I Thought You Were in the Shelter

Prologue

Jacob

I’m in the corner of the church hall with a whiskey I don’t want, watching people dance to a song I hate, because this is what I do. Show up because it’s expected and leave the second I can, and in between I stand in corners and wait for it to be over.

The groom’s aunt has tried to set me up with her daughter twice tonight.

The first time I pretended not to hear her over the music, and the second time I told her I had to check on my truck, and she gave me that disappointed look every woman in this town gives me when I don’t play along with whatever they’ve decided I need.

The bride’s mother cornered me by the bathroom to ask when I’m going to settle down, and I told her I was settled, and she laughed and patted my arm and said a man like me needed a woman to come home to. I didn’t answer because there’s nothing to say to that, nothing she’d want to hear anyway.

Three different women have found excuses to brush against me on their way to the bar.

The first one apologized and smiled, and the second one didn’t bother apologizing, and the third one let her hand drag across my chest and hold there too long, so I moved before she could do it again.

Now my back is against the wall and there’s nowhere left to retreat to.

I should not have come. I don’t like weddings and I don’t like crowds and I don’t like the way everyone pairs off on the dance floor and sways together, and none of it lasts.

I’m counting the minutes until I can leave without being rude when she walks over.

Ellie.

Blonde curls coming loose from whatever she pinned them up in, catching the string lights, falling around her face in a way that makes my hands itch to touch them.

Blue eyes bright with champagne and mischief, and a smile that changes the whole shape of her face, that makes the rest of the room look dim and distant.

She’s wearing a blue dress that ends above her knees, and her legs are tan and bare in heels she keeps shifting on. They hurt and she doesn’t care. Looking good matters more than comfort tonight, and I understand that, the wanting enough to suffer for it.

I’ve watched her from corners like this one for a year.

At every town event and church potluck and holiday parade, she’s there, and she’s never alone because people orbit her and they can’t help it.

Old women touch her hair and tell her she looks like her aunt, and old men ask after her job and shake their heads, proud of her for reasons I don’t know.

Kids follow her around and she lets them, crouching down to their level, listening the way you’d listen to a preacher.

She laughs at everyone’s jokes and remembers everyone’s names, and I’ve never once seen her look anything but delighted to be wherever she is.

I figured she didn’t know I existed.

She stops in front of me and tips her head to the side, and this close I can see freckles scattered across her nose, a tiny white scar on her chin, the soft pink curve of her mouth.

Her lips are parted and there’s champagne on her breath and her chest rises and falls with each inhale, and I’m thinking about what that mouth would feel like on my skin, what sounds she’d make if I pulled her against me, whether she’d let me or slap me or both, and I shouldn’t be thinking any of this because she’s looking at me and seeing a person, not a problem, and I don’t know what to do with that.

“You know, standing in the corner glaring at people isn’t the personality trait you think it is.”

Her voice is brighter than I expected, with a drawl that gets thicker on certain words, and there’s laughter underneath it, and everything in the world amuses her.

“I wasn’t aware I was going for a personality trait.”

“Could’ve fooled me. You look like you’re at a funeral.

” She gestures with her champagne glass at the room behind her, the streamers and the cake and the groom’s drunk uncle doing what might be dancing or might be a medical emergency.

“This is a wedding, Jacob. There’s an open bar and a chocolate fountain and at least three people who’ve fallen into the punch bowl tonight. You could try enjoying yourself.”

“I’m having the time of my life.”

“Clearly.” She grins at me, wide and delighted, and I want to know what her face looks like when she comes, whether she’s loud or quiet, whether those blue eyes stay open or squeeze shut. “I’m Ellie. But you knew that.”

“I know who you are.” It comes out rougher than I mean it to, and she’s close enough now that I can smell vanilla and champagne and a flower I can’t name underneath, and I can see the pulse beating in the hollow of her throat.

I want to put my mouth there and feel it jump.

“Sunshine. Never seen you without a crowd.”

“And you’re the cowboy who never talks to anybody.” She takes a step closer, and now there’s barely a foot between us, and I can feel the heat coming off her skin through the thin fabric of her dress. “So why are you talking to me?”

Because you walked over here and I forgot how to breathe.

Because I’ve spent a year watching you laugh at other people’s jokes and wondering what it would take to make you laugh at mine.

Because you’re close enough that I can see the tops of your breasts in that dress and I’m trying not to look and failing.

“You came to me,” I say instead.

“I did.” She doesn’t look away, and her eyes are very blue and very direct and she’s not afraid of me at all. “I’ve had two glasses of champagne and I decided life’s too short to keep pretending you’re not the most interesting thing in this room.”

“That’s a low bar considering the competition.”

“The drunk uncle doing the worm is pretty compelling.”

“He’s going to throw out his back.”

“He already did. That’s why he stopped.” She’s still smiling, and under the smile there’s a dare now, a question, an offer I don’t deserve and shouldn’t take.

“So. Jacob Walker. Are you going to ask me to dinner, or are we just going to stand here making observations about other people’s poor life choices? ”

I stare at her. Two glasses of champagne and freckles and no fear at all, and she’s too bright for me, too good.

I decided a long time ago what I do and don’t do, and girls who smile like that, girls who walk up to strangers at weddings and demand to be entertained, girls who look at me and like what they see, are on the list of things I don’t do.

“Tomorrow,” I hear myself say. “Seven. I’ll pick you up.”

Her smile goes blinding and takes over her whole face and makes her eyes crinkle at the corners, and I feel it in my chest.

“Okay then.”

Before either of us can say anything else, a hand lands on her shoulder.

“Ellie! There you are.” It’s the groom’s younger brother, the one who’s been drinking since noon and dancing with every woman under forty. He’s got that flushed, loose look of a man who thinks he’s charming when he’s actually just drunk. “You promised me a dance.”

“Did I?” She’s still looking at me, not at him, and her smile hasn’t changed at all.

“At the rehearsal dinner. You said you’d save me one.” His hand slides down to her elbow, proprietary, already starting to pull her toward the dance floor. “Come on, they’re playing our song.”

“I don’t think we have a song.”

“We do now.” He tugs at her arm, grinning, and to him this is all a joke, she’s playing hard to get and he just needs to be persistent enough. “Just one dance. I’ve been waiting all night.”

My hand is around her wrist before I decide to move.

His hand is on her elbow and mine is on her wrist, and we’re both holding onto her, two men and one wrist, and the difference is that she’s not trying to pull away from me. Her pulse jumps under my fingertips, fast and hard, and her eyes go wide, and she doesn’t move.

“She’s taken,” I say.

He blinks at me. He didn’t notice me standing here the whole time, because nobody notices the man in the corner until he moves.

“What?”

“She’s dancing with me.”

“I didn’t see you ask her to dance.”

“You weren’t paying attention.”

He looks at Ellie, then at me, then at my hand on her wrist, and his face goes from confusion to annoyance to the particular wounded pride of a man who’s just realized he’s not going to get what he wants.

“Fine.” He lets go of her elbow and takes a step back, hands up. “Whatever, man. Didn’t know she was with somebody.”

He walks away, muttering under his breath, and I watch him go until he’s swallowed by the crowd near the bar. When I look back at Ellie, she’s staring at me with an expression I can’t read.

“I didn’t realize I was taken.”

“You’re not.” I should let go of her wrist. I don’t let go of her wrist. “But he doesn’t know that.”

“So you lied.”

“I improvised.”

“You said I was dancing with you.”

“I did.”

“Are you asking me to dance, Jacob Walker?”

I don’t dance. I’ve never danced, not once in my adult life, because I don’t see the point of it, the swaying and the holding and the pretending to know what you’re doing when you don’t.

But she’s looking at me and waiting, and her pulse is still jumping under my fingertips, and the word comes out before I can stop it.

“Yes.”

Her smile is softer now, less bright and more real, and she turns her hand over so her fingers can lace through mine.

“Then let’s dance.”

She leads me onto the floor because I don’t know where to go, and the song that’s playing is slow and unfamiliar and she puts her free hand on my shoulder and waits for me to figure out what to do with mine.

I settle it on her waist, on the curve of it where the dress pulls tight, and I can feel the warmth of her body through the fabric.

“You’ve done this before, right?” she asks.

“No.”

“Ever?”

“Not voluntarily.”

She laughs, and it’s not the bright performance laugh she uses on everyone else, it’s smaller and warmer and just for me, and my chest shifts with it.

“Okay, here’s what you do.” She moves closer, close enough that her chest brushes against mine when she breathes. “You hold onto me and you move your feet and you try not to step on my toes.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s the whole thing. Dancing is just an excuse to hold someone close without anyone thinking it’s weird.” She looks up at me through her lashes. “So hold me close, Jacob Walker.”

I pull her in.

She fits against me, her head just under my chin, her hand warm in mine. We’re barely moving, just swaying in place while the music plays, and I have no idea what I’m doing but it doesn’t seem to matter because she’s not pulling away, she’s pressing closer, her fingers curling into my shoulder.

“You’re very tense,” she says against my chest.

“I’m aware.”

“Is it me?”

“It’s everything.”

She tips her head back to look at me, and her face is soft in the low light, her eyes searching mine.

“Do you want to stop?”

“No.”

It comes out too fast, too honest, and her smile spreads across her whole face.

“Good. Because I don’t either.”

We dance through the rest of the song and into the next one, and I don’t step on her toes, and she doesn’t stop smiling, and by the time the music shifts to a faster one she’s laughing at what I said, really laughing, her head thrown back and her eyes squeezed shut, and I did that. I made that happen.

The fast song breaks the spell. People are moving onto the floor around us, jumping and shouting along to the music, and the moment is over but the feeling isn’t, this warm weight in my chest that I don’t have a name for.

“I should let you get back to your corner,” she says, but she doesn’t let go of my hand.

“Should you?”

“You looked very comfortable there. Very brooding and mysterious.”

“I was miserable.”

“You were watching the door like you were planning an escape.”

“I was watching you.”

It comes out before I can stop it, and her breath catches, and for one long moment neither of us says anything. We’re just standing there in the middle of the dance floor with people moving around us, holding hands, looking at each other, and neither of us knows what to do with what we’ve found.

“Tomorrow,” she says finally. “Seven.”

“I’ll be there.”

“You better be.” She squeezes my hand once, then lets go, and the loss of her touch is a cold room. “Because I’m already looking forward to it.”

She walks away toward a group of women by the cake table, and one of them asks her a question and she answers, and she’s back to being sunshine, bright and warm and surrounded by people who love her. But before she turns away completely, she looks back at me one more time.

She doesn’t wink. She just smiles, small and private, and we have a secret now.

I stand out on the floor where anybody could see me, nowhere near my corner, nowhere near the wall, and I don’t care because she’s still smiling at me across the room, and I feel it in my chest, and I know without question that this woman is going to ruin me, and I’m going to let her, and tomorrow night I’m going to pick her up at seven and figure out what the hell I’m going to say to her.

I finish my whiskey at the bar because I need a job for my hands, and I don’t leave until she does, and when I finally drive home through the dark with the windows down, I’m thinking about the way her pulse felt under my fingers, and the way she laughed, and the way she said my name like she meant it.

I don’t sleep much that night, and when I do, I dream about blue eyes and freckles and a mouth that laughed at what I said.