Chapter 8
eight
. . .
Sadie
"You didn't have to do all that," I tell him, for what feels like the fifth time in three days. "The urgent care, the ride, telling me to stay home. I could've handled it. I’ve been handling it the entire time Vince has been alive."
"I know you could've." Beau's loading pieces into the back of the trailer, and he doesn't look up from what he's doing, just keeps stacking wood like it weighs nothing. "Didn't mean you had to handle it alone."
"Still.” I pull my bottom lip between my teeth. “Thank you." I lean against the side of the trailer, arms crossed, watching him work. "Vince asked about you twice yesterday. Wanted to know when he gets to come see the sawdust videos in person."
"Anytime he wants. Kid's got good taste, apparently." He grins, wiping his hands on his jeans before he reaches for another piece. "How's he feeling?"
"Back to normal. Running around like nothing happened, which is more than I can say for me.
I think I aged five years in that room, waiting for the results to come back.
" I glance up at the sky, and it's gone a dark gray in the last twenty minutes, clouds stacking up over the tree line in a way that doesn't look good. "You checked the weather today?"
"Said storms possible this afternoon. Didn't think it'd move in this fast." He follows my gaze up, and his jaw tightens a little. "We should get this last load secured. Don't need lumber flying around out here if it gets bad."
We work fast after that, hauling the last of the pieces into the trailer, and I can hear thunder starting to roll in the distance, closer than I'd like.
The wind picks up, kicking dust and gravel across the job site, and by the time we've got the last piece loaded and the trailer doors half shut, the sky opens up all at once, no warning, just a wall of rain coming down so hard I can barely see the truck twenty feet away.
"In here!" Beau grabs my arm, pulling me toward the open trailer door, and we both scramble inside just as the rain turns sideways, hammering against the metal roof loud enough I can barely hear myself think.
He hauls the door most of the way shut behind us, leaving a gap for light, and we're both soaked, standing in the dim space between stacked lumber and the pieces we just loaded, breathing hard from the sprint.
"Well." I push wet hair out of my face, laughing despite myself. "That came out of nowhere."
"Yeah." He's watching me, and his gaze is different right now, full of a heat that's been building since we met and finally doesn't have anywhere else to go, trapped in this small space with the rain hammering down around us. "You alright?"
"I'm fine. Just wet." I'm hyper aware of how close we're standing, the trailer barely wide enough for the both of us to fit comfortably between the stacked pieces, and my shirt's clinging to me in a way that suddenly feels like it matters. "How long do you think this'll last?"
"No idea. These things can blow through in twenty minutes or sit here for two hours." He hasn't looked away from me since we got in here, and my heart's thudding in my chest, harder than it should be for a man just standing there. "Sadie."
"Yeah?"
"I need to tell you something, and I don't know how much longer I can keep not telling you.
" He runs a hand through his wet hair, and for the first time since I've known him, he looks nervous, actually nervous, not the easy confidence he usually carries around like it's nothing.
"I think about you when we're not at work.
Way more than I should. I brought you those flowers because I couldn't stop myself, not because it was just a thank you.
I drove you to get Vince because I couldn't stand the thought of you handling that alone, and it wasn't just because you're my employee. "
My breath catches somewhere in my throat. "Beau…"
"You don't have to say anything back. I just needed you to know, before this storm passes and we go back to pretending it's not there." He takes a step closer, close enough I can feel the heat coming off him even through wet clothes. "Tell me if I'm reading this wrong."
I don't tell him that. I can't, because he's not reading it wrong, hasn't been reading it wrong for two weeks now, not since that first morning I caught myself watching him at the table saw with his shirt off and had to remind myself three separate times that this was a bad idea.
"You're not reading it wrong," I say instead, quiet, barely audible over the rain.
That's all it takes. He closes the last bit of distance between us, and his hand comes up to my jaw, careful, like he's still checking whether this is something I actually want, and I answer that question by closing the last inch myself, pressing my mouth to his.
The kiss is slow at first, careful in a way that doesn't match the two weeks of tension that's been building between us, but it doesn't stay that way for long.
His hand slides from my jaw into my wet hair, and I fist my fingers in the front of his shirt, pulling him closer, and the kiss turns hungrier, and single thing neither one of us has said out loud since that first morning in the gravel lot hangs between us.
"Sadie." He breaks away just far enough to say my name against my mouth, breathless, like he's checking one more time. "You sure?"
"I'm sure." I am. I've never been more sure of anything, standing soaked to the bone in the back of a trailer while thunder rolls overhead, but it feels more right than anything's felt in longer than I want to admit.
He kisses me again, harder this time, and my back finds the stack of lumber behind me, strong enough to hold my weight when my knees go a little unsteady.
His hands are everywhere at once, sliding under the hem of my wet shirt, along my ribs, up my spine, and I'm doing the same to him, finally allowed to touch what I've spent two weeks pretending I wasn't looking at.
He pulls back just far enough to tug my shirt over my head, and the look on his face when he does it, like he can't quite believe this is happening, sends a shiver through me that has nothing to do with the wet clothes or the storm outside. "You're beautiful," he says, low, rough around the edges.
"So are you." I pull his shirt off too, finally getting to run my hands over what I've been sneaking glances at since day one, and he groans low in his throat when I do it, dropping his forehead against mine for a second like it's almost too much.
He pulls my bra from my body, his mouth going to my nipple as my hand goes between us and gets rid of the material covering his cock. I wrap my hand around the warm, velvet skin, and jack the length.
Beau throws his head back, groaning when I sweep my hand over his tip.
I haven’t done this in so long that I’m not sure what it is that I want. But when he takes all the clothes off my body, spreads my thighs, and looks between us, I know I want him. “Do you have a condom?” I gasp. “I’ve already had one unplanned pregnancy, don’t want another one.”
He makes a noise in the back of his throat, and fishes his wallet out of his back pocket. I watch, eyes wide, as he presses the latex over his length. Then he’s pressing into me, and I know now that my life is never going to be the same again.
Wrapping my legs around his waist, I let my heels dig into his ass as we push and pull against one another. My fingers go up into his hair, tugging on the strands as he works my body the same way he does the wood he makes into beautiful pieces.
The rain keeps hammering the roof, and we lose ourselves in each other, careful and hungry in equal measure, tucked between stacks of lumber that smell like cedar and rain.
His hands know exactly where to go, unhurried despite the storm outside, and I find myself gasping his name against his shoulder more than once, the two of us fitting together in a way that feels less like this is new and more like we've been doing this our entire lives.
Afterward, we stay tangled together, my back against his chest, his arms wrapped around me, both of us breathing hard, listening to the rain start to ease off outside. "That was…" I start, not entirely sure how to finish the sentence.
"Yeah." He presses a kiss to the top of my head. "That was amazing."
I don't know how long we stay like that, wrapped up in each other in the dim light of that trailer, but it's long enough that the storm's mostly passed by the time a fist knocks against the metal door hard enough to make us both jump.
"Beau? You in there? The storm's cleared, man, we're back to work!"
It's Dane, his voice muffled through the metal but unmistakable, and I feel my whole face go hot, scrambling for my shirt, which is somehow ended up all the way across the trailer.
"Yeah, give me a minute!" Beau calls back, and I catch him grinning at me in the dim light while we both hurry to get dressed, a grin that's equal parts satisfied and a little bit panicked. "We're gonna have to figure out what we're telling people."
"Later," I say, pulling my damp shirt back over my head. "Right now, I just need Dane to not walk in here and find us half dressed in the back of a lumber trailer."
Beau laughs, low and warm, and presses one more kiss to my temple before he moves toward the door. "Later, then."
I follow him out into the wet, cleared-off afternoon, my heart still racing, and I don't have the first idea what happens next between us.
But standing there watching him walk toward Dane like nothing just happened, hair still damp, mouth still a little swollen from mine, I know one thing for certain.
I don't regret a single second of it.