Chapter 40
Stevie Lynch is standing on my porch. I blink, waiting for the mirage to disappear, because this cannot be real. Just a minute ago, I was wishing for her to be here, aching from missing her, and now, she’s here.
“Stevie,” I breathe.
Her smile is wobbly, not the confident thing she usually wears. “I don’t want you to move to Fontana Ridge.”
My heartbeat stutters. “What?”
She shakes her head, dark waves tumbling around her shoulders. “I don’t want you to move to Fontana Ridge. I don’t want you to find a job there. I don’t want you to give up your lifestyle for me.”
“Stevie—”
She cuts me off with a lift of her hand. It’s shaking, and my chest squeezes at the sight of it. It takes everything in me not to reach for her.
“No, let me finish,” she says, her eyes focused squarely on me. There’s determination in them, like I saw when she was healing from her concussion or working on the Airstream or trying to care for her family. “I don’t want you to do that because I won’t be there. I have a proposal for you.”
I listen as she tells me her plan to travel during the off-season and head back to Fontana Ridge with the tourists.
She’s out of breath when she finishes, this woman who is in better shape than I could ever hope to be, and I wonder if her heart is racing as fast as mine.
“And I was wondering, if you wouldn’t want to come with me.
If you don’t, it’s okay, but…” she trails off, holding my gaze.
I watch as she settles something in her head, taking a deep breath before she finishes.
“You don’t have to come with me, but I’d like it if you would, because I love you, Jack Sullivan, and I don’t want to live my dream with anyone else. ”
I stare at her for a heartbeat that feels too long, wondering if all of this is an elaborate dream. But then I decide I don’t care if it is. I close the distance between us, wrapping a hand around her neck, pulling her against me.
Her mouth hits mine like a freight train. The kiss isn’t gentle. It’s a clash of tongues and teeth. Her back hitting the doorframe, her hands in my hair, her thighs coming up around my waist. Stevie isn’t a soft woman, but she melts against me, and she feels too good for this to be a dream.
With a foot, I kick the door closed, and press her up against the nearest wall, dragging my mouth from hers, over the curve of her jaw, down the slope of her neck, across the delicate skin at the collar of her sweater. She tastes better than I could have imagined.
“Stevie,” I breathe into her skin, and she shivers against me, her breath coming in short pants in my ear, hot on my skin. “Are you really here?”
She pulls back from me, her eyes connecting with mine. The pupil swallows up the hazel. “I’m here,” she says. Her voice is a rasp, the scrape of sandpaper. “I’m here with you.”
Her chest heaves against mine as I draw my hand over her jaw, pulling at her swollen bottom lip with my thumb. “And you love me?”
She hadn’t said it on the phone, and I didn’t want her to say anything she didn’t mean. She’s already given up so much of herself. I wanted her to keep this until she was ready to say it. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t wonder. That I didn’t crave to hear her say it.
She leans forward, eating up the space between our lips. Hers coast against my own as she says, “And I love you, Jack Sullivan.”
Her words feel like honey dripping over my skin. I want her off this wall, splayed out beneath me. I want her hair wrapped around my fist and her mouth on my skin. I want her in more ways than I can cohesively conceive right now.
I pull back from her and let her legs go, dropping her feet softly onto the hardwood. My gaze travels over her face, lower, before coming back up. She looks disheveled, like she’s been traveling all day and kissed in the cold. “I like your plan,” I tell her.
Her expression clears a little, and for a moment she looks almost shy. Unsure. I want to wipe it away. “Yeah?”
I nod. “A lot. But is it what you really want? I don’t want you to sacrifice anything else. I want—God, I want you to have everything.”
“I want you,” she says, holding my gaze. It sends awareness spiraling down my spine, settling in the bottom of my stomach, the backs of my knees, the palms of my hands. They itch with the need to touch her, to make her feel the way I am right now.
“But even if you didn’t want this,” she says, squaring her shoulders, “I would still want it for myself.”
Proud sparks set off in my chest. A slow smile pulls at the corners of my lips, and I lean closer until they’re touching the curve of her ear. “That’s my girl.”
I hear her inhale, feel it as her chest scrapes against mine.
All my senses are heightened. I feel high, like if I closed my eyes and touched her, I wouldn’t be able to tell if she was real or one of the characters in the stories I’ve learned about the stars.
Of gods and goddesses placing pieces of themselves in the sky.
She doesn’t feel real right now. She feels like a mirage. She feels ethereal.
I want to devour her.
“Jack?” she breathes, hands coming up to my biceps. Her touch sends electric shots all through me.
I fist my hands in the loose fabric at her hips, head dipping to rest in the curve of her shoulder. “Just trying to keep myself together, make sure this is all real.”
“It’s real,” she promises, running her hands up the slope of my shoulders. Her nails scratch against my scalp. “But I don’t want you to keep yourself together.”
Her words unlock something in me, a restless energy pulsing beneath my skin.
I nod against her, then turn, dragging my lips up the slope of her neck, not kissing, but tracing.
All the places that have haunted me for months.
The spot where her hair always falls from her braid.
The hollow of her throat where she sprays her perfume, where the scent of her is the strongest. The place on her chest where her collar meets skin, where I can feel each rough inhale.
When I make my way back to her ear, I whisper, “I don’t want you to keep yourself together, either.”
In the morning, I make Stevie breakfast. She stands in the kitchen, her bottom lip caught between her teeth, holding back her smile, as she watches and tries not to intervene.
But I’ve learned a few things from her, and I manage to make biscuits that only end up slightly burnt, homemade gravy that turns out delicious, fried eggs, and fresh-squeezed orange juice.
She watches me turning the oranges on a stainless steel juicer. “Why is that thing even here?”
“No idea. I found it in one of the cupboards. I think someone must have left it.”
“Well,” she says, leaning a hip on the counter. “I’m very impressed.”
She’s wearing one of my flannels pulled over a tank top with the thinnest straps I’ve ever seen. I threw the flannel at her this morning, and told her if she wanted to eat, she was going to have to stop distracting me.
Her laugh was musical. I know what it feels like when pressed into my shoulder, how it will turn into a gasp when I sink my teeth into hers.
We kissed and touched on my sofa, pressed together until our lips hurt and our skin was buzzing.
We talked until her lids grew heavy, her words slurring together as she swore she was wide awake.
When she finally passed out, her head tucked into the crook of my shoulder, I carried her to my bed, and tucked her beneath the sheets, watching the way the moonlight played over her skin.
If she hadn’t been there when I woke up, I would have thought it was all a dream.
But when she rolled over and smiled at me, her eyes still heavy with sleep, I knew I couldn’t have imagined this.
When we sit down at the table, I keep sneaking glances at her as we eat, still unable to believe she’s really here. That she left Fontana Ridge and drove across the country to find me.
“What do you want to do today?” I ask. “I could take you into town, let you browse the bookshop. It’s surprisingly large for how small the town is.
Or we could go on a hike. There’s so many good ones around here.
Or ride horses on one of the trails. Or I could take you to meet Evan. He’s going to be thrilled. Or—”
Stevie cuts me off with a hand on my forearm.
Her smile is soft as she shakes her head, her loose hair tumbling over her shoulders, knocking off one of the sleeves of my flannel.
“We can do anything. There’s no rush.” Her smile grows into something bigger, brighter.
Incandescent. “We’ve got all the time in the world. ”