Chapter 27
Willow
Camping?
Against a wall
Exercise routine
Shortly after disconnecting with Deacon, my phone pinged next to me with a text from Zoe that included a link to an airline website.
Zoe: I miss you. Flights to Colorado are cheap now. Come hoooooome!
Willow: What would we do?
Zoe: Whatever the hell we want. Maybe ride a Bronco…
Zoe: And by that I mean a football player.
Willow: I’m more of a Cowboys fan.
Zoe: Save a horse?
I looked at the flights she’d sent, and she was right—the flights to Denver were cheap. After a couple minutes, my phone flashed with an incoming call.
“I’m just looking at the flights,” I began.
“But I shouldn’t. I’m living on my savings right now.
Plus my volunteer job. I’m putting in fifteen to twenty hours a week, and I enrolled in that GRE prep course to prepare for the standardized admission test I’ll need for vet school. I’ve got so many things to figure out.”
“Figure them out with me! I’m the smartest person you know.”
I clicked through the departure options. “Didn’t you pepper spray yourself recently?”
“That notwithstanding. Let’s do it!”
“I visited the vet school today,” I said, changing the subject. “It was really amazing.”
Zoe would always be my cheerleader. “All the more reason to escape now, before you have to study all the time! You’ll never have time to escape to the woods with me on a whim when you’re a hotly recruited vet student.”
“It’s not that easy. It’s hard to even get into a program. The acceptance rates are lower than most medical schools, and all the materials I had prepared are still at Spencer’s place.”
She gave an audible grunt of disgust at his name. “After we get back from the trip, I’ll break into his house and steal them for you.”
I laughed at the idea of her dressed as a cat burglar all in black, especially since everything in the house was so beige and she would stand out.
“I can ask him for it like an adult.” Unless he had thrown away the things I’d left.
I hadn’t realized I’d left them until I was moved out, and by then, I couldn’t bear the thought of seeing him. “And I don’t know about the trip.”
“Ooh! A trip. Where are you going?” Hollis appeared at the fence, arms crossed over it.
I twisted the phone toward her. “Zoe, this is Hollis.” My neighbor waved, and I walked toward the fence.
“I love your hair!” Zoe said, and Hollis tossed it on her shoulder dramatically. “I’m trying to talk her into a trip back to Colorado to go camping.”
“You should!” Hollis exclaimed, “S’mores!”
“That’s what I said,” Zoe added. “I like her. Hollis, come with us. Any friend of Willow’s with such great hair and ideas is someone I want to hang with!”
“It was your idea,” I said, with an eye roll, but Hollis was already nodding.
“C’mon, Willow. You can be away from your brother’s hot bestie for a few days,” Zoe said.
“Oh, we’re talking about Deacon. I’m here for this,” Hollis added.
“I don’t need to see Deacon every day,” I threw back, even though we did talk every day, and since that night on the phone, I spent a lot of my day and more of my evenings thinking about him than I should.
We’d watched three episodes of a medical drama we’d both been wanting to catch the night before over the phone.
When he called, I thought he’d want a replay of our dirty talk session, but we’d gotten sucked into the show.
He pointed out everything that was inaccurate, and I told him which cast members I thought were hot.
I’d always wondered if he planned to use his EMT training outside of the military, and he’d said that he didn’t, even when I commented about the average hotness of the EMTs on the show.
He really hated talking about any future that didn’t involve the military.
My stomach hurt from laughing by the time we hung up. It ended up being even better than a sexy call. I rarely let myself laugh when I was worried about Cruz, but something about Deacon made it okay, made it feel safe, and I knew he was also worrying about my brother.
“Well, then it’s a deal. I found a great campsite. Hollis, are you free next weekend? Flights are really cheap. And the airline is…questionable, but still…cheap flights.”
“I didn’t agree to go yet,” I reminded her.
Hollis ignored my hedge. “Isn’t camping on your list, anyway? We’ll make s’mores!”
“I have to find someone to take care of Gus,” I hedged, watching him run the perimeter of the yard in search of his favorite ball. “Cruz loves no one more than this dog.” Mentioning Cruz made the familiar string of worry about him tighten in my chest.
Hollis chimed in. “Hmm…If only you knew someone who both loved dogs and would do anything for you…”
“It’s not like that.” I bit my lower lip.
Zoe laughed. “Except that it is…” She yelped. “Shit! I just spilled orange soda all over my boss’s dog inside her Porsche. I gotta go.”
I had so many questions, like why she was driving her boss’s Porsche, and how she spilled orange soda on the dog while doing so. But I guess I could ask her while we were camping.
“If he can’t, Blaine can,” Hollis offered. “Assuming you’re actually okay with me coming.”
“It would be fun to hang out with you both.” It really would be—they were both so enigmatic, and I felt more alive when I was with them. Hollis and I had started walking every morning—it felt good to start my day moving and laughing. I’d never had a regular routine like that before.
She looked at her phone. “Oops. Des is waiting, but text me what you decide!”
I walked toward the house. Spending money on a flight was irresponsible when I was between jobs, but she was right—camping was on my list. I toggled over to Deacon’s contact, my finger over the call button once I got back in the house. Before I could hit it, there was a knock at the door.
“Bike mechanic at your service,” he said when I opened the door. I fought the urge to greet him with a kiss—every cell in my body wanted to, but that’s not what this was, so I held out my hand for a professional handshake.
“You come highly recommended.”
“Oh, I come very highly recommended,” he said with a wink. “All my clients are very satisfied.”
I nodded toward the garage. “You don’t have to convince me,” I said as we made our way through the house.
I’d gotten a few peeks at how satisfying he could be, but I didn’t expect his fingers to close around my wrist and then back me up against the wall.
Deacon’s big, hard form pressed me forward, and his head dipped to my neck, his nose sliding up along my throat.
I let out a whimper. I couldn’t help it.
His hand steadied my waist, set firmly in place, but it felt like he was touching me everywhere.
“I don’t have to convince you?”
“Um,” I said, taking in the feel of his breath on my neck. “No,” I said, my voice more of a squeak than I planned.
“Hmm.” He hummed against my skin and, my God, it was hot in here. “I might still try.” Deacon squeezed my waist and his lips brushed the shell of my ear and he spoke low, making my legs feel like jelly. “God, you smell so damn good.”
I swallowed hard at his words, but Deacon stepped back after a beat. He looked from my lips to my eyes. “I don’t think that counts,” he said. “I can do better.”
“Counts?” My mind was awhirl, and my body was still making its way back to earth from whatever that was. “Better?”
He grinned and traced a finger down my bare arm. “You had against the wall on your list, but I can do better. I never asked exactly what you wanted against a wall.”
“That was…” I squeezed my thighs together, needing some kind of friction after that. “You surprised me.”
“I’ll warn you next time,” he said, taking another step toward the garage.
I really wondered if Deacon understood how unexpected he was.
I’d had the wall on my list because I’d told my ex how sexy the idea of making out against a wall was to me, but he’d insisted it was inefficient and we’d end up knocking down artwork.
It wasn’t really about the wall in any case—it was about the overpowering need, the craving.
I wanted him to feel that way about me. I definitely hadn’t been concerned about the artwork on the walls with Deacon.
He was already taking the bike down off the hooks on the wall when I followed behind him. “What do we have here?” he said, dropping to his knees to inspect the tires. His growly, sexy voice was back to normal, and I did my best to pretend I was, too.
“The tires need air,” I said, snagging a hand pump from a shelf nearby. “I can fill them, but could you adjust the seat?” The metal of the pump was cold in my hands, but did little to cool down how heated I felt from the moment in the house. I fiddled with the valve cap and felt his gaze on me.
“I was going to be a gentleman and do it for you,” he said, his big body angled against the concrete where he was leaning, toying with a wrench he’d taken from its spot on the wall. “But if a woman insists on pumping something, I won’t ever fight her.”
I chuckled, his blatant innuendo cutting the tension.
“I can do some things myself,” I mused, not taking the bait on his comments as I pumped air into the tire, conscious of how he was watching me as I stepped onto the footholds and pressed down on the handle with both hands.
“And even you can’t find a bike pump sexy. ”
When I looked over my shoulder, his gaze was on my chest where my breasts were pressed together from the motion, causing, from my vantage point, a kind of pornographic level of cleavage.
“Yeah, we can agree to disagree on that,” he said, patting the seat as I finished with the second tire, double-checking the air pressure. “Excited to try this out?”
“Yeah,” I answered. “Love learning something new.”