Chapter 17 Body Like a Backroad
BODY LIKE A BACKROAD
SAM HUNT
OWEN
“I’m ready.”
I’m ready. I’m ready. I’m ready.
Brooke says what is now one of my new favorite phrases in the English language... right next to “I want to be your wife” and “I love you.”
Our silence is thick as she readies her impromptu salon, meticulously placing her tools on Tink’s patch of countertop like a surgeon prepping for a procedure. My eyes follow her every move from where I sit on the stool she set up for me in the couple of feet between the kitchen and our bed.
One of my threadbare, college baseball shirts hangs to her midthighs.
And though her legs look entirely bare, I know those cuffed denim shorts that form to her perfect curves—and drive me crazy on a regular basis—are hiding under the oversized tee.
Hair caught up in a wild bun, with strays pulled out and framing her face, I want nothing more than to undo the flimsy elastic and watch it fall over her shoulders.
“Are…” Her voice shakes along with her hands. “Are you ready?”
I can’t answer. I’ve waited so long for this moment—clinging tight to the memory of a single night I thought would never happen again—that I’m worried if I say a word, I’ll wake up and this will all be a dream.
So I only nod, desperate and daring her to come closer, to touch me and prove that I’m really and truly awake.
She stalks towards me, a cautious feline, unsure of where to pounce. So I stay as still as humanly possible—the guy who’s been waiting ten years for her to love and trust him completely.
Without preamble, she slides around my back, combing both hands through my hair, and I hear the swishing of her first cuts. Cuts Brooke vowed never to make. This single act has me fighting back years of emotion. I’m so proud of her. So in love with her. And itching to show her how much.
Does she notice the chill bumps along my bare shoulders? Or the hairs of my arms, standing on end? Can she hear my heart pounding out of my chest, painfully aware of every place her skin touches mine?
Every nerve in my body zeroes in on her warmth against my back. Her hands in my hair. Her shallow breaths, setting the tempo for mine. I want her, but I don’t want this moment to end.
The sound of her shears, my hair lightly falling to the floor, and everything we aren’t saying fill the space of our tiny trailer until the tension is so thick, I’m sweltering.
When Brooke works her way to the front, standing between my legs, I can’t help but touch her, stare at how devastatingly beautiful she is, and wonder at the miracle that we’re here now, and I get to call her my wife.
My hands are greedy, zinging with unspent energy until they find their home around her legs. Her only acknowledgement is a gasp and the flicker of her eyes to mine before she returns to her work, her teeth buried into her lower lip in concentration.
Suddenly, I’m eighteen again, getting a haircut from my best friend before I leave for summer training, and I’m terrified.
Afraid to leave her. Afraid that if I don’t kiss her tonight, I’ll never get the chance.
But worried, too, that if I let myself act on this insatiable need for her, I won’t be strong enough to leave her the next day.
All I say is her name. “Brooke…”
And she puts the scissors down.
Her fingers pass through my hair once more, as if she’s just as intoxicated by the feel of it as I am, before they move to my face.
She takes my cheeks in her delicate, impossibly soft hands, running her thumbs against the facial hair I haven’t bothered to shave, and holds me like I’m something she cherishes.
If I ask her right now, I wonder what her fear would be and if it would be the same as mine?
I’m afraid forever with her won’t possibly be enough.
“Owen.” She releases my face only to take up my hand, the one holding the plain, but precious band she slipped onto my finger barely two months ago while making promises I think she’s only recently beginning to revere.
Bringing it to her lips, Brooke kisses my knuckles, then, with tears in her eyes, rubs her free hand in a circle on her belly. “I’m in love with you.”
My eyes, unbidden, fill with tears as well… The belly rub. I knew she understood.
“I love you, Brooke,” I manage to rasp out as I tuck her hair behind her ear, giving me full access to those shimmering, brown eyes, and then promise, “I will always love you.”
Slowly, she draws my lips to hers, and I let her.
This is already worlds apart from our first kiss, where Brooke seemed to lose control before realizing we could never go back to what we were.
From that moment on, we’ve been pre-kiss and post-kiss versions of ourselves.
Unable or unwilling to forget what could be.
But, tonight, there’s no misunderstanding or hesitation.
It’s like the slower she moves, the more Brooke’s telling me that she won’t change her mind this time. That, though she fears so many things, she doesn’t fear this. Not anymore.
Her touches are light and restrained. She’s leaving the milk out for me now, inviting me in and promising the warmth and security I’ve been waiting for my whole life, never willing to give myself or that trust to just anyone.
I would’ve waited forever, because Brooke is my person.
My hands find her waist, lifting her onto my lap and trying to meld every inch of her body to mine.
Smiling against my mouth, her arms fall loosely over my bare shoulders, closing any remaining distance between us before she tilts her head and deepens the kiss.
There are no cameras or audience or any barriers safeguarding us now.
And there’s no going backwards from here.
It’s just me and Brooke. Babe and Ruth. Always, just us.
Only after we’ve explored everything possible to explore from my perch on the stool in our kitchen does she peel her mouth from mine.
Licking her lips, she’s breathless and flushed but hungry enough for more that she nuzzles her nose along the line of my jaw before finding her way back to my lips and losing all track of time.
When we come up for air she says, “Owen, it’s midnight,” like it’s time for bed, and I’m not going to argue a bit.
We’re both winded and a little drunk on each other, but I can see the sincerity in her face clearly as she rubs her thumb across my kiss-swollen lips and asks, “Will you be my husband today?”
Any control I have shatters. Without another word, I lift her in my arms, carry her to our bed, and give her my answer.
Suite Hearts, Day 45
“We could use the money to buy a bigger house?” My fingers trail up and down Brooke’s side, wrapping into the shirt of mine she threw on for bed last night.
Something I never thought much about, but now that she’s wearing my shirts on a regular basis—in my bed…
with me—I doubt I’ll ever wear them again.
They’re all hers now, and I won’t miss them for a second. They never looked this good on me.
“But I love your house,” she says, face buried against my chest.
I loosen my grip, running my hand down and squeezing her hip. “Our house, Love. It’s ours.”
I can feel her smile against my skin. “Our house,” she repeats, like she can’t quite believe it. Though it’s been hers all along, she was just too stubborn to recognize it.
“And I love it, too, but it isn’t going to hold all of the Jones babies we’re gonna make.”
She giggles and kisses my chest again.
I start brainstorming reasons why we should never leave this bed.
It’s been raining for a solid week, a normal occurrence for a Georgia summer.
I usually find myself grumpy during this season.
Rain interrupts baseball. It’s hot and humid, and when it rains for days on end, I feel like I experience a sort of seasonal depression that’s hard to get past, waiting desperately to see the sun again.
But lying in bed with my wife all morning, listening to the steady rain fall against our tin roof and Brooke’s easy laughter as we plan our life together, I’m not sorry, at all, to be stuck inside. It’s like a reward I didn’t earn.
“How many babies are we talkin’? Two? Three?” Brooke asks, trailing her nail lightly across my skin. I’m about thirty seconds away from insisting we practice.
I flip her on her back, covering her body with mine and placing a fury of kisses across her face and neck. “Oh no. Eight or nine… at least.”
She pokes my side, but I don’t relent, nipping at her ear, then leaving a trail of kisses on her shoulders. “You want a whole baseball team.”
“With you? Yeah, I do.” I put my weight on my elbows, hovering over her and loving the fact that I’m out of my sling now and can hold my wife in all the ways I’ve been dreaming about. “A little league team I get to coach, with you rubbing your pregnant belly in the stands…”
“We definitely won’t fit a whole baseball team in your—I mean our—house right now.”
“New house. Put it on the pro list.” I kiss her nose. “When you signed up, what did you plan to spend the money on?”
Brooke grows quiet.
“What is it? Something crazy?”
She shakes her head. “I was… I was going to leave Honey Hill.”
“Oh.” I roll over so that I’m laying at her side but pull her close. “Okay… why? Where were you gonna go?”
“I don’t know.” She shrugs, and I can tell this is hard for her. “I was afraid…”
She stops herself, but I nudge her to go on. “Come on, Love. Tell me.”
“You were about to be picked up by Atlanta, and I knew you’d be leaving… probably soon, and I couldn’t do it again, O. I didn’t want to be left behind.”
“Oh, Babe,” I curl around her, wishing I could’ve protected Brooke from everything that she’s carried for her entire life.
I want to shield her and tell her how unfounded the idea of me leaving without her is, but I know all I can do is continue to show up.
To stay. “That’s never going to happen. I’m not…
him. I’m sorry if that hurts for me to say, but I need you to hear me. ”
Thunder rolls in the distance, ominously jostling our Tink.
Brooke and I cling tighter to one another, and though I’m glad we’re having this conversation, something inside me doesn’t think we’re through the storm just yet.
“I’m sorry your first experience with a man who should have loved you fiercely made you feel as if you weren’t worthy of that kind of love.
As if you weren’t worth fighting for every single day.
” She cries silently but doesn’t stop me.
I pray she listens. That something sticks.
“But I’m not that man, Brooke. I will fight every day for you, and if you’ll let me, I’ll show you exactly what that love looks like. ”
“I’m sorry. I wish I wasn’t still so scared.”
“I am too, sweetheart. I’m so unsure of how to make you see it clearly… to know that we are not a temporary thing. But I’ll do whatever you need me to.”
“Just… be with me.” She wraps her arm around my waist and rests her head on my chest, tangling her legs with mine.
I’m about to do just that, spending a little quality time giving special attention to the space between Brooke’s neck and collar bone, when Sumer Morrison’s voice blares through our trailer.
That’ll kill the mood.
“Bet she knew we were about to wrestle.” Brooke scratches her fingernails lightly against my scalp.
I growl.
She places a soft kiss on my lips, as if that will pacify me. “Let’s say no real quick and come right back here.”
“Promise?”
“Yes. I promise.” She kisses me again and pushes me from the bed. “Now, let’s go win this game. All those Jones babies need a big house.”
We’re dressed, much to my dismay, and upstairs on the roof in five minutes during a rare break in the rain.
However, on Day Forty-Five we aren’t given an offer, but, instead, are forced to choose between four mystery boxes again.
One containing elimination. The Yankees choose first and are sadly sent home, which makes choosing our box feel much less imposing and all the more exciting when Brooke and I stick with mystery box number four and get five minutes to step outside our Tink.
We rush down the ladder and outside as quickly as we can, laughing like lunatics as soon as our bare feet touch the grass.
Brooke’s giddiness at our sudden freedom is contagious.
I chase her around the small yard until she squeals, leaping and laughing and completely uninhibited by the eyes and cameras watching us.
The giant clock on the screen tells us we have two minutes left of this gift, when it starts to pour.
So I take Brooke in my arms, ready to spend all one hundred and twenty precious seconds dancing with my wife in the rain.
I twirl and dip and spin her until we’re breathless and drenched to the bone.
I can’t remember a time I’ve ever been so happy.
Ten seconds starts ticking down. Brooke stops our dancing and wiggles her feet in the wet grass like she’s burying them in sand.
She soaks up our last seconds outside, and I can’t help but be transfixed by every raindrop hitting her skin, or the fact that, though the sky is dark, Brooke’s eyes are blazing with light.
I give her every bit of seven seconds, and when the clock hits the three second warning, I throw Brooke over my good shoulder and carry her into our Tink.
My wife has promises to keep.