Chapter 39
I take a few breaths and splash some water on my cheeks, then reapply my makeup.
My hands shake. The extreme reaction I’m having to seeing Ellis’s family with people I love is distressing.
I close my eyes and take some breaths—concentrating on my feeling earlier with Daniel.
The rightness of it. The steady effect on my soul.
When I feel ready, I leave the restroom—running straight into Ellis. “Oh,” I say stupidly.
He looks at me, his expression inscrutable. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, totally.”
But my little smile feels flimsy even to me. He steps in close. “Sorry if my parents bombarded you.”
“No, don’t be sorry. They’re lovely,” I say. “As they would be. And hey, you should be proud of your work. The trees—that’s a huge deal. There are, like, a billion of them here.”
He laughs, but it’s edged with self-deprecation again. “I had a lot of help from Daniel.”
I frown. There’s something about him that is shrinking into himself when he talks about his job that is at odds with the confident, easy guy that I know so well. “Daniel tells me that everyone at the firm has a lot of ownership over their specialties. He’s really proud of you, too.”
This doesn’t land in the way I want it to, and I point over our heads. “Tell me about this tree.”
“Come on,” he says with an eye roll.
“I’m serious. I wanna know about it. And why you decided to plant it here.” It’s not quite a mature tree, but it’s tall enough to provide a leafy canopy over us and the bathrooms. The bark is textured and light brown, the leaves are fernlike, and it’s full of gorgeous yellow blooms.
We both tilt our heads back. “Well,” Ellis starts, his hands in his pockets. “This is a Cassia leptophylla, otherwise known as a golden medallion.”
I shoot a look at him. “Another Cassia?”
He smiles. “Yeah, same family. It’s evergreen, so it’ll never be bare.
They get these beautiful blooms so are mostly used as ornamental sidewalk trees in Los Angeles.
Not an obvious choice for a park, and definitely not native.
But they are really hardy, drought-tolerant, and I thought would be a nice splash of color and texture here by the restrooms.”
I stare at him. “Okay, Bill Nye of trees!”
“Anyone with Wikipedia could have told you that,” he says with a headshake, his necklace glimmering in the sunlight.
“That’s not true. What you told me was your reasoning behind planting it here. Knowledge and experience went into that, buddy. Hate to break it to you, but you’re good at your job.”
Something sparks in him, I can feel it diffuse from his body, subtle but there. His smile is genuine, free of self-deprecation. “I’m not fishing for compliments!”
“That’s nice, you just caught a juicy trout anyway.”
“Juicy?” he says with his eyebrow raised. “Dork.”
A yellow blossom drops from the tree and lands on my shoulder. I’m about to get it when Ellis reaches out and catches it between his fingers. He holds it between us for a second, twirling it between his thumb and middle finger. I watch his elegant fingers and feel my limbs go heavy with longing.
His eyes scan my face intently as if he can hear my thoughts, and I feel myself warm under his scrutiny. “Ellis,” I say softly.
He waits for me to say more, but I don’t. I step closer to him and our faces are inches apart. “We need to stop doing this,” he says, his eyes intense.
I swallow. “Yeah.” But I inch closer because I can’t deny the pull of this man. Our bodies are always in tune with each other, circling and circling—restless until we’re close.
And then my lips brush against his, and he doesn’t move. I pull back immediately. “I’m sorry,” I whisper. What am I doing?
But he shakes his head. “I don’t want to be sorry anymore.”
And he pulls me in, quick and assured, and we’re kissing again.
In earnest, for real. No tentative brushes of our lips, just a need to be closer, to swallow each other whole.
It feels like relief and punishment at the same time.
His hands run down my sides, and suddenly I’m hauled up against his solid body.
We both make noises into each other’s mouths and the kiss turns primal as I find myself pushed up against the wall of the bathroom.
I am aware that this hides us behind some greenery, and somewhere in the back of my mind I’m admiring Ellis for this maneuver, for his thoughtfulness even as we’re both completely out of our minds.
His hands touch the skin between my top and skirt.
Then they climb up my ribs, gentle and possessive, and I’m lost in the press of his lips, the slide of his tongue when a toilet flushing jolts me out of it.
I pull back immediately and so does he. We stare at each other, catching our breaths.
We don’t speak as I adjust my top, my hair.
“Fuck,” he says under his breath. “What are we doing?”
“I don’t know,” I say. But maybe I do. “I think we need—”
“Hey, there you are.” Daniel strides into the clearing. “I’ve been looking for you.” He looks between us and smiles for a second before it falters. That’s when I notice my lipstick smeared all over Ellis’s mouth, his neck.
Fuck, indeed.