4. Rourke
four
Rourke
She keeps coming back. Four days past what the article needs. Five interviews' worth of notes for an eight-hundred-word piece. We both know it. Neither of us says it, like naming it out loud might scare it off before it's had the chance to become whatever it's already becoming between us.
I tell her things I haven't told my best friend Orrin, and I've known him since we were kids fishing the same stretch of river behind the mill.
About my grandfather teaching me to graft at nine years old, his hands over mine on the knife, patient in a way he wasn't about much else in this life.
About the two years circling the cider decision and backing off every time, because selling it means strangers drinking something I made without me standing there to say what it cost, why it tastes the way it does, what two hundred bottles a year actually means to a man who's spent two decades making it for no one but himself.
"You're afraid of being misunderstood."
"Maybe."
"That's not a flaw, Rourke. That's just true of anyone who makes things by hand instead of buying them ready-made off a shelf somewhere."
We're in the barn again, late, the crew long gone home for the night, lanterns doing what the one overhead bulb never quite manages.
She's got cider on her mouth from the second taste I poured her, and I'm looking at it longer than I should, and she catches me at it and doesn't look away, doesn't pretend she hasn't noticed exactly where my attention's gone.
"You're staring."
"I know."
"You gonna do something about it?"
I close the distance instead of answering with words.
She meets me the rest of the way there, and it isn't slow so much as it's certain — the kind of thing that doesn't need to hurry because it isn't going anywhere, because we've both known this was coming since somewhere around row nine on the first day.
Her hands find my shirt. Mine find her jaw, careful, like she's something I could bruise if I'm not paying attention to every point of contact, and she makes a sound against my mouth that tells me plainly I don't need to be quite that careful with her.
We end up against the workbench, cider forgotten on the barrel behind her.
Her fingers work the buttons of my shirt with more patience than the moment calls for, like she’s memorizing the feel of each one under her hands.
I don’t rush her. I just stand there and let her open me up, watching the way the lantern light catches in her eyes every time another button gives.
I get her jacket off first, then her sweater.
The cold barn air hits her bare skin and she shivers once, hard.
I pull her flush against me before the second shiver can land, and whatever was left of the chill disappears between us.
Her breasts press soft and warm against my chest through the thin fabric of her bra.
My hands settle at the small of her back, holding her there. “Tell me if I should stop,” I say low against her ear, meaning every word.
“Don’t stop.” No hesitation at all.
I get her jeans open and slide my hand between her thighs.
She’s already slick, already ready, the heat of her soaking my fingers the second I touch her.
She gasps my name against my collarbone like saying it out loud costs her something real.
I work her slow at first, one finger, then two, curling deep until her hips push forward and her nails dig half-moons into my shoulder through the flannel.
She’s so wet the soft sounds of it fill the quiet between us.
I keep the pace steady, deliberate, watching her face the whole time. When she’s right at the edge—thighs shaking, breath gone high and thin—I stop. Just hold still inside her and wait.
She curses at me, soft and broken.
“That’s cruel,” she manages, breathless.
“Making sure you mean it.”
“I mean it.” Her eyes open, dark and steady on mine. “I’ve never meant anything more.”
I lift her onto the bench. The wood is rough under her bare thighs.
I get my belt undone, shove my jeans down just far enough, and she wraps her legs around my waist like she’s done this with me a hundred times instead of never once before tonight.
I notch myself against her, feel how soft and open she is, and push in slow.
We both go still for a full second—her breath catching hard, my hand fisting in the fabric still bunched at her hip. She’s tight, hot, perfect. I can feel every inch of her taking me, and for a second I have to lock my jaw just to keep from losing the last of my control.
Then she rolls her hips against me, taking me deeper, and stillness stops being an option for either of us.
It’s not slow after that. Her back against the rough wood, my mouth at her throat, her voice climbing until she’s not forming actual words anymore—just my name, over and over, broken open every time I drive into her.
I can feel how close she is in the way her body starts to shake, the way her nails dig harder into my shoulders.
When she comes it’s with her teeth pressed against my shoulder and her whole body drawing tight around me like a fist closing, pulsing hard and wet and perfect.
The sound she makes against my skin wrecks whatever restraint I had left. I follow a few strokes later, forehead dropped against hers, buried deep, both of us breathing like we’ve been running the whole east block flat out.
I hold her a while longer, still inside her, still catching my breath. The lanterns keep guttering low. The cold barn air finally starts to reach us again, but neither of us moves to put any distance back.
She reaches for her sweater without any real hurry to put it back on. I watch her dress the way I watched her work a row two days ago — paying attention, the way I pay attention to anything that matters. She catches me at it again.
"What," she says, not really a question.
"Nothing." I hand her her jacket. "Just thinking I owe your editor a better quote than eight percent margin."
"You could give me one now."
"Not tonight." I pull her back against me one more time before I let her go, just to feel the shape of the evening settle into something I'll be able to hold onto tomorrow, when the crew's back and the light's ordinary and none of this feels quite real in the daylight the way it does right now.
"Tonight you get the truth instead. Figured that was worth more. "
She doesn't argue the point. Just tucks herself into my side for one more minute before the cold finally wins, and neither of us says what we're both thinking — that four days in, this has already stopped being research for either one of us.