“Your style being...?”
“Hopelessly, embarrassingly into you.” He pulled back just enough to meet my eyes. “In case that wasn’t clear.”
“It was becoming apparent.”
“Was it the yoga? I felt like the yoga might have been too obvious.”
“The yoga was extremely obvious. I couldn’t write a single word.”
“That was the goal.” He was laughing now, and I was laughing too, and we were standing in the snow in front of a destroyed cabin kissing like teenagers, and I couldn’t remember the last time I’d felt this happy.
Maybe never. Maybe this was new.
“Come on,” Samuel said, taking my hand. “Let’s go home.”
Home. He’d called my cabin home. Our cabin. Ours.
I let him lead me back through the snow, our fingers intertwined, and thought: this is what I was so afraid of? This?
Chapter Fifteen
Samuel
Farley Davenport had kissed me, and now neither of us knew what to do about it.
Oh, we were handling it fine on the surface. We’d walked back to the cabin holding hands and made lunch together without incident. We’d sat on the couch with Purrsephone between us, pretending to read while stealing glances at each other like teenagers at a school dance.
But there was something new in the air now. A charge. An awareness that hummed beneath every casual touch and lingering look.
We’d crossed a line, and neither of us was pretending we could un-cross it.
“We need to go to Shifflett’s,” Farley announced, breaking a silence that had stretched just past comfortable. “We’re almost out of coffee.”
“Okay.”
“And you need toiletries. Since yours are buried under a tree.”
“Also true.”
He stood up, all business, reaching for his coat. But I caught the way his eyes lingered on my mouth before he turned away. The way his hand wasn’t quite steady on the zipper.
Interesting.
“Is this a date?” I asked because I couldn’t help myself.
Farley paused mid-zip. “It’s a supply run.”
“A supply run where you kissed me two hours ago and now you’re taking me to town.”
“Correlation isn’t causation.”
“That’s not a no.”
He finished zipping his coat with more force than necessary. “Are you coming or not?”
I grinned and grabbed my jacket.
Shifflett’s General Store was blessedly quiet when we arrived. The teenager behind the counter gave me a long look—the kind that said I know exactly who you are—but returned to their phone without comment. Small mercies.
