Chapter Sixteen
“My car wasn’t made for off-roading,” Hazel said, bracing on the dashboard as Ash drove over a bumpy set of hardened tire tracks between an old pecan grove on one side and a goat pen on the other.
Back at the festival, he’d asked for her keys, and she’d handed them over without a fight. He hadn’t planned at the time to bring her here, but when he impulsively took the highway east of town, it made a simple kind of sense. Here, he could talk to her, come clean about this morning, his father, everything. He just hoped he wasn’t too late.
Ash parked by the big, whitewashed barn. He unlocked the heavy doors with a long-memorized combination and slipped inside. The lights flickered on. He tasted dirt and rust in the air as his movements disturbed the space, which was half workshop, half storage. What he needed was right where he expected.
When he emerged back into the daylight, Hazel squinted dubiously and crossed her arms. “What are those for?”
“Come on.”
She did not fall into step behind him for a few stubborn seconds. Then, he heard her boots crunch through the short scrub.
Near the barbed wire fence marking the edge of the property, Ash set down his loot: a crate of golf balls, a seven iron, and a handle of Jack Daniel’s that was down to its last inch. He stomped down weeds that had sprung up since the last time anyone had done this and pushed a tee into the ground.
“Explain,” Hazel said, impatient.
He pointed at a slowly bobbing oil pump on the other side of the fence. “We’re aiming for that.”
“That’s got to be a hundred yards away.”
“Give or take.”
Hazel let out a heavy sigh, arms still crossed. For a second, he worried he’d pushed her too far, brought her out here when she’d meant what she’d said earlier about wanting to stop what they’d only just started. But she nodded for him to go ahead. Do it, then, said the clench of her jaw. Hit it.
He knew his first ball wouldn’t land anywhere near the pump. His shoulders needed to warm up first, his body had to dial into the right force. He was better with a bat than a golf club, but golf balls were cheaper than baseballs. He swung, and the ball soared in a long, low arc and fell somewhere in the mid-distance, a small puff of dirt kicking up where it landed.
He handed her the club.
“I don’t know how.”
Before he could offer to show her—for real, not like their flirtatious charade with the darts—she stiff-armed him. “Can I just say—”
“After you swing.”
She opened her hand for the club, and he passed it to her. Then she eyed the whiskey, and he gave her that, too, tamped down a smile when she made a face at the taste. “Don’t tell me how old this is. Or who else’s mouth has been on it.”
She teed a ball, swung, and hit a huge chunk of earth through the barbed wires. “Don’t laugh.” She shoved the club back at him.
“Try again.”
“I don’t want to golf.” She bent to replace the ball on the tee anyway. “I’m trying to tell you I’m sorry.”
Ash saw his mistake now, stalling and giving her the chance to speak first. She was going to tell him she was sorry they’d started this, sorry she wanted to call it off already. He could feel it. Even so, her palpable irritation was some kind of kryptonite for his dumb heart. Despite everything, one corner of his mouth twitched up. What did it say that he felt most at ease when Hazel was annoyed with him, even now?
She huffed and shouldered the club. She took a slow practice swing, eyes fixed to the ball at her feet.
Ash sipped the whiskey to keep from saying anything else. He didn’t have a plan here, only broad strokes. Take her somewhere she couldn’t easily run off. Do something to keep his hands busy—another club would have been nice. And alcohol. Because if he was going to tell her about his dad, he was going to need some help.
But now that they were out here, where he’d talked and drank and whacked the shit out of these balls with Travis so many times in the last several years, the flaws occurred to him. One: they’d eventually need to drive home, probably sooner rather than later, so he couldn’t get drunk. And two: he’d taken her to the middle of nowhere like some kind of axe murderer.
Hazel chipped the ball a good several yards. He said, “Nice,” right before she said, “June told me about your dad.”
That was not at all what he’d expected her to say. Forgetting that he’d just decided not to get drunk, he took a long pull from the bottle. It seared his throat.
“The hospital this morning. His MS. I’m sorry. I feel like such a jerk for earlier. I thought you’d…”
“What?”
“I don’t know. You were acting weird. I thought you’d changed your mind.”
They switched places. She capped the Jack and set it in the dirt. He fumbled with a ball before successfully teeing it. He was afraid to ask but had to ask, “Changed my mind about what?” as he took his swing.
She watched his ball cut through the sky. “Me, I guess.”
“I thought I was pretty clear last night that I want—”
“But then you showed up late today and didn’t say why, and something was obviously wrong, but you wouldn’t say what. Now I know, but you kept brushing me off. I thought you were trying to figure out how to break it to me gently.”
He was holding out the club, but when she reached for it, her meaning crystalized, and he pulled it back. “Wait, is that why you brought up stopping this? You were beating me to it?”
She reached again for the club, eyes boring into his until he released it. “You said we needed to talk later.”
“Yeah, I was going to explain about my dad.”
“Oh.” She tucked her hair behind her ear then busied herself with several practice swings before finally, finally hitting the damn ball. “Why didn’t you just say you’d been at the hospital? I thought you didn’t want me around.”
He wanted to shake her. “Why would I suddenly not want you around? Haven’t I come every time you’ve asked me to? Haven’t I told you repeatedly that I want to be around you?”
“You didn’t come, though. And then you were squirrelly and quiet. If you were going to break up with me—I mean, not break up break up. I know we’re not—” She blew out a frazzled breath. “I was taking the hint.”
“It wasn’t a hint.”
“Well, it felt like one.”
“Are you really that—” Insecure, he wanted to say, but didn’t.
Another flaw to bringing her out here: he’d given her a weapon. She nearly threw the club at him. Her chest rose and fell with sharp breaths, and he realized he was doing the same, getting worked up. If he wasn’t careful, he would go too far, just like he had at the hospital with his parents.
“It wasn’t a hint, okay? I didn’t want to dump all my family stuff on you in the middle of Winter Fest. That’s why I wanted to talk later.”
“It wasn’t just at the festival, though,” she said. “I’ve been to your house, met your family. I’ve told you all kinds of personal things. Why didn’t you tell me about your dad before? June thought I knew. And last night, Franny was asking about him, wasn’t she? Not his hip, but the MS?”
Reluctantly, Ash nodded.
“So, what, you can talk about it with Franny, but not me?”
“That’s not it at all. She knows because people around here know about it now. I haven’t talked to her, not in any deep way.”
“If people around here know, then why keep it a secret from me?”
He swung hard, and the ball sailed out and up, suspended for a long moment, the small white sphere nearly vanishing in the washed-out sky before its arc broke. The ball bounced off the top of the pump with a distant ping.
“Why?” Hazel pressed.
“Honestly?” He teed up another ball, ignoring that it was her turn. “Hazel, I’ve been trying to figure out some foolproof way to be with you and not scare you off.”
He swung again. He reached for the next ball as the last hit its mark. “You told me nothing could change. You don’t do afters. Hell, you made me promise you the café because, if anything went wrong, you’d be done with me.”
Another swing. Another hit.
“I—”
“It was always just a matter of time, wasn’t it, before things got too serious? I thought if I could keep things easy and uncomplicated, maybe I could hold on long enough for you to see that I’m—”
A gust of wind blew his next ball off the tee. He scrubbed his face in frustration. “Maybe I should have told you about my dad sooner. But look what happened the first time things got remotely difficult. You panicked and tried to bail. Because God forbid you have to admit you have feelings about anything.”
“That’s not fair.”
“It’s not?”
Her shoulders hunched in, and her lip quivered before she bit it. As soon as he registered how hard his words had landed, she thrust her hand out for the club. He barely jumped out of the way before she was planting her feet and rounding back for a big swing. “You’re the one who said this was just physical, that you could stop on a dime and go right back to pouring my coffee.”
Her ball shot wide, ricocheted off the fence post with a loud crack, and zinged back, nearly taking out Ash’s knee.
“Shit, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she cried, flinging the club away.
A harsh laugh scraped out of his throat, part relief and part indignation. “What was I supposed to say, Hazel? That I’m so fucking gone on you I’m already dreading the end of this trip? When we go back to regular life, and coffee is the only thing you’ll need from me?”
“You’re— Ash.”
He turned. He couldn’t look at her. This was exactly what he’d been trying to avoid.
“Ash.” The remorse woven into his name made his chest tight. Her fingers brushed his knuckles, his wrist, and squeezed. He could hear the catch in her throat behind him when she tried to speak but stopped. Then, “All I’ve wanted these past few days,” she said, her voice so quiet the wind nearly carried it away, “is to get as close to you as you’ve somehow gotten to me.”
He turned around, and she shifted back to maintain the space between them, a buffer. He clasped his hand over hers to keep her grip on his wrist, keep her right in front of him. “That true?”
She blew out a breath. “Yes.”
He didn’t let her duck her face, tipped her chin up. She held his gaze as long as she seemed able to stand it before the dark fringe of her eyelashes fluttered closed.
“Haze, I need you to tell me if any part of you wants to stop. For the record, I don’t. At all. But if you do, I’ll figure out how to—”
“Pour my coffee?” She came back to him with more confidence this time, her eyes open and bright. With a resolute shake of her head, she toed up and kissed him, firm, closing the door on that avenue of thought. She stayed close, her breath ghosting across his lips. “I don’t want to stop, Asher.”
It was that stupid, playful nickname, after all her harsh, angry intonations of Ash, that made him cradle her face and pull her mouth back to his. “I kind of hate that you’ve made me like that.”
“What?” Her hands slipped up under the back of his jacket, fingertips pressing against his flannel shirt. He inched closer, and she made an approving sound in the back of her throat that made him want to do anything, everything she wanted.
“You do know my name really is just Ash, right?”
She laughed and pecked his cheek then his neck, pausing to say, “I feel like I’m going to need to see your birth certificate.”
Her fingers delved under his shirt at his lower back. He hissed at her freezing touch, reached behind to take her hands in his, covering them, keeping her wrapped around him.
“You’re always warm,” she murmured, burying her nose into his chest.
They stood like this for a moment, the wind licking her hair up and making her burrow even closer. It wasn’t nearly as cold as a few days ago, lower fifties and almost pleasant in the sun, but the wind still bit. With shuffling, rocking steps, he walked her back toward the barn to block it. “I’m named after a tree. We all are.”
She looked thoughtful. “Maggie…Magnolia?”
He nodded.
“And…Juniper?”
“Yeah, but don’t ever call her that. She hates it. Leanne is short for Oleander, and then Laurel.”
“Why trees?”
He crowded her against the wood siding of the barn. “My parents got married on Arbor Day.”
“That’s sweet.”
“Yeah, until you’re a scrawny kindergartner on a school bus with the name Ash.”
“Oh.” She winced. “Poor boy.”
He chuckled. “Why am I telling you my childhood embarrassments? Not very manly.”
“I beg to differ.”
“Oh, yeah? My getting picked on is a turn-on? That doesn’t surprise me, actually.”
She nodded, dead serious. “It’s only fair after everything I’ve told you. There’s even a theory in psychology about this—social penetration theory.”
He tugged her belt loop. “I’m listening.”
“The theory is that people grow closer through an intensifying series of self-disclosures, beginning with superficial things like favorite bands or TV shows and moving toward more personal stuff.” She gulped as his lips brushed lightly down the side of her neck. “Like childhood traumas. But it requires reciprocity, or else one person winds up more vulnerable.”
“Reciprocity, huh? Like, I’ll show you mine if you show me yours?”
“Basically.”
“Who knew psychology was so hot?”
She tugged him closer. He caught himself on the wall above her shoulder, but not before stumbling into her, chest to chest, his knee wedging between hers. He tried to push off her, but with a bright laugh, she wrapped her arms tighter around him and kissed him again. He was already hard and fought the desire to rock against the soft lower curve of her stomach, but just barely. Breathing was no longer a vital concern. He could survive on gasps of secondhand air between kisses. Her foot hooked around his calf, agreeing, warning, Don’t you dare pull back. The almost painful dig of her nails at his back made him twist and give in, give her what they both wanted. When he grinded against her, she rolled her hips into his.
Ash wanted to touch every inch of her, but so much of her body was covered up, and at every point his hands settled—her neck, her collarbone, the stolen spot of warmth at her hip beneath her sweater—he had to resist squeezing too tightly. But when his fingertips grazed up over her stomach, her ribs, and finally met the satin band of her bra, the control he’d managed so far nearly broke.
He groaned, pulling his mouth from hers only to smother his face into her shoulder. He bit playfully at the material there, chuckling at how crazy he felt, how badly he wanted to sink his teeth into her. “Hazel…”
He didn’t even know what he was trying to tell her. He wanted to savor and devour at the same time. Through his intoxication with her, the sensory overload, her smell—so fucking sweet and minty and something he couldn’t name—he felt a vague imperative to not push any harder than she did. Whatever line she set, he would not cross. But damn, he would walk right up to it.
Her fingers slipped through his hair and gently scratched his scalp before tugging at the roots.
“Tell me if you—”
“I don’t want to stop,” she said.
While he nuzzled the neckline of her sweater down with his chin, kissing the swell of skin just above her bra, his hands reverently spanned her rib cage, then cupped her breasts, thumbs finding her nipples through the thin material. He brushed one and peered up to watch her eyes close, her teeth bite into her lower lip. He brushed it again, this time with more pressure, and she shivered.
“Is it too cold?” he whispered, hoarse.
“No.” Her fingers were still frigid where they settled at the nape of his neck, her nose and cheeks pink. A mass of clouds crowded out the weak midday light, casting them in shade.
Ash reluctantly slipped his hands from her sweater.
“Why are you stopping?” she demanded, borderline whiny.
He pecked the tip of her nose, grinning at her immediate scowl. Then, he tugged her to the front of the barn.