Page 80 of In The Weeds
He nods. “If we wait for them to do it, it’ll be next week. I don’t want the trees to dry out.”
“Can’t have that,” I mumble, still half-asleep. His smile widens.
“No, we can’t.”
“How long will you be gone?”
“Not long. We should be back tomorrow night.”
I sit up on the bed and rub my hands against my eyes. Prancer lets out a plaintive meow from her place at the edge of the bed, upset by the disruption. I drop my hands and yawn in Beckett’s general direction. “I’ll come with you.”
He shakes his head and shifts forward to brush a kiss against my lips. Soft. Perfect. “Stay here,” he says. He hesitates for a second and then curls his hand around my neck, his palm sweeping against sleep-warm skin. “Sleep in my bed while I’m gone, yeah? I’ll see you when I get back.”
I collapse back to the pillows and blankets with a grateful sigh and bury my face in flannel. “You’re sure?”
“Yeah, I’m sure.” The mattress dips at my waist and warm lips drift across my forehead. “Get some rest.”
“Have fun with the trees,” I mumble.
The last thing I hear before I drift back to sleep is his rough chuckle, his fingertips carding through my hair.
When I wake up again,I’m curled on Beckett’s side of the bed, clinging to the sleeve of a flannel hanging from the bedpost. I laugh at myself and give in to an indulgent stretch beneath the comforter. There hadn’t been a discussion last night as to where I would sleep. We stumbled in from the greenhouse with our clothes rumpled and I followed Beckett into his bedroom. I draped my body over his, pressed a sleepy kiss to his mouth and fell asleep with his arm slung over my hip.
He grumbled about me hogging the blankets, but I woke up in the middle of the night to Beckett holding most of them close to his chest, his face buried in my hair.
I reach blindly for my phone on the nightstand, squinting at the screen. The house sounds too quiet without Beckett here. I miss the sound of drawers opening in the kitchen, metal spoons and the clink of his coffee mug.
10:37 am
Josie:Text me when you’ve got a second. I’ve got news.
I tap her name and let my phone rest against my chest as it begins to ring. I stretch out my legs with another groan.
“You don’t need to sound so smug,” Josie says when she answers, catching the tail end of my stretching sounds. I let my body flop back to the bed, my arms above my head. My hand brushes against something soft and cool and I wrap my fingers around it.
A long green stem. A cluster of small blue blooms. Meadow sage, I think it’s called.
I hold it under my nose with a smile.
“What’s your news?”
“Nuh-uh,” Josie admonishes. “You were way too short on our video call. I have things I want to discuss first.”
I said maybe two words to Josie the other morning in the kitchen before I slammed the laptop shut. Luckily she had been too gobsmacked by the appearance of Beckett’s bare torso to do anything but gape like a fish.
I guess she’s collected herself.
“I’d like to start with the tattoo along his collarbone and work my way down.”
I laugh. “No.”
“I took a quick screenshot, but he moved. It’s kind of blurry.”
“You … what?”
“I’m gonna frame it and put it on my wall.”
“No, you’re not.”
