In the Weeds (Lovelight #2)(93)

Josie loops her arm through mine and drags me across the office space, back to the conference room. She comes to an abrupt halt right outside the door, watches the screen, and seems to time her entrance with whatever Beckett is saying in the video.

When the video loops again, she shoves me once—hard—between my shoulder blades. I catch myself on the edge of the table and watch.

It’s an awkward shot. The camera angle is a little off, leaving him lopsided in the center of the screen. One of his fingers is slightly covering the camera, a halo of obstruction in the top corner. But it only makes it better, the imperfection of it.

“Hey,” he begins, a fierce frown on his face. A laugh immediately bursts out of me. Leave it to Beckett to make that one syllable sound so damn reluctant. Sharp edges. A grumble. His voice is so deep through the speakers in the corners of the room that I can almost feel it, right at the back of my neck. The way it rolls out of him, the tingle against my skin when he’s pressed all the way against me. “I know this is—well. I think this is sort of the coward’s way of doing this. Saying what I’m gonna say to you through a screen. But it felt—it felt appropriate to do it like this. To be uncomfortable.”

I watch as he swallows and looks up, over the camera. I can see trees behind him and I imagine him out there in the fields, dirt on the palms of his hands. “I haven’t been doing that with you, have I? Going out of my way.” His eyes snap back to the screen. “We’ve been sitting on my back porch for weeks, Evie. Just watching the sun move. We’ve been doing things how I’ve wanted to do them.”

Me too, I want to tell him. I haven’t wanted to be anywhere else but on that porch with you.

He lets out a deep, gusting sigh and his mouth curls at the edge, just a touch. Regret, it looks like. “So I thought—I don’t know. I guess I thought making you one of these things would be a start at saying sorry, for the way I left things. The last time we were together, I told you I couldn’t keep watching you walk away. You told me to ask you to stay, and I didn’t. I was having trouble with the possibility that you’d want to. I thought, how could someone like Evie want to be here? With me?” He pauses and drifts his hand over his heart. My own pounds in response. “I’ve kept so much from you.”

Hope lights up every inch of me, my heart in my throat. I ignore everyone else in the room and take a step closer to the screen, looking at those blue-green eyes, somehow the same color as the sky above him and the trees behind him.

“So this is—I’m asking you to stay this time,” he rasps. “I’m trying to do it right. Come home, honey. Stay with me for a bit. I’ll make you those muffins you like and won’t say a damn thing about you stealing my socks. We’ll sit on the porch and I’ll tell you about the stars. I’ll bring you flowers every day.” He scratches behind his ear and shifts his phone, a rustle of fabric against the bottom speaker.

“I’m sorry I didn’t say this next part.” He gives the camera a grin, knuckles against his jaw. “I want you to stay with me. You can leave when you have to. So long as you come back when you’re done.”

I hold onto the back of the chair in front of me, my hands gripping the top edge until my knuckles turn white. I wish I were standing in front of him. I wish I could trace those lines by his eyes and step between his feet, press my palm to his neck and guide his mouth to mine.

He blinks and his gaze trips somewhere else, another lingering pause. His eyes swing back to the phone with a brush of color across his cheeks, a slow-curling, bashful grin that inches under my ribcage. “Alright, well. That’s it, I guess.” He shrugs, a little unsure. “I know you came back here because you were looking for your happy. But Evie, you gave me mine while you were looking for yours and I think it’s only fair if I try to return the favor. I’ll be, uh—” he swallows around his words—looking, I know, for the right ones. “I’ll be here. You know where to find me.” He stares at the phone like he wishes it were me instead. “Bye.”

The video cuts off with a fumble, his movements unpracticed, his frowning face the last thing I see before the video loops—back to him standing beneath the sun.

I stand there in that tiny conference room and I watch it again. Again and again and again. I feel the eyes of the other people in the room as they watch me for a reaction. I’m pretty sure a couple of them have their cameras out.

But I don’t care.

I only see Beckett and the dark shadows under his eyes that tell me he hasn’t been sleeping much, the way the sunlight catches in his hair and makes it seem lighter—a halo of gold around him. I catalog the lines of his face and the way the ones by his eyes deepen when he says come home, honey.

I feel those words melt against me.

I tighten my grip on my bag as a smile begins to bloom across my lips. Like the wildflowers in that field at the edge of the farm, my face tilted towards the sun.

On my way.

“For the record,” Josie appears at my side with her phone clasped loosely in her palm. It hangs down by her side buzzing away as her chin finds my shoulder. She ignores it and instead sighs happily as ten-foot-Beckett scratches once under his jaw. “I like his plan better.”





CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE





BECKETT