Chapter 19 – Davis
CHAPTER NINETEEN
DAVIS
All week long the heat had been brutal on the trails, the sun beating down without mercy, the skies refusing to give them so much as a single cloud. While Davis pulled her rake through the dirt, sweat dripped from her nose, rolled between her breasts, trickled down her ass. But the heat wasn’t all bad, because when it was hot, Kev took off his shirt.
She’d become a Pavlovian dog, a drooling mess, and his glistening abs were the loudest dinner bell in the history of humankind.
They were almost done with the final details of this track, and she couldn’t wait to try it out. They’d cut a huge section of banked turns into the mountainside, and they’d built a wall ride, a series of skinny bridges, and a sweet ladder drop she was dying to fly over. Almost as much as she was dying to trace those V-shaped muscles darting into Kev’s shorts with her tongue.
“Ugh,” she groaned, shaking herself out, shaking off the thoughts of how hot his skin would feel under her fingertips, how hard and slippery.
“You okay, Davis?” Tex asked, a wry grin barely concealed under the shadow of his cowboy hat. He’d seen where she’d been looking, who she’d been looking at.
“Yep. Just hot,” she replied, wiping the back of her hand across her brow. Not realizing the words that had come out of her mouth until Brayden snorted and said, “I’ll bet,” under his breath.
Luckily, Kev was busy cutting in a drainage gutter far enough away that he hadn’t seen or heard the men catching her staring. But, holy Hannah, every time he speared the ground with his shovel, his forearms flexing, his shoulder muscles rippling, she lost all sense, all concept of being surrounded by other people, forgetting that standing there staring at him with her mouth hanging open wasn’t socially acceptable.
It was the hug. It had to be. It was being so close to him again, feeling his body beneath her hands, hearing his heart beating wildly against her ear. It was wearing his flannel to bed and returning it to him the next morning without washing it. Just so it smelled a little like her. Just in case he might have noticed, might have brought it to his nose, closed his eyes, and breathed her in.
She’d always been physically attracted to Kev in a way that was almost embarrassing. But now, after all they’d been through, after his letters, after they’d cried together in his cabin, after their hug, she couldn’t deny it. She wanted him.
You’re the one who wanted to be friends , she reminded herself inwardly while watching him arch his back, his abs stretched out long while he sprayed water from his squirt bottle into his open mouth. Also reminding herself that even though those were some very lucky hydrogen and oxygen atoms, she wasn’t one of them. So as much as she might have wanted to, she couldn’t just slide herself down his body like that one drop currently sliding over his chin, traveling down his throat, slipping between his pecs…
Before she could follow that one lucky drop farther, he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, dropped his squirt bottle back to the ground, turned his head…and winked at her.
Shit .
Sucking in a breath, she jerked her head down, closed her fingers around her rake, and tried to pretend she’d been working instead of staring. But while he ducked into the trees to finish his dig, she wondered about that wink. About the way his gaze had found hers so easily, like he’d known she’d been watching him. Like he’d put on the entire performance just for her. If that was true, if he was teasing her, it was so unfair it was almost rude. Not that she wanted him to stop. But it made her think of an article she’d read once about a man who’d become a monk and used extreme manual labor to combat his lingering sexual urges. Raking even harder, faster, making each section of the trail so clean someone could eat off it, she could suddenly relate.
When she took a break for her own drink of water, having just barely wrangled back a tenuous grip on her frazzled hormones, he called for her.
“Davis!”
Whipping her head up, frazzled all over again, she shouted back, “Yeah?”
When Kev shouted, “You gotta check this out,” she glanced downtrail, catching Ace and Tex looking at her, shaking their heads, smiling, knowing everything.
Feeling herself blush, a surge of heat blooming in her chest, tingling in her cheeks, she asked, “What’s up?” in the blandest, friendliest tone she could muster while she set down her rake and walked toward the trees.
“Come here, and I’ll show you,” he said in a way that wasn’t so friendly. A way that made her knees weak and her core simmer.
“Say what you want,” she heard Stanley mutter as she followed Kev’s voice into the woods. “But the boy’s got game.”
Pushing through pine boughs thick enough to hide them from the rest of the world, Davis found him kneeling in a clearing, dappled in sunlight, surrounded by a small field of wildflowers. Yellow arnica, magenta fireweed, purple bellflower, scarlet paintbrush.
“Wow,” she whispered, barely more than a breath.
He turned his head, gazing up at her, looking like some golden god glowing in a sea of color. “Amazing, right?”
You have no idea , she thought as she went to him. Kneeling beside him, she ran her fingertips over the veiny pink petals of a wild geranium blossom and said, “So amazing.”
Plucking a daisy from its stem, he brought it to his nose and breathed in deep. It seemed suddenly so private where they were. Only the birds, the flowers, the muted rays of sunlight finding their way through the trees.
Only them.
“Here,” he said, turning to face her while she turned to face him. Carefully, he brushed the strands of hair that had come loose from her ponytail back off her shoulder. Then he slid the stem of the daisy behind her ear. “Beautiful.”
She trapped a moan in her throat as his fingers brushed over the shell of her ear. Before she met him, she’d never been touched by a man with Kev’s level of confident ease, of attention, of skill. When she’d thought she might never feel it again, might compare every man who ever touched her in the future to Kev and find them lacking, she’d mourned. But now, as his fingers trailed across the angle of her jaw, her moan almost breaking free, her chest rising and falling in rapid waves, his touch felt like a resurrection.
His thumb traced the curve of her lower lip, his eyes going dark, his gaze turning hungry while he said, “Davis?”
Loving the way her name sounded when he said it like that, like she was a dessert he might order, something delicious he couldn’t wait to eat, she reached up and wrapped her fingers around his wrist. Her eyelids fluttered at the strong, driving pulse beneath her fingertips when she replied, “Yes?”
His gaze was fixed on her mouth. But slowly, it rose to meet hers, gaining clarity. “Friends don’t do this, do they?”
She sighed, feeling him putting the brakes on himself, the intensity in him ramping down.
“Should we stop?” He asked it so quietly she felt more than heard the words. So quietly she could easily have convinced herself she hadn’t heard them at all, that she hadn’t thought no, we shouldn’t. But that would have been wrong. Rash. Careless.
So she tried to agree, tried to nod, but this only made his thumb part her lips, opening her wide enough to take it into her mouth. She could do it. It would be so easy here in this sweet, secret place to lean forward, run her tongue along his skin, close her mouth around him, and suck ?—
“Quitting time!” someone yelled out, yanking them apart. Shattering whatever spell the flowers had cast on them.
“Jesus,” she gasped, collapsing back on her heels, bracing herself on her hands, still panting as the world stubbornly came back into focus.
Kev only stared at his thumb, his pupils blown while he growled a low and tortured “Fuck.”
Watching him, the way his abs flexed as his teeth sank into his lower lip, she said, “I don’t think we can be alone together. Like, ever. I don’t think we can be trusted to… friend .”
“I think you’re right.” He met her stare. “We need a fucking chaperone.”
She laughed, the honey-thick tension between them gradually thinning out. “I’ll ask my mom.”
“What about Maude Alice?” he suggested with a grin that made her glad she was already on her knees. “She’d be game.”
“Oh my god.” Laughter shook her shoulders. “What is wrong with us?”
Licking his lips, a thing she somehow felt all over her body— fucking magical flowers —he said, “Nothing.”
He was right. Nothing was wrong. Everything was just a bit too right. But it was also too fast. Maybe even dangerous. Only, it didn’t feel dangerous. It felt amazing. And after months of feeling miserable, she was having a very hard time not letting herself indulge in a little amazing.
“I know it’s wrong,” she said, reaching out for him in her mind, sliding her fingers over his round shoulders, up the column of his neck, into the soft curls at his nape. “I know I shouldn’t. But Kev.” She took a breath, let it out. “I want…”
“What?” he asked, spurring her on, just a light kick since she was already raring to go. “What do you want, Davis?”
Her gaze dropped to his pecs. “I want”—she swallowed—“to put my hands on your chest.” She let her eyes sink even lower. “I want to trace my fingers down your abs. I want to feel you, your body. Like, you have no idea?—”
“Fuck, Davis.” He scrubbed a hand over his face. “You can’t say those kinds of things to me.”
“I know.” Pressing her lips together, she said, “I’m sorry. But it’s true.”
His hands clenched into fists at his sides. “If I told you all the things I want to do to you right now, you’d probably run away faster than I could catch you.”
She highly doubted that, but the image, the visual… And now it was all she could think about: Racing through the trees, running from him while he gave chase. Wondering what would happen if she slowed down. Wondering what would happen if he caught her.
“But I can’t. We can’t.” His jaw muscles feathered. “We’re only?—”
“Friends,” she said, coming to her senses, parking the chase fantasy—but keeping it close enough to take it for a test-drive later. “We’re only friends.”
“Right.” His shoulder sagged, probably in relief. But maybe in regret too. “Friends.”
“Okay.” She inhaled the sweetness of wildflowers. “Friends. We can do this.”
“We can,” he agreed firmly while he got to his feet. He reached out for her. “I promise not to call you into the woods again.”
Taking his hand, letting it go as soon as she was up and not a second later, she said, “And I promise not to—” Dream about your breaths coming fast behind me, your footsteps even faster. How hard your body would feel crashing into mine, taking me down to the forest floor … She cleared her throat. “Be so horny.”
Laughter burst out of him. “Same.”
His bared golden-god torso gleamed in the afternoon sunlight, and she shook her head at it. “But Kev, you have got to start wearing a shirt. It’s not fair.”
“Sorry.” He glanced down at his work boots, giving her a clear view of the flush tinting his cheeks. “I’m, um, probably doing it on purpose a little.”
“I knew it,” she said, and she might have given his chest a little shove if the prospect of touching his warm skin didn’t feel so un friendly.
“It’s just, when I don’t wear a shirt”—his wince was so guilty it needed to serve time—“it makes you look at me. And I guess I’m horny too.”
He wasn’t the only one blushing now. “That’s actually kind of sweet.”
“But you’re right. I shouldn’t,” he said. “Because we’re not ready. Because we need more time.” As soon as the words left his lips, his smile fell, his brow creasing. “Even though we don’t have very much of it.”
“Kev! Davis!” Tex shouted into the trees. “Time to go.”
While she followed him out of the woods, away from the flowers, from the cool, silent shade and back into the sweltering heat and blazing sun, she knew he was right. Her time, their time, was running out.
She needed to make a decision. She needed to figure out what she was going to do with her life. She needed to figure out if the growing, undeniable desire to stay, to tell Professor Novak that she wasn’t coming back, was because her interests were starting to shift. If helping Brayden and the other men in the computer lab had really sparked something inside her that felt like a different path. If her late-night internet searches for educational grants for nonprofits had really filled her with an enthusiasm she hadn’t felt in a long time. Or if it was all just smoke and mirrors, tricks distracting her from the truth: that she was holding on to the past with Kev, hoping there might be a future with him too. Hoping their story wasn’t over and willing to sacrifice everything else to find out.
Even if she planned on pressing the daisy he’d given her flat between the pages of a book tonight so she could keep it until she was old and gray, she knew she couldn’t sacrifice everything for him again. She couldn’t stay here just for him. No matter how good it felt to have his skilled fingers brush over her ear and his thumb trace her lip. No matter that the trees were greener, the sky bluer, the breeze softer when he was near, when he smiled at her, when he reminded her how right everything had felt when she’d been his and he’d been hers.
Okay, fine , maybe those things mattered a little. But he wasn’t hers anymore. She wasn’t his. And even if they did end up finding their way back to each other, he couldn’t be her reason. He couldn’t be her everything. She needed something for herself. She just needed to decide whether that something was in Missoula or right here at home.