But I’ve seen four packages arrive this week and I know the man isn’t buying duck food for himself. The smallest box contained a tiny little golfer’s hat with a bright red poof on top that Beckett snatched away as soon as he saw me with it, his cheeks a furious shade of pink.
By Wednesday, I’m a tangled up mess of tension. I sit at the kitchen table with my legs folded beneath me, my laptop open but my gaze fixed firmly out the back window. I catch a glimpse of him every now and again through the fogged glass of the greenhouse, his tall form bowed over something, his hand braced flat against the window, fingers spread wide. I have to turn away and busy myself with emails, lose myself in work in an effort to forget how that hand felt against my skin. How the sun lit up every single line and ridge of his body, his shirt thrown to some corner of the kitchen. The cut of his hips and the trail of hair below his belly button, the thick press of him against the front of his flannel pants.
I put my head down briefly over my computer and tap it there twice.
Beckett is a complication in my plan. My wishy-washy plan that doesn’t have a timeline or a clear end point. It would be easier if all I wanted was his body—to fall into bed with him and bury my confusion with the things he makes me feel. But I don’t. I want late nights on his back porch and stories about the stars. I want dirt on my hands and that smile on his face, the quiet one that inches up in fractions.
Last night he found me on the back porch, tucked in my chair with a blanket wrapped around my shoulders. I had been in a foul mood, annoyed with myself and my inability to just—figure this out. Get it together. Be better. He had watched me quietly with his shoulder propped against the door and asked:
“Did you find your happy today?”
I ground my teeth and shook my head. A quick jerk. “No.”
He had hummed once, head tilting to look out over the fields. “You want a hug?”
And that had been its own sort of magic, hadn’t it? He hadn’t tried to fix it. Just … asked if he could hold me through it.
I nodded and he wordlessly collapsed in the seat next to me, patting his thigh once. I shuffled over to him and curled up in his arms, my head nestled under his chin, his palm a heavy weight against my back, sweeping from my shoulders to my hip. A gentle pressure. A quiet affirmation.
My job means I travel all the time. This trip to Inglewild is the longest I’ve stayed in one place since I turned twenty. I’ve always had an itch under my skin to explore. It still flares to life now and again, but these days it’s tinged with exhaustion. More muscle memory than any sort of compulsion propelling me forward. I don’t want to go.
I want to stay.
I direct my attention back to my laptop and scan my email for the note from Josie. She sent over the information for Theo yesterday, the guy from the small business group that’s been reaching out. I tap out a quick message to him about connecting and hit send, the back door creaking open as I finish.
I glance up at Beckett, dirt covering his hands and in a smudge above his left eyebrow.
“How are the plants today?”
“They’re fine.” He glances down at his dirty hands and then back to me. There’s consideration there, like the only thing keeping him from throwing me against the table I’m sitting at is the topsoil on his palms. I curl mine into fists. “Can you be ready to go in an hour?”
“Ready to go?”
He nods. “Yeah. Ready to go out.”
I stare at him and wait for an explanation. He doesn’t give me one.
“Out where, Beckett?”
“On our date,” he tells me. A smile starts in his eyes. “You still want to?”
I nod. I absolutely want to. I was starting to think he forgot about it. That maybe it was just something he said in the heat of the moment.
I push back from the kitchen table and stand. “Where are we going?”
His smile spreads until he’s biting his bottom lip against the force of it. “Not very far.”
“Are you warm enough?”
I huff and puff my way up the hill, the second sweatshirt Beckett pulled over my head before we left the house making it difficult to move. I give his t-shirt a pointed look, my lips pressed in a thin line.
“Yes, I’m warm enough.” I’m too warm, but every time I try to take this damn sweatshirt off, Beckett looks like he wants to wrestle me right back into it. Which could be fun, but I’d much rather him wrestle me out of it.
He had appeared at my bedroom door at six on the dot with a large, greasy paper bag clutched in his hand and a backpack slung over his shoulder. A single, perfect white peony held between thumb and forefinger.
“Told you I’d bring you flowers,” he said.
I toy with the stem of it now as we wander our way through the fields, the branches of the pine trees catching on my sleeves. It’s warmer tonight, the first real spring evening we’ve had since I arrived. The dark sky blinks to life above us, the moon beginning to rise over the trees. I can see the glow of it, stars scattered behind.
“Not much further,” Beckett tells me.
It better not be. I’m being tortured by the way he looks in those jeans. The crisp white of his t-shirt against his tanned skin.
I bump his shoulder with mine.
“Do you take all the pretty girls out in the fields late at night?”
“Nah,” he shakes his head and bumps me back. “Just you.”
A flicker of warmth lights in my chest as he slows to a stop at the edge of a field. A clearing rolls out from beneath our boots to the edge of the woods. He looks at me from the corner of his eye and slips the backpack from his shoulder.
“Do you know where we are?”
I spin on my heel slowly, trying to remember. Two giant oak trees overlook over both sides of the entrance to the clearing, towering like guards to the forest beyond. I have a hazy memory of standing between them last fall with my arms outstretched, trying to touch both at the same time. Big, rusted orange leaves—almost the size of my hand—drifting down around me.
“The trees,” I say. “I remember them.”
He nods and pulls a blanket from his backpack, letting the edges fly out with one flick of his wrist. It settles against the grass with a quiet swish. A bottle of wine comes next, anchoring the corner. Two glasses, one of them my jam jar. The other, a chipped coffee mug.
“This is very impressive,” I say. He gives me a skeptical glance but I mean it. The last date I was on was close to a year ago and the guy took me to a shooting range where his ex still worked. Needless to say, there wasn’t a second date.
“You haven’t even seen the best part yet.”
“I’ve already seen your dick, Beckett.”
He barks out a surprised laugh, shaking his head. In the light of the moon, I can barely make out the little lines that appear next to his eyes with his grin. He grabs the greasy bag by his feet and holds it out to me, letting me peek inside. Cheeseburgers from the cafe, two overflowing cups of crispy french fries that are somehow still hot. I moan and reach for one, but he snaps the bag shut before I can, placing it by his feet.
“Hold on a second.”