Responsibilities were something altogether new to me. Of course, I paid my bills, and when I had a scheduled shoot, I made sure my ass was there on time. But that was pretty much the extent of them. Or had been since I’d run from this town.
While my little taste of Havenbrook showed that it may not have been as bad as I remembered, my hometown was still suffocating. Mostly because being here came with certain expectations. Ones my daddy had etched in stone for me from the time I was born.
Havens don’t behave that way. Havens can’t be seen doing that. Dammit, Nat, why can’t you be more like your sisters?
I’d fled, not just for adventure, but to escape the expectations of being born into the family I hadn’t had a choice about.Probably why I’d made my own family with Asher and Nash. Had made my own way, too. I’d never fit in a box, and certainly not the one my daddy had made for me. I’d always been a rule breaker. Always marched to the beat of my own drum. And Richard Haven had never accepted it. Though that wasn’t exactly a surprise, since he was as pigheaded as they came.
What was surprising was that he’d come to accept my sisters just fine. Even despite Will marrying a man he’d always hated, Rory bucking all convention and rejecting his money and assistance while forging her own way with a man seven years her junior, and Mac taking his job from him. Though that hadn’t been my sister’s intent, it certainly had to sting all the same.
But still, my sisters went and had Sunday supper every week with the family, and my daddy supported them, even if it was in the twisted way he had. But me? I didn’t even get the twisted version, though I did get the promise of a more respectable job, thanks to the family connections.
“Believe me,” Asher said, “if I were gonna tie you up, we wouldn’t be leavin’ the bedroom.”
My brows flew up toward my hairline as I stared at him. Images of him doing just that bombarded me, and I shifted in my seat, my pussy tingling at the mere thought. “Sounds like a fun, childless day to me. So, why aren’t we doin’ that again?”
“Damn, wifey, are you always this insatiable?” He glanced over at me with a smile. “I think we’ve proven we don’t need Rory to take the kids for me to fuck you. I didn’t wanna waste our free day wrapped up in bed.”
“Wow,” I said, dragging out the word. “I must be doin’ something wrong, if that’s the case.”
He huffed out a humorless laugh and shook his head. “Believe me, if you do anything any more right, you wouldn’t be able to drag me out of bed in the first place.”
I bit my bottom lip and glanced down, hiding the grin that had crept across my mouth. A grin that shouldn’t even be there in the first place. I didn’t smile at sweet words from a man, and I certainly didn’t get giddy from them. WhowasI? And what the hell was this thing that was happening between us?
It was something I’d been asking myself since the wedding, but I hadn’t come up with anything yet. And though it was scary wading through whatever this was without answers, that was how I did everything in life. Leaped without looking, consequences be damned.
“What’d Will want this mornin’ when she called?” I asked.
He reached over, interlacing our fingers, and rested our joined hands on my leg. “She was hopin’ I’d play at her wedding next weekend.”
“Yeah? You gonna do it?”
“Of course.” He glanced over at me before returning his attention back to the road, the trees whipping past on either side as he drove us to our destination. “Might play this new song I’ve been workin’ on.”
“That why you’ve been scribbling in your notebook so much and hummin’ under your breath?”
“Maybe.”
“Yeah?” I asked. “You plannin’ on lettin’ your wife hear that anytime soon?”
He flashed me a grin—one that shot straight through my insides. “If you’re lucky.”
I hummed and leaned over, scraping my teeth against the sharp cut of his jaw. “Maybe I’ll get lucky a couple times tonight, then.”
Pressing my lips to his neck, I trailed kisses along his skin, my body on fire for him even though it’d only been hours since he’d been inside me. Hours since he’d groaned my name againstmy ear as he’d fucked me from behind. Hours since the sound of it had sent shock waves through me.
I was half a second away from telling him to pull over, destination be damned, when recognition dawned as I registered our whereabouts.
“Wait a minute.” I sat back in my seat. “We goin’ where I think we are?”
Asher slid me a glance out of the corner of his eyes, a smile tipping his lips. “Well, I couldn’t exactly get us tickets to Bora Bora. But I figured you deserved a little adventure, even if we couldn’t leave Havenbrook to find it.”
I grinned as the car came to a stop, my stomach flip-flopping over…everything. That he would set this up for me. For us. Plan a day that I’d love just because. One he knew, without question, I’d enjoy.
But more than that, it filled up my heart that he knew I needed this day even before I knew it myself.
I unbuckled my seat belt and stared out the windshield to the banks of trees lining Havenbrook Creek. A rock ridge we used to jump off soared straight out of the swimming hole that had been practically a second home to us.
Back when we were nothing but troublemaking teens, we’d come out here dozens of times, bringing our dumb asses down to the creek with none of our parents any the wiser. And one time had nearly been my last.
