Burying Water (Burying Water #1)(82)

It isn’t until he slaps the alarm clock that I fully wake up and realize what I’m doing. I pull back with a gasp. “I’m sorry.”

He props himself up, his elbows on either side of my head, cradling me. His dark eyes are twinkling.

“It just felt so . . .” I feel myself frown, searching for the right word. “Natural.”

“In general? Or with me?”

“Not in general.” I pause, hesitating. “Why do things feel so natural with you?”

He shifts to run the backs of his fingers over my cheek, his eyes dropping to my mouth. “Do they?”

“Yeah. You must remind me of someone. I feel like I know you.”

He smiles. A sad smile. “Maybe you just want to know me.”

“Maybe.”

“Maybe,” he echoes, his thumb drifting over my bottom lip, first over the faint scar left by the attack, and then over the full length, each sweep dragging an exhale from my lungs until my breathing is ragged and my body starts to ache in a familiar way, a way I know I’ve experienced before. I just don’t remember when.

I’m about three seconds from begging him to kiss me when he leans down and closes his mouth over mine.

And the alarm goes off again.

“Fuck,” he mutters, dipping his face into my neck. “I have to go.”

Checking the clock, I see that it’s ten minutes after eight. “So do I. The horses need to be let out.”

His mouth closes over my throat to kiss it gently, and I can’t help the moan that slips out.

“You’re killing me,” he whispers—so soft that I barely hear it—and then he lifts himself up. I stand and watch as he peels his shirt off for a clean work shirt from his dresser. It gives me a chance to see the muscular curves in his shoulders and back. And the tattoo stretched from shoulder to shoulder, which I recognize right away as his car. “What came first, the car or the tattoo?”

I hear his smile as he answers, “Tattoo. I got it when I was sixteen.”

“Your parents allowed it?”

“Fake ID.”

Of course. Stepping closer, I dare reach up to run a finger around a tire. “You really wanted that car, didn’t you?”

He freezes with his shirt held in front of him, a hiss that sounds a lot like “Jesus” slipping from his lips. I’m not sure if it’s my words or my finger that he seems to be reacting to. He turns to face me, his eyes searching. Begging, almost. “I did really want this car.” He says it like it’s a confession, like it’s something to feel guilty for. I watch his Adam’s apple bob with a hard swallow as he steps into me, the heat from his bare chest radiating off him like the woodstove I curl up next to each night.

With a hand around the back of my neck, he leans in to kiss me, this time without hesitation, without caution.

With urgency and passion. And fear.

Just as suddenly, he breaks free. Gripping my hand, he leads me down the stairs, past the car, to the edge of the garage. “I’ll talk to you later, okay?”

I smile, waving, until the tail end of his car disappears around the corner of the house.

That’s when I notice Meredith sitting on the deck with a mug in her hands. Watching.

My cheeks flame immediately. What must be going through her head right now? She knows what happened to me. She knows I was carrying some man’s baby only months ago. Would she approve of me being with her son? Would she want him mixed up with someone with my past, given his own?

I give her a quick wave—because it would be rude not to—and then I rush toward the barn, a nervous sickness rolling in my stomach the entire way, as if I’ve been caught doing something wrong.

Which is ironic, since everything about Jesse feels right.

“Zoe asked if we could change this sign,” Ginny says from atop her stepladder, unhooking the dust-covered horseshoe that reads “Peaches.” She holds it within her palm for a moment, studying it, before adding, “I guess I’ll need to go into town to get a new one carved for Lulu. Ironwoods is still open, right?”

I don’t answer. I can’t answer. Not because I don’t know—I drive by the iron and millwork shop every day on my way to work. It’s because my mouth is hanging open.

“Well?” she snaps, turning to find me gaping at her. “Should I waste my time going all the way into town and dealing with those gossipers if it’s not there?”

I smooth my face and continue spreading fresh hay in Felix the Black’s stable. “It’s still there.”

The ladder squeaks with her descent. “I don’t really have anywhere to keep these.” Her rubber boots scrape the ground as she sets the old horseshoe on a small shelf. “But I don’t want to toss them out. We need someplace to keep these things, if we’re going to be taking any more down.”

Taking any more down? We’d have to do that only if . . . a slow smile stretches over my lips. Only if Ginny allowed more horses here again. “I’m sure we can come up with something,” I say, my voice trembling with exhilaration. For Ginny, because this is a big deal. A huge deal. I keep my head down because I don’t want her to see the sheen coating my eyes.

The wall she has built, enclosing her in a self-prescribed solitary confinement, may finally have a structural crack in its foundation.