Page 67 of In The Weeds
I’m looking forward to our date, whenever he decides to follow through on that particular promise.
I’m also looking forward to throwing him down on the nearest flat surface and having my way with him.
I’ve caught him staring at the kitchen table a couple of times since that morning, his thumb at his bottom lip and a look of deep concentration on his serious face. I’ve caught myself staring at it, too.
My restraint is hanging on by a thread, bolstered only by Beckett’s extended time in the greenhouse. He disappears there every free moment he has, mumbling something about making space and clearing clutter. Spring cleaning, he says.
Nothing to do with a duck.
But I’ve seen four packages arrive this week and I know the man isn’t buying duck food for himself. The smallest box contained a tiny little golfer’s hat with a bright red poof on top that Beckett snatched away as soon as he saw me with it, his cheeks a furious shade of pink.
By Wednesday, I’m a tangled up mess of tension. I sit at the kitchen table with my legs folded beneath me, my laptop open but my gaze fixed firmly out the back window. I catch a glimpse of him every now and again through the fogged glass of the greenhouse, his tall form bowed over something, his hand braced flat against the window, fingers spread wide. I have to turn away and busy myself with emails, lose myself in work in an effort to forget how that hand felt against my skin. How the sun lit up every single line and ridge of his body, his shirt thrown to some corner of the kitchen. The cut of his hips and the trail of hair below his belly button, the thick press of him against the front of his flannel pants.
I put my head down briefly over my computer and tap it there twice.
Beckett is a complication in my plan. My wishy-washy plan that doesn’t have a timeline or a clear end point. It would be easier if all I wanted was his body—to fall into bed with him and bury my confusion with the things he makes me feel. But I don’t. I want late nights on his back porch and stories about the stars. I want dirt on my hands and that smile on his face, the quiet one that inches up in fractions.
Last night he found me on the back porch, tucked in my chair with a blanket wrapped around my shoulders. I had been in a foul mood, annoyed with myself and my inability to just—figure this out. Get it together. Be better. He had watched me quietly with his shoulder propped against the door and asked:
“Did you find your happy today?”
I ground my teeth and shook my head. A quick jerk. “No.”
He had hummed once, head tilting to look out over the fields. “You want a hug?”
And that had been its own sort of magic, hadn’t it? He hadn’t tried to fix it. Just … asked if he could hold me through it.
I nodded and he wordlessly collapsed in the seat next to me, patting his thigh once. I shuffled over to him and curled up in his arms, my head nestled under his chin, his palm a heavy weight against my back, sweeping from my shoulders to my hip. A gentle pressure. A quiet affirmation.
My job means I travel all the time. This trip to Inglewild is the longest I’ve stayed in one place since I turned twenty. I’ve always had an itch under my skin to explore. It still flares to life now and again, but these days it’s tinged with exhaustion. More muscle memory than any sort of compulsion propelling me forward. I don’t want to go.
I want to stay.
I direct my attention back to my laptop and scan my email for the note from Josie. She sent over the information for Theo yesterday, the guy from the small business group that’s been reaching out. I tap out a quick message to him about connecting and hit send, the back door creaking open as I finish.
I glance up at Beckett, dirt covering his hands and in a smudge above his left eyebrow.
“How are the plants today?”
“They’re fine.” He glances down at his dirty hands and then back to me. There’s consideration there, like the only thing keeping him from throwing me against the table I’m sitting at is the topsoil on his palms. I curl mine into fists. “Can you be ready to go in an hour?”
“Ready to go?”
He nods. “Yeah. Ready to go out.”
I stare at him and wait for an explanation. He doesn’t give me one.
“Out where, Beckett?”
“On our date,” he tells me. A smile starts in his eyes. “You still want to?”
I nod. I absolutely want to. I was starting to think he forgot about it. That maybe it was just something he said in the heat of the moment.
I push back from the kitchen table and stand. “Where are we going?”
His smile spreads until he’s biting his bottom lip against the force of it. “Not very far.”
“Are you warm enough?”
