It was painful and beautiful. She didn’t think she could stand it for another moment, and she didn’t want it to end. In that moment, she felt it all, the good, bad and scary, bound together, inescapable.
She was drowning in it, drowning in him. In what he made her feel. She couldn’t run from it, couldn’t make light of it. Couldn’t shove it to the side.
All she could do was embrace it.
She held on to him, hoping his strength would hold her together because at this point, she didn’t trust her own. And that was a damn scary place to be. But she was with Eli, so it had to be safe, too.
“When I’m with you, I don’t want to be anywhere else,” he said, moving his hand over her hair, sliding his fingers through the strands.
“Me, either,” she said.
It was true. And for a woman who was always so keen to move on to the next place, the next thing, it was a huge and frightening admission.
He shifted their positions so that she was sitting between his thighs, her back to his chest, his fingers gentle as he laced them through her hair. She closed her eyes, a tightening moving from her chest, up her throat, making it hard to breathe. Making her ache.
“Is this what you used to do here?” he asked.
She laughed, a shaky sound that didn’t do anything to loosen the knot of emotion inside her. “Not exactly. I’ve never done anything quite like this.”
“Me, either.”
He tugged lightly on her hair, once, then again. She turned and looked at him, and he kept hold of her. “What are you doing?” she asked.
He cocked his head to the side, a rueful smile on his face. “Braiding your hair.” He kept his eyes on hers as he wove another section together. “Is that okay?”
She looked at his face, at the sincerity in his eyes. Sincerity and caring she’d never had directed at her before, and that she’d never hoped to deserve. The walls inside her cracked and she had to fight to keep the tears that welled up in her eyes from spilling down her cheeks.
Because when he said that, what she heard was I’m taking care of you.
“Yeah,” she said, the word a whisper. “It’s okay.”
She closed her eyes while he finished, focusing on breathing. On not breaking down completely over this moment. On not betraying everything she felt.
He slid his thumb down the side of her neck, his touch gentle. “Done.”
She turned back to him again. She wanted to say so much. And nothing, and everything.
He leaned in slowly, his breath fanning across her cheek. Then he kissed her, and she let herself get lost in it. In a kiss that wasn’t meant to start anything, wasn’t meant to arouse. A kiss that was meant to forge a connection. An outpouring of all the emotion their joining had brought to the surface.
Panic clawed at her as she realized the kiss would have to end. This moment would have to end.
She didn’t want the kiss to end, because when it did, they would have to deal with what happened next. And part of her was already panicking about that. Part of her was feeling the need to run.
This was deep. And it was real. And the most terrifying four-letter word she could think of was pushing into her consciousness, hovering on the edge of her lips, burrowing into her heart.
And that was the one thing she hadn’t wanted. The thing she feared more than anything.
But the kiss had to end. And it did. When they parted he slid his thumb over the edge of her lip. “Sadie...”
“We should go,” she said, terror gnawing at her. Terror that he was going to say what she was trying not to think. That he wouldn’t say it. That he would never say it. Or that he would now when she wasn’t sure she could deal with hearing it.
She reached back and touched her hair, ran her fingertips over the imperfect braid. “We really should go,” she repeated.
“Uh...yeah,” he said, letting out a big gust of air. “You’re right. The barbecue. It’s your baby. You...you should be there for it.”
“Well, yeah,” she said, wrapping her arms around her midsection. “I kind of should. Sorry about... Not much of a seduction, I guess.”
He met her gaze, his eyes intense. “I don’t know if I’d say that.”
She breathed in deeply through her nose, smoke burning her nostrils, and frowned. “I would have thought they’d be powering down the grills about now. It’s getting dark.”
“Maybe that many more people showed up,” he said, sounding slightly grim and serious, and it was probably her fault. For cutting him off. For bringing him out here and spilling her guts and then basically telling him nothing of what she was feeling because it all scared her too much.
“We can hope,” she said, rounding up the blanket and holding it tight against her chest. Like she was trying to apply pressure to a wound, and in some ways, she felt like that’s exactly what she was doing.
Eli picked up the uneaten food, and Sadie mourned it slightly, because she didn’t feel like eating at all now. She was too full. Of feelings she didn’t want to sort through. Emotions she didn’t want to have.
They headed back toward the ranch, cutting through the trees, Sadie taking the lead and not walking hand in hand with Eli, like she sort of wished she could.
You can’t bolt if he’s holding on to you.
The smoke got thicker as they got closer to the ranch, the wind bringing a wall of it their direction. “What the hell?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” she said. “That’s not... That’s not normal.”
Eli picked up the pace, passing her, before he moved into a dead run. She followed after him, clutching the blanket against her pounding heart.
She was saying things. Worried things. Things with swearing. But she couldn’t really make sense of them. They were just pouring out of her mouth without any kind of specific order or reason. Fear, irrational at this point, but intuitively driving her on.
