"I will." Her smile is small and certain. "Goodnight, Asher."
She walks to her car, and I stand there until her taillights fade down the lane. My phone is heavy in my pocket. My pulse is steady, slow, and stubborn. I know better than to hope for simplicity. Nothing about this is simple.
Zach whistles behind me. "You are terrible at stretching your legs."
"Go stack your wood," I say, and he laughs all the way back to the hearth.
In the quiet that follows, I decide to stay away. It’s the only way to keep the lines clean. Then my phone buzzes, and the resolve I just built collapses.
Sunshine:Home safe. Thank you.
Me:Get some sleep.
Sunshine:You too.
I slip the phone back into my pocket and stare at the dark pasture, the barn a black shape against the sky. I know the smart thing, and I know the safe thing.
I also know the way her kiss still burns on my mouth.
Tonight, I choose the burn.
Chapter 17
Kassi
Tonight I tell myself I’m going to bed early. I say it out loud while I rinse the pasta pot and stack Emma's pink bowl in the drying rack. I say it again when Emma calls from her room to ask if she can have her sparkly star nightlight on the brighter setting—because sometimes the dim one makes the shadows look like dragons.
I am not going to text him, I promise myself. I will not look at my phone. It is just a quiet Friday night, and I’m a mother with a to-do list on the fridge. I am not a silly girl who waits for her screen to light up.
My screen lights up.
It is one word.
Bear:Outside.
My heart jumps in my throat as I head back to the living room.
Sticking my phone in my back pocket, I step into my ankle boots by the door, and grab my sweater from the hook. Locking the door behind me, I stand on the porch for a breath, hoping to steady myself.
At first, I don't see him. His truck is parked in the deeper shade at the back of the parking lot behind my apartment. He looks like he belongs to the night. Big shoulders, easy stride, hat low, eyes catching a slice of moonlight as he comes toward me when I reach the bottom of the stairs.
"Asher," I whisper, because his name is the only thing I can find.
He stops at the foot of the steps, not quite touching, not quite staying away. "I wasn’t sure you would come outside."
"You shouldn’t be here," I say, but it is quiet and soft—nothing close to a real no.
"Probably not." His voice is low and rough. "But I couldn’t make myself drive away."
I pull the sweater tighter around me as if it could hold me in place. I should tell him to leave. He is a man I should not want, a man who makes my life complicated.
But I step toward him anyway.
We stop a breath apart. I can smell him, leather and soap and something like cedar that makes me want to lean in and breathe deeper. I tip my chin up and look at him and think I’m in trouble.
"You make this harder than it should be," I say.
"Good," he answers, and there is the almost smile that gets me every time. "Nothing worth having should be easy."