Chapter 36
LOVE SIDE STORY
Cricket
Everything is crazy busy around the winery.
Mostly the good kind of crazy busy, but still crazy busy.
We’re in high gear getting ready for the wedding, which is a month away.
We’re making sure the chairs and tables in the basement of the events center are in good working order so that we can get replacements if needed and ordering food and flowers and borrowing sound equipment from the neighbors and asking trusted friends if they can sign NDAs and show up to help.
When we’re not getting ready for the wedding, I’m soaking up all of the knowledge I can find about grapes and following Winona in both our fields and hers to glean what I can from her years of experience. The kind of things you can’t find with internet research and online classes.
Dori’s often with us too.
Some days feel helpless, like we’re both learning all we can about wine for nothing, since the grapes belong to Winona this year, and even if they didn’t, making wine still takes time, even the fastest wines.
Other days, I tap into my optimism—or possibly my denial—and am convinced we’ll have enough miracles to get us through to when our first batch of wine could be ready.
In a year and a half.
I told Heath and Mabel and Ginny about Pip draining all of the wine and asked them not to give her shit about it, and now Heath’s offered to check every barrel.
They’re two-deep and four high on both sides of the cellar walls, so we’re hoping Pip didn’t get the back and high barrels—and that the wine’s still good—but the equipment he needs to move the barrels is broken, so that has to be fixed first.
More Cheeky Beaver AI videos have gone up on , stretching out my original video’s notoriety even longer. Mabel says she has a plan to find out who’s running the channel so that we can go directly to the source since the site’s legal team isn’t being helpful.
I didn’t ask details—I’m too busy with everything else. Way too busy, but I’d do anything for Mabel and this winery. Mabel’s the overprotective big sister I never knew I needed.
And then there’s the rest of everything with Heath.
Who really should come first, because oh my holy orgasms.
He sneaks into my apartment nearly every night, where we share a glass of wine and talk about our days and then fall into bed together.
He never stays late, but I’m seeing him more often during the day with all of the work necessary around the property to finish up before the wedding.
The man knows how to work a tool belt.
And he’s sexy as hell no matter what he’s doing.
Holding a paintbrush? I drool.
Pulling chairs and tables out of storage to stage in the event space? I swoon.
Replacing loose boards on the deck with a carpenter’s pencil behind his ear, quick efficiency with a tape measure, and then expertly wielding his power tools? I save that for my fantasies on the nights that he falls asleep on his couch and I have to get myself off.
That, and the smiles he gives me.
Mr. Grumpy Handyman is now a pretty happy guy most days.
I like to think it’s me, but some days, I still worry it’s not.
That it’s just sex making him happy.
Or that his favorite baseball team is doing well.
That nothing else has broken here.
Or something.
But mostly, I think it’s me.
Lav and I venture out together to get our hair done the day before school starts a couple weeks after Caro and Ten’s visit—her to get her green streaks touched up, me to handle the mess that my hair has become since I was already about due for a trip to the salon when I arrived here—and nothing bad happens.
No one looks at us.
No one whispers about us or shoves my video in my face, either the raw version or the GrippaBeav versions.
No one makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end.
Lav and I even stop at a burger-and-shake spot for lunch before we head back to the winery.
She heads off for her first day of second grade armed with a stack of birthday invitations for her whole class.
And midmorning, as I’m checking on The Cluckinator and her three new sisters in the chicken coop that Heath built and fenced in for them with my and Lav’s help, he pulls back into the driveway when I think he should be out doing a job, joins me at the coop, and pulls me into the house.
Upstairs.
Into his bedroom.
I’m wet before we get through the doorway, and then he’s kissing me and tearing my clothes off and dragging me toward his bathroom.
“Finally,” he groans as he pulls out of the kiss.
He strips himself, then guides me into the tile-walled shower with him and turns on the overhead rain spout, then twists on the in-wall nozzles, surrounding us with hot water while he captures my mouth again.
I can’t stop touching him everywhere.
His broad shoulders and flat pecs.
His ribs.
His ass.
The low noises he makes in the back of his throat tell me he’s loving this as much as I’m loving his hands all over me too.
This kiss.
The way his thick erection presses into my belly.
“Want you—so bad,” he gasps as he pushes me against the shower wall.
“Want you more,” I pant back.
He parts my legs with his thigh, and then we’re kissing again while I rub my clit against the rough texture of his leg and he thumbs my nipples and groans into my mouth.
My breath hitches as an orgasm approaches, closer and closer with every tilt of my hips.
Best legs.
He has the best legs.
The best penis.
The best body.
The best heart.
The best everything.
I moan as everything shatters inside of me.
He lifts my leg, then my ass, and then he’s sliding into me as I’m coming.
“God, you feel so good,” he gasps.
“You—better.” My inner walls clench around his thick length, the intrusion taking my climax higher and tighter and stronger.
Are there stars on the ceiling of his shower, or is that just what he does to me?
“Can’t get enough,” he groans into my shoulder.
“Never.”
I’m still coming as he thrusts inside me, slowly at first, then faster and faster, extending my orgasm as he hits that sweet, sweet spot deep inside me, until my legs go straight and my feet curl and the most powerful force I’ve ever felt inside me bursts free.
I’m not broken.
Not a disaster.
Not chaos.
I’m free.
Free, and loved, and worthy.
And not afraid of showers anymore.
Heath groans into my neck, and his erection pulses inside me as he stills, pressing me harder into the wall, holding me up with his solid body.
“Fuck yes, Cricket,” he groans.
“I love you,” I gasp.
I can’t help it.
I do this every time.
“Love you,” he pants back. “Love you so much.”
Tears soak my eyes, and a lump clogs my throat, and I cling to him like I can’t let go.
Like if I let go, it’s not real.
That once I let go, he didn’t say it back.
He won’t have meant it.
Except—except he’s sagging against me, holding me tight, and whispering it again.
“I love you, Cricket.”
I bury my face in his neck and let my eyes leak while steam and hot water stream all around us. “Heath. I love you so much.”
He squeezes my ass cheeks. “You brought me back to life. Showed me how much there is to love about it again.”
“I didn’t—”
He lifts his head and raises his brows at me. “Yes, you did. You did.”
I swallow and smile a wobbly smile. “You saved me too.”
He shakes his head.
“No, you did,” I whisper. “I wouldn’t have gone back to the house if you hadn’t—if you hadn’t been so nice to me when I knew you didn’t want to be.”
He winces. “I should’ve always been nice to you.”
“You were.”
“Not nice enough if you knew I didn’t want to be.”
I wiggle my toes. “You were what you could be.”
He huffs out a soft laugh and buries his face in my neck again. “My parents will love you.”
His parents.
His parents.
“Am I—am I meeting them?” I whisper.
“Coming for Lav’s birthday party.”
“And are you—are you introducing me as your girlfriend?”
“Probably should,” he murmurs against my skin. “Since you are.”
“Am I?”
“Are you not?”
I wrap my legs around him again. “Maybe a girl needs to be asked.”
He kisses my neck. “Like this?”
“You really like me,” I whisper.
“I love you.”
“Liking and loving isn’t the same thing. I love my family, but I don’t like them.”
He huffs out a laugh. “I love you and I like you and I want to introduce you to my family as my girlfriend.”
I squeeze him tighter. Inside, I’m squealing.
He loves me.
He wants to be official.
“What about Lav?” I ask.
“Her too,” he murmurs. “She suspects already. We’ll tell her tonight. After school.”
We.
We’ll do it.
“I wasn’t looking for this,” I whisper.
He envelops me in the warmest, safest, most perfect hug ever. “That’s always when the best things come.”
The best things.
We’re best things.
Light truly does come from darkness.
And right now—right now, I know everything will be okay.
We’ll save our home.
We’ll keep falling more and more in love.
And life will never be hard again.
Fine, fine, it probably will.
But this?
This is perfection.