Chapter 17
Kassi
Tonight I tell myself I’m going to bed early.
I say it out loud while I rinse the pasta pot and stack Emma's pink bowl in the drying rack.
I say it again when Emma calls from her room to ask if she can have her sparkly star nightlight on the brighter setting—because sometimes the dim one makes the shadows look like dragons.
I am not going to text him, I promise myself. I will not look at my phone. It is just a quiet Friday night, and I’m a mother with a to-do list on the fridge. I am not a silly girl who waits for her screen to light up.
My screen lights up.
It is one word.
Bear: Outside.
My heart jumps in my throat as I head back to the living room.
Sticking my phone in my back pocket, I step into my ankle boots by the door, and grab my sweater from the hook. Locking the door behind me, I stand on the porch for a breath, hoping to steady myself.
At first, I don't see him. His truck is parked in the deeper shade at the back of the parking lot behind my apartment. He looks like he belongs to the night. Big shoulders, easy stride, hat low, eyes catching a slice of moonlight as he comes toward me when I reach the bottom of the stairs.
"Asher," I whisper, because his name is the only thing I can find.
He stops at the foot of the steps, not quite touching, not quite staying away. "I wasn’t sure you would come outside."
"You shouldn’t be here," I say, but it is quiet and soft—nothing close to a real no.
"Probably not." His voice is low and rough. "But I couldn’t make myself drive away."
I pull the sweater tighter around me as if it could hold me in place. I should tell him to leave. He is a man I should not want, a man who makes my life complicated.
But I step toward him anyway.
We stop a breath apart. I can smell him, leather and soap and something like cedar that makes me want to lean in and breathe deeper. I tip my chin up and look at him and think I’m in trouble.
"You make this harder than it should be," I say.
"Good," he answers, and there is the almost smile that gets me every time. "Nothing worth having should be easy."
"That is not fair."
"I don’t remember promising fair."
I want to tell him about fair. About the bills, and the hard knot of fear in my stomach every time my phone rings with a call from the development company.
I want to tell him about loyalty and the old edge of hunger that keeps me saying yes to bosses who stopped being the people I thought they were.
Or how I hate being the reason my daughter notices I stare at my checkbook too long at the end of the month.
None of that will come out. All that arrives is a breath of surrender.
Lifting my hands to his chest, I feel the steady beat of his heart under my palm. I have tried to make this about curiosity and maybe about the thrill of a fight. Right now, it is neither. It is need; clean and bright and terrifying.
He lowers his head, the brim of his hat brushes my hair, and then his mouth is on mine.
The first sweep of his lips is a question for exactly half a second.
Then everything breaks open. Heat climbs my spine.
I rise on my toes and fist my hands in his shirt, and let myself fall into the kind of kiss that erases a day, the week, and any plan for keeping my life neat.
He tastes of a future I told myself not to imagine. His hands frame my face as though I’m precious or he’s memorizing every detail.
When we finally pull apart a fraction, and our breaths tangle between us, the first words that climb out of me are the ones I have been trying to ignore. "This can't last."
He doesn't release me. His thumb slides across my cheekbone, slow and careful. "Why not?"
"You know why." I hear the answer in my own voice, and it is both logical and desperate. "Your ranch is your life. My job is child and what is best for her is mine. We are on opposite sides."
He tips his forehead to mine, his hat pushing up on his head. He doesn’t argue, not yet. "Maybe they don't have to be sides. Maybe they are just different roads that touch."
"They cross at a stop sign in the middle of town, and then they go away from each other again," I say, while trying to make my mouth move away from his hand. The way he is touching me is not helping my discipline.
"I can't sell my land," he says, steady and unwaveringly.
I know this about him. That ground is his history and his hope. When he talks, his shoulders set the way Emma’s do when she clutches her rabbit.
"You can't walk away from your work right now. I get it. None of that changes what is happening right now," he continues.
I tip my chin and pretend that I am the one in control of this. "Admitting this doesn't fix anything."
"Then we won’t try to fix it tonight," he says. The corner of his mouth lifts. "We will just admit it."
I give him the glare I use on grown men in suits who try to talk over me in meetings. It slides off him like water. "This does not mean I agree with you."
"Good," he says, and there is heat and humor in his words. "I like a woman who makes me fight for it."
My laugh catches and then breaks into a breath when he kisses me again. This one is deeper. This one moves slowly enough that I can feel each shift, each new pressure, each brush that learns something about me.
He eases back an inch, and my mouth chases him without permission.
I want to deny that I am that girl, the one who reaches, the one who asks for more.
Now he knows better. He slides a hand into my hair, and it loosens out of the ponytail that did not survive bedtime.
His other hand finds my waist and pulls me so close to him that I can feel how hard he is.
"Walk with me," he says, quiet like a secret, just between us.
I nod, and we head toward the old barn that sits just beyond the downtown square. The grass whispers under our steps. The sky is a black bowl full of small cold fires. Somewhere in the dark, the neighbor's wind chime gives a soft clink, once, twice, and then the breeze changes, and it goes still.
The barn smells like hay and dust. There is a clean slice of moonlight across the center aisle, and the rest is soft shadow.
He stops where the light hits the packed dirt.
My sweater slips down one shoulder, and he lifts it back into place with two fingers—the smallest domestic act in the world.
This hits me harder than the kiss. The tenderness in it steals my breath.
"You fit here," he says, not looking away when he says it.
"That makes it worse," I say, and the truth of it is a weight and a promise.
He waits, and I appreciate that about him.
He knows when to move and when to let quiet make space for an answer.
I step in close again because the space without him feels wrong now.
When he leans down, I rise, and we meet in the middle.
The kiss is an intense, slow slide, making me feel every second of it.
I take my time learning him. The shape of his lower lip between my teeth, the sound he makes when I trace the edge of his jaw, the way his breath stutters when I press my palm to the warm skin at the base of his throat.
"Asher," I say, and it is half a warning.
"Tell me to stop," he says, but his hand spreads at the small of my back like he hopes I won’t.
I don’t tell him to stop. I cannot. Want blurs the edges of everything into something sweet and immediate. I press closer and feel the hard line of his cock. If he could feel me, he’s fine me wet with wanting him.
A coyote yips out by the fence line. He goes still. I inhale, and a laugh rises—thin and unsure, the first after a long time. "Your timing, wild thing," I whisper toward the door. The night, merciful and unmerciful, goes quiet again.
He kisses the corner of my mouth as a reward for being the one to find the humor. Then he rests his forehead on mine. "You sure?" he asks, even now, and this is new to me, a man who checks the ground before we both step forward.
"This is a mistake," I say. It’s the line I drew for myself. I’m not ready to pretend it never existed.
"Maybe," he says. His thumb traces my jaw. "But it is ours."
I close my eyes, and the barn shifts closer around us, as if it’s listening. "I don’t know how to do this."
"Neither do I," he says. "But I know I don’t want to stop."
"You are going to ruin me."
His voice drops until it is almost a thought. "Not ruin. Remake."
"I have a kid who depends on me. My job pays our rent. My boss wants me to find leverage on you that I do not want to find."
His jaw ticks. For a beat, I think I have cut us both. Then he nods once, and the understanding in his eyes is a shock. "You will do what you need to do to keep your girl safe. I respect that."
"I’m not spying," I say fast, because I need him to hear this. "I will not. I want you to know that."
"Good," he says, and there is pride in it, like I have done a hard thing he wanted for me too. "I don’t want easy, remember."
"Stubborn," I say, but I’m smiling again, helpless against it.
"Pot, kettle," he says, and the rhythm between us settles into something new, something that has the shape of a beginning, whether I’m ready or not.
We stand side by side and listen to the town settle. A single truck passes on the far road, slow and familiar. Someone's radio carries a bit of an old song before a door closes and muffles it.
"I like this," I say before I can stop the words. "The quiet with you."
"I like you in it," he says.
I think I will remember that line when I am old.
"And I still don’t agree with you," I add, because being honest is easier when his shoulder is inches from mine.
"Good," he answers, and he looks down at me with heat and humor again. "I like a woman who makes me fight for it."
"That will not be a problem," I say, and it feels like a promise we both understand.
He turns me gently and kisses me again. This one is clean and simple, as we have both learned the shape of trust and are practicing saying it until it becomes natural.
His hand slides up my spine. Mine slides under the edge of his shirt at the back and finds warm, bare skin.
The contact sends a shock through both of us, making us catch our breath at the same time.
We laugh softly and are slightly astonished.
I tip my head against his chest for one breath because I need steady. The steady is him. I should be more alarmed about that than I am. His heartbeat thumps a calm rhythm against my cheek.
He tips my chin up with his knuckles. "Tell me again," he says.
"What?"
"That this can't last."
I don’t know why he needs to hear it, but I give it because we both have to live in the same town tomorrow. "This can't last." The words come out as a prayer and a dare.
He kisses me again, gently, claiming.
I’m learning how to kiss him goodbye, that still says stay. His hand lingers at my hip as he pulls back, and his gaze moves over my face, searching, holding the words he’s not ready to release. I see him decide to keep them to himself for now, and relief settles in me.
We walk back to the stairs that lead to the small porch just outside my apartment door.
He stops at the bottom step. I stop one step higher, and that puts my eyes level with him.
He trails a hand down my arm and laces our fingers together for one more second.
He looks at my front door, then he looks back at me.
"Text me when you’re inside," he says.
"I am not a teenager," I answer, but my heart already likes that he asked.
"I know," he says. "Text me anyway."
"Bossy," I say, and can't stop the smile from climbing to my mouth.
"Stubborn," he returns, and there we are again, the same two people as an hour ago, only not the same at all.
I slip inside using my hidden key and close the door softly. The living room is dim and golden from the lamp near the couch. Candy is asleep now, book face down on her stomach, curled up on my couch.
I cross the hall and look in on Emma. She is snoring her little snore, the one that sounds like a mouse sighing.
In my room, I lean my forehead against the cool wood of the closed door and count to ten because otherwise I might call him back, and that is not how I want to play this.
Me: Home. Everyone is asleep.
His reply comes fast.
Bear: Good. Get some sleep.
Me: You too.
Setting the phone face down, I let my head fall back onto the pillow. I try to build my old argument again, though it’s not holding. Now he’s in it, threading through all the reasons in a way that makes them different.
I reach for my phone without looking and tap out one more message before I can stop myself.
Me: This does not mean I agree with you.
His answer is three words that feel like a promise and a challenge.
Bear: Good. Fight me.
I tuck the phone under the edge of the pillow and close my eyes.
Even though I’m still a woman who has a daughter, a job, and a hundred reasons to keep her heart and life neat, I’m also a woman warmed from a kiss that still hums on my mouth.
Both can be true. Tomorrow I will figure out the impossible—how to live with both.