Chapter 23
It was still dark, the only light from the heat lamp and the moon, when Rebecca woke up, suddenly cold again, to see Cort carrying a sleeping Pip inside to his bed. She sat up, pulled her knees toward her, and wrapped the sleeping bags tight. He returned moments later holding two bottles of beer.
“Hey,” he said. “Didn’t know if you’d wake up but I brought you one anyway, just in case. Pip hates missing school, so I wanted to make sure he got at least a few hours of sleep in a proper bed.”
Rebecca smiled and accepted the beer bottle, twisted off the cap. “You’re a good dad.”
“He makes it easy.”
“What time is it?” Her phone was lost somewhere in the sleeping bags, possibly out of battery.
“Three-ish? Too early for coffee, so I figured beer was the play,” he said with a smile. “I checked the hourly forecast and it’s going to start getting warmer from here, but I’ll still keep watch.”
She sipped her beer and looked out across the yard, toward the house. “I meant what I said, earlier. It’s lovely. The house.”
“It was a gut job when I bought it, but all I could afford at the time. That’s how I discovered Kingman’s, actually. I wanted to make this place great, on a budget. It was a real lifesaver.”
“I really like the bookshelves.”
He chuckled. “Figured you would.” Then he paused and, gently, easily, as if it were nothing, climbed back inside the sleeping bag beside her, tucking his legs up, too.
Once again, their shoulders touched. She felt warm, relieved by his return.
“And when I say that, I mean it. When I built them, I remember thinking these were the kind of shelves that would impress someone like you.”
“I like that,” she said. “That you thought of me.” She had spent so much time, these past few days, convincing herself that what was between her and Cort was purely platonic.
Somehow, though, out here in this pumpkin patch and garden, by the light of the full moon, zipped into a sleeping bag with him, their proximity was the only thing that felt real.
When he moved closer, she did, too, meeting him where he was.
“Becca?”
Her heart had gone into overdrive, and she knew there was no stopping it, no hiding the breathlessness in her voice when she said, “Yes, Cort?” The autumn air seemed to still around them then.
Rebecca could hear her own breathing, could smell the familiar scent of sawdust and herbal aftershave that always seemed to cling to him.
“Back then. The dance. Everything, all of it. Please don’t stop me, please don’t say we were just kids, because it’s haunted me all these years.” He paused, and she didn’t say anything, just let him compose himself and continue. “But I wanted to talk to you about choices.”
“Okay,” she said quietly. “I won’t stop you. Let’s talk.”
“That school trip we took to Toronto. I felt so out of place in the city.” He chuckled.
“I hated it. I still do. I wish I’d made different choices, but not about that.
This place is my home. I love Bramley Hollow.
I can’t imagine living anywhere else, and it’s always been this way for me.
But you lit up during that field trip. You were so full of dreams, you were so full of…
just such clarity about where you wanted to be.
I knew in that instant you wanted to be anywhere but here.
At least, back then. And that…well, that made me feel you weren’t the safe choice.
Back then, I felt like I had to make safe choices.
I was off-kilter from my parents’ divorce, uncertain about what I wanted for my future.
I made the safest choices I could think of, after that.
Trying to forget about my feelings for you—that was a safe choice for me.
Getting back together with Melanie. Staying here instead of going to university.
Marrying Melanie because it made sense, because everyone expected it.
Taking over the family business.” He turned, and she did, too.
In the dim light, his gray eyes were bright beacons, intense, probing her for answers to questions he hadn’t asked yet.
“Don’t get me wrong—I love Pip more than life itself, and I wouldn’t change that choice.
But those other safe choices I made…” He shook his head.
“I do wonder what would have happened if I’d been braver back then. ”
Rebecca felt her heart hammering against her ribs. “Braver how?”
“If I had gone to the dance with you after all.” Those words seemed to shimmer before her, along with the image of herself, not watching through a sliver in the door, but in the gym, with him.
“If I had held you in my arms the way I wanted to, if I had seen what that was like. If I hadn’t waited so long… ”
The warmth of his words spread through her head, her heart, into her stomach, ignited a small bonfire at her core. She also felt deep relief, hearing him say these things. That he had wondered, too. That he had regrets.
“All these years, I thought I’d made it all up in my head,” she said. “You’re right it was a long time ago, but it always felt like it mattered.”
“You didn’t make up anything. Every moment of it was real.
I felt it all, too. I still do, like you’re made of electricity, every single time I touch you.
Back then, I pulled away, because I felt like I had to.
Which…” She felt it coming, and it made her feel cold.
She longed to move even closer to him, but now she was afraid.
“…brings me to last year. After the funeral.”
It felt as if the fire had been doused with cold water. “We don’t need to—”
“Please, hear me out. Your grandmother had just died and you were deep in your grief; Mel and I weren’t even officially divorced yet.
We had been drinking. And I was so afraid that if I let that night, that moment, be our one chance, it would have been wasted.
It didn’t feel like our time. But I did a terrible job of explaining that to you—didn’t explain it at all, actually.
That just because that night wasn’t the right time didn’t mean there never would be.
That you weren’t exactly what I wanted. And then you left town the next day and you didn’t come back.
I thought you’d be back. Every holiday I’d drive back and forth past the diner, checking for a light inside, checking for your car in the parking lot.
But you stayed away. And I started to wonder if maybe you didn’t feel the same.
I was too scared to just call you up and ask you. ”
They were leaning toward each other now, drawn by something magnetic neither wanted to resist.
So she reached out. Let her body lead instead of her overthinking mind.
Like an explorer, tentative but reverent, she touched his face, feeling the rough stubble of his jaw.
The warmth of his skin was a revelation, the electricity he had just mentioned an all-out buzz.
It was so intense, she found herself pulling back.
This time, he was the one who reached out, fingers brushing her jaw as if testing something. He let out a soft sigh, almost a sound of relief.
His hand slid to the back of her neck, warm and steady. “So, I’m asking you now, I guess. How you feel. About me.”
“I…feel like I want to kiss you,” she said, surprising herself with her bravery. “I almost always feel that way when I’m around you, to be honest. But…”
He smiled down at her. “But?”
“Well, it was me last time…”
The seconds stretched like an eternity while his slow smile grew into something sexy and intense, and he moved closer in tantalizing increments. And then, finally, his lips met hers.
It wasn’t tentative. It wasn’t shy. It wasn’t happening after a day of grief, a night of drinking. They weren’t teenagers—they both knew who they were now. It was a kiss years in the making, weighted with every almost, every not yet, every what if that had ever passed between them.
His lips were warm and sure, tasting faintly of mint and a little bit of beer.
His kiss was gentle but insistent. Familiar yet brand-new.
Her hands slid to his chest, feeling the solid beat of his heart beneath the soft flannel, and for a moment the world slipped away.
There was no past, no future, just this. The two of them together.
When they finally pulled back, only slightly, he rested his forehead against hers, breath uneven.
“Okay,” he murmured. “It was definitely the right time to do that.”
Rebecca laughed lightly, lips still close to his. “Just to be sure…let’s try that again.”