21
SAWYER
LATER THAT NIGHT, I sat out on the front porch while Beckett washed off the day inside.
I had wine. I had stars. A cozy blanket. Hell, I had a lake view that people paid a fortune for.
I was sitting out there enjoying it all because I wanted to and not because I was tempted, once again, to bust in on Beckett’s shower to join him.
Okay, so maybe that was a lie.
The entire day had been a lesson in patience, because every time we accidentally touched, I felt like I was going out of my mind. Whatever was happening here was real—that much was becoming more obvious. It was just so easy with Beckett that holding back was the hard part.
I took a sip from my glass and tried to focus on the quiet instead of my thoughts, which were racing at a million miles an hour.
Kinda like Duchess earlier that morning. The ride, with her trying to remove Beckett from the earth—according to him—had been funny, obviously, and I was going to hold both her and Buttercup over his head for the foreseeable future.
Which was only the rest of a rapidly-flying-by week, but still.
I was notnotthinking about that.
Another sip and I closed my eyes, but then my brain conjured images of Beckett naked and running those strong hands over his body under the hot spray, soon replaced bymyhands feeling him up, all that hard muscle just begging for my touch?—
No. No, I didn’t need to think that. I needed to think of something more platonic. Like how we’d had lunch with my insane brothers, and Rome had told Beckett about his short-lived stunt career because he’d fallen off a horse. He completely neglected to mention that he’d been drunk on champagne and fell into rosebushes, and the prickly thorns were what made him come to that decision, but I’d filled Beckett in on the details.
Yes, good. Platonic. More of that.
I pulled up the cozy blanket and settled back into the Adirondack chair.
We’d run into my moms briefly in the lobby before they headed out for a trail ride of their own, and then quite literally had bumped into Peter and Alec rounding the corner at dinner.
It had been an almost Peter-less day until that point, something I hadn’t even noticed until then. He’d caught me, grabbing my arms before I could knock us both over, and it was strange… His hands didn’t feel like Beckett’s when they steadied me. They didn’t send a charge through my body or make my pulse kick up. I didn’t look into his eyes and feel like they were dragging me under the way a certain pair of blue ones did.
Was I finally getting over Peter? It was a freakin’ miracle.
And I owed it all to the man inside,notshowering,notnaked,notwanting me to thank him on my knees…
Stop. I reached for my bottle of wine and topped off my glass, mostly because it gave my hands something to do.
The cabin door opened behind me, and I looked up before realizing that was a terrible idea.
Beckett stepped onto the porch, hair damp, wearing dark track pants and a Columbia University sweatshirt. So casual, so perfectly at home and sexy, that it made me glad there was a blanket over my lap.
“Nice pants,” I said, trying to keep things light because I was starting to feel the slightest buzz from the wine. Or maybe it was just the effect he had on me. “You do know you’re never escaping the Tracksuit nickname now, right?”
He glanced down at himself and shook his head. “I asked for that.”
“You did.”
“Well, shit.” He settled into the chair beside mine, stretching his legs out in front of him. I could smell his soap and all that warm skin, and wanted to just hold him and breathe him in…before doing much, much naughtier things to his body.
I cleared my throat and sat up, reaching for the glass I’d poured for him. “You thirsty, or are you gonna make me double-fist tonight?”
He smiled, and as he took the glass, his fingers brushed against mine in a way that sent heat straight up my arm and into places I was not allowing my brain to acknowledge.
Not right now, anyway.
“Careful,” he said after taking a sip. “Double-fisting wine on a porch under the stars sounds like the start of a country song.”