
The collision is jarring—the rough slide of denim against denim, the crushing weight of his chest flattening my breasts, the hardness of his thigh pushing between mine.
Heat explodes through me, scorching through my veins, pooling low and liquid in my belly.
His hand tightens in my hair, angling my head to deepen the kiss. A sound escapes my throat—a whimper, an embarrassingly needy moan—and he swallows it, drinks it down, kisses me harder.
If we weren’t standing in the middle of a pumpkin patch right now, clothes would already be flying off.
A surprised “Oh!” sounds behind us.
We spring apart.
The world rushes back, the blue sky, the golden corn, the distant sound of bluegrass music. I’m panting. My lips feel bruised. My hair is a disaster.
I turn, cheeks flaming, to find Rebecca and Lila standing at the entrance to our dead end.
Rebecca looks amused. Lila’s bliss goes beyond. She’s grinning like she could survive for a week on nothing but the satisfaction radiating off her face.
“Sorry,” she says, not sounding sorry at all. “We thought you guys got lost, but now we can see you’ve been busy with other activities.”
Liam takes a step back from me, but he doesn’t let go. His arm stays around my waist, keeping me tucked against his side. He glares at Lila.
The more he scowls, the more she smiles.
They’re having an entire silent conversation made of micro-expressions I can’t decode. Rebecca clears her throat. “Well, guys, sorry to interrupt, but the farm is about to close, and we need to get everyone out of the maze.”
I let out a strangled laugh. “Oh my gosh, I’m so embarrassed we couldn’t clear it. Kids can do it.”
“You’re not the first rescue we’ve had to make,” Rebecca says with a grin. “But you are the most… disheveled. The corn can be confusing. Especially when you’re too busy looking down each other’s throats to find the exit.”
“Clearly they’ve been distracted by that newlywed bliss,” Lila chirps.
I don’t know what she’s getting at. Despite catching us kissing, she knows the marriage is fake.
Liam shoots her a death glare. “Stop being obnoxious.”
“Never.” She winks at me. “Come on, lovebirds. Let me show you how it’s done.”
* * *
Liam is silent the entire drive home. His grip on the steering wheel is so tight the expensive leather creaks in protest every time we take a curve. He keeps his eyes fixed on the road. I watch the farmland blur past my window and replay the kiss on a loop in my mind.
His tongue in my mouth. His hands in my hair. The sound he made when I pressed closer.
I squeeze my thighs together and stare harder at the passing trees.
When we pull into the driveway, the glass house gleams in the sunset. Liam kills the engine but doesn’t move.
I grab our carved pumpkins from the backseat—my grinning face and his mangled experiment—and carry them to the porch. I set them side by side on the top step. His and hers. Matching jack-o’-lanterns for our fake family.
Inside the house, the high ceilings magnify every sound: the click of the door closing, the soft pad of our footsteps, the rustle of jackets being removed.
We drift into the kitchen. Should I ask him what he wants for dinner?
The tension is unbearable.
I can’t stand it anymore.
“I’m sorry,” I blurt out. “For making you kiss me.”
Liam stops mid-pace. He turns to face me, his expression unreadable.
“You didn’t make me do anything.”
He speaks with a terrifyingly quiet calm.
“I asked you to—”
“And I wanted to.” He steps closer. His gray eyes pin me in place. “I’ve wanted to kiss you since the stadium. Since before the stadium. Don’t apologize for giving me permission to do something I was already dying to do.”
My breath catches.
He holds my gaze, steady and unflinching. “Is it out of your system yet?”
I should lie. Say that yes, I got what I needed, I’m cured of this inconvenient attraction and ready to go back to being platonic roommates who share a bed but nothing else.
“Not really,” I admit.
He nods slowly. “Me neither.”
He looks at me for a long moment, conflict warring in his eyes. A muscle jumps in his jaw. “We can never kiss at home.”
I frown. “Why?”
He moves toward me, bending down so his lips brush against my ear.
“Because no one would stop us here.”
His breath is warm against my neck. Goosebumps erupt down my arms.
“And we don’t want ‘kiss it out of our system’ to become ‘fuck it out of our system.’ Right?”
My mouth goes dry.
Right. Yes. That would be bad. That would complicate everything.
“Right.” I nod, trying to look sensible, even as other parts of my body wholeheartedly disagree.