Page 25 of Slow Burn (Driven 5)
h now. “Your poppy would get so mad because we’d leave them drying all over the place, and then yell at him not to move them and disturb the wishes on them. He even started calling us the dandelion duo for a while.”
“The dandelion duo?” She smiles as she looks at me, and I nod toward the weed in my hand. “Did your wishes ever come true?” The awe in her voice tugs at everything inside of me.
“All the time.” I reach over with my free hand and run it over her cheek. “In fact, the one your mom wished the hardest for happened.”
“It did? What was it?”
I smile, tears burning the back of my eyes. “It was you,” I whisper. Maddie’s eyes lock on mine, the grin spreading on her face, but the sorrow glistening in her eyes. I put my arm around her and pull her in close to my side. We sit there quietly for a moment while I figure out how to make her a part of this, a way to feel close to her mom. “Do you want to be part of the dandelion duo?”
Startled, she bounces her head up, huge brown eyes staring at me full of hope. “Can I? What do I need to do?”
“Well, you need to make a wish, and the way a dandelion sister makes a wish is by saying, ‘I wish I may, I wish I might, have this wish I wish tonight’ … and then you close your eyes, make your wish, and blow as hard as you can on the seeds so they take flight.”
“That’s all I have to do?”
“Yep. Would you like to become one now?”
“Yes!”
I hold the dandelion out for her to take in her hand. She looks over at me and I nod for her to go ahead. “I wish I may, I wish I might, have this wish I wish tonight….” She squeezes her eyes and falls silent for a moment as she makes her wish before blowing all of the seeds into the air.
“Look,” I tell her so she opens her eyes and watches. “One day one of those seeds carrying your wish is going to come back and bring you your wish, okay?” She nods her head before resting it in the crook of my arm as we watch the last of the seeds disappear. Memories flash through my mind, so faded by time but there nonetheless, and I feel a soft contentment at being able to share this with Maddie. “See, now anytime you see a dandelion, you’ll know it’s a sign from your mom since now you’re officially part of the dandelion duo.”
We sit there a while longer before gathering our stuff. We walk toward the parking lot and decide to stroll through the farmers’ market on the way to the car. Of course, Maddie’s eyes stop on every booth, and we pause numerous times to ooh and ahh at the random items on display.
We are busy discussing why she doesn’t need the huge bag of kettle corn she’s eyeing since she still has smudges of chocolate ice cream on her face from her snack moments before when I freeze at the sound of the slow, familiar cadence behind me. I know it can’t possibly be him, but it’s not like I can resist looking because before my brain even tells my mind to stay focused forward, I’m already turning my head.
At the same moment that my eyes lock on the owner of the voice, his eyes find mine. And all of my resolve, every damn bogus, bullshit lie I’ve told myself about not wanting more with Beckett comes tumbling down around me when our eyes meet.
I feel that instantaneous spark—that firing of desire in my core—when a slow, lopsided smirk spreads on his lips. My vanity has me immediately cringing at my cutoff denim shorts and oversized shirt hanging off of my shoulder. My hair piled high on top of my head in a messily fashionable ponytail compensates for my complete lack of makeup.
Or so I tell myself.
We hold each other’s gaze for a moment, while we both try to figure out what the other’s eyes are saying. And then my chance to infer any meaning there is knocked clear to the wayside when I notice an arm looped through Becks’s. I follow the arm up to take in the woman at his side. She says something to him, and he looks at me a moment longer before turning to see what she’s pointing to.
I can’t tear my eyes away from them. I don’t want to acknowledge the pang of jealousy that starts gnawing through me at the sight of him with another woman. And not just any woman, but a woman who’s the complete opposite of me. Dark and exotic compared to my blond hair and dime-a-dozen cow brown eyes.
Maddie tugs on my hand and breaks my trance. And as I’m pulled back to the here and now, as I blindly buy the popcorn for her because my mind is so rattled by seeing Becks with someone else, I find myself dismayed by the fact that for the first time ever, I feel completely insecure.
What the hell is he doing to me?
I silently chastise myself, tell myself to pull on my big-girl thong and own it like a stripper does her pole, but I think I’m a little stunned at the realization that my ever-confident self has pulled a disappearing act. And even now I’m at a loss because I suddenly notice that the guy who handed me the kettle corn is staring at me like I’ve lost it until I realize I’ve paid and am blocking the next customer in line.
Fuck.
I let Maddie lead as she pulls my hand while I attempt to come to grips with this foreign feeling of inadequacy inside me. I laugh. Mad thinks I’m laughing at her excitement over the popcorn, but in all honesty, I’m dumbfounded that of all men to make me feel this way, it’s Becks.
Wanting more of him is most definitely a possibility … but it’s the what comes after that’s not in the cards for me.
And while I sit at a picnic table shoveling popcorn in my mouth without thinking, it hits me. This is how he must have felt when he called the house and Dante answered his phone. No wonder he was a prick to me.
But Dante is no one, and she … she obviously is someone to him.
It’s not like I care or anything.
Before I can finish lying to myself, I look up from the bag of popcorn, and he’s right in front of me. Or rather his abdomen is, and that in itself causes my breath to hitch as I recall the feel of my fingers over the defined muscles beneath his T-shirt. I have to angle my head up to meet his shadowed eyes under the brim of his baseball cap.
“Dante.”
