Say the Word(33)

It couldn’t be clearer that she disapproved.

“Mom, this is Lux,” Sebastian offered, wrapping an arm loosely around my shoulders. I wanted to shrug off his touch, uncomfortable under his mother’s hawk-like eyes. Not wanting her poisonous stare to ruin what had, until her arrival, been blossoming between us.

“It certainly is,” she murmured, her sharp focus lingering on Bash’s arm. Though the kitchen was warm, the air had become decidedly frosty since her arrival. “Sebastian, you know how I feel about having guests when the house isn’t tidy. Greta comes on Mondays and Fridays, you know.”

Tidy?

There wasn’t a dirty dish to be seen, and a three-course meal could’ve been eaten off the floors, they were so clean. Greta, who I assumed was their housekeeper, should definitely be getting a raise if she alone was keeping the mansion in this unblemished state. But of course, Mrs. Covington’s protests had nothing at all to do with the state of her home. Southern manners demanded a certain modicum of respect be paid to all houseguests, even to those one so blatantly disapproved of. And she’d been bred a political animal — as the wife of a politician, she couldn’t say what she really meant, which was likely something along the lines of, Get this trailer trash out of my house immediately.

In politics, image was everything. Propriety always reigned supreme. And it sure as hell wouldn’t be proper for a senator’s wife to demand that her perfect son remove the poor girl from both her presence and her pristine household, lest she soil something.

Like the furniture. Or the family name.

“Mom—” Bash began.

“Sebastian.” Her smile was arctic. I fought off a shiver. “Drive your…” Her beat of silence was timed impeccably — the work of a masterful conversationalist. “…friend home now, please.”

I wanted to point out that adding the word “please” to the end of an order didn’t detract from the fact that it was, in actuality, still an order, but I figured that would only make a bad situation worse. With her ringing endorsement hanging in the air, she glided from the room, her heels clicking sharply against the gleaming hardwood floors.

“That went well,” I joked lightly, eyes averted. “I think she liked me.”

“Lux,” Sebastian said, sympathy threading his voice. “I’m sorry about her. I thought she’d be at Pilates or a DAR meeting or one of her afternoon activities. I had no idea she’d be here.”

“No worries,” I said breezily. “This is her home, she’s entitled to her opinions and decisions.”

“Well, her opinions are wrong,” he said, leaning in to wrap his arms around me. I tensed in response, wary of his mother’s disapproving eyes. “Relax,” he whispered.

“We should go,” I told him, feeling completely out of my comfort zone and wanting to be anywhere on earth but in his kitchen. “Please.”

“Alright, come on.” He grabbed my hand and led me back through the kitchen to the patio door we’d entered through. “I want to show you something.”

Despite my continual requests that he give me at least a hint about our destination, Sebastian remained stubbornly silent. He led us out onto the patio, skirted around the perimeter of the house, and cut through the yard toward the back edge of the property. The well-kempt greenery of his sloping lawn eventually gave way to longer, wilder grasses and a copse of tall yellow poplar trees. As we wove through them, I stopped asking about our destination and silence descended over us. The poplars were old, soaring high above our heads with a majesty only Mother Nature can conjure. Walking beneath the shelter of their branches, we seemed miles from civilization rather than mere steps, as though we’d been transported to another world when we crossed the barrier from landscaped lawn to untamed wild.

There was serenity here, a hushed dignity it felt wrong to interrupt with words. Our footfalls were quiet against the mossy earth, and the only sounds were that of the wind whistling through the trees and the gentle trickling of a nearby stream as water flowed over the rock bed.

There was no trail — none that I could see, anyway — but Sebastian walked with purposeful strides, as though his feet had walked this path so many times he’d long since committed it to memory. After about five minutes, we broke through the dense-packed trees and came to a small clearing.

I gasped when it came into view, in awe of the mammoth sentinel before my eyes.

At the center of the glade was a huge, red oak tree. It dominated the clearing, dwarfing the surrounding trees with its thick trunk and long-reaching branches. It was so wide that had Sebastian and I stood on opposite sides and stretched our arms around its circumference, our hands wouldn’t have touched. Its boughs were low-hanging, the bottom branches only about ten feet from the earth. It must’ve been a dream to climb as a child.

Detaching my grip from Sebastian’s, I ran forward to skim my hands across the trunk, moving around it in a circle with my neck craned to catch a glimpse of the top. I felt a wondrous smile break out across my face as I made myself dizzy running in circles with my gaze trained skyward.

Giggling and breathless, I came to a halt with one hand planted firmly against the bark to steady myself. “Wow,” I breathed. It must’ve been seventy feet tall.

“This is my favorite spot on the property,” Bash revealed. I looked up to find him standing ten feet away, his eyes locked on my face. I could feel the color in my cheeks and I was warm in spite of the crisp air. My hair had slipped out of its ties during my mad dash and was hanging loose around my torso, a wind-tousled mess. “I hate that house,” he added, nodding his head in the direction we’d come from.