My legs straighten out from under the blanket I'm wearing, meeting the cool night air. I reach out, fingers fluttering. "Ooh, gimme. This has been fun."
Penn presses the gift into my hand with a flourish. "It's the last one. A gift for every birthday I missed." The pearlescent paper shimmers in the light from the moon.
"Did you wrap these yourself?"
He nods, looking proud. "I watched some how-to videos."
"That is unbelievably cute." I tap the top of the box. "May I?"
"Go for it," Penn says, scooting his chair closer.
Cedar and citrus swirls around me. His knee presses against mine, body heat moving through his gray sweats and surrounding my leg. His Adam's apple bobs with a hard swallow. Desire unfurls in my belly, slow and hot. It takes me back to our movie night, to the fire in his gaze.
I pause with my finger under a flap of wrapping paper. I'm nervous to bring up last weekend and the way I basically threw myself at him, but if not now, when? "Penn, when we were at your place last weekend after we watched the movie, and...you know. Did you stop it because of Duke? Or was it something else?"
Penn leans forward, elbows resting on his knees, chin propped on his hand. He's so close, I could stroke his cheek. Fire ignites in his gaze, hot desire plain on his face. "Sunshine, there's no part of me that doesn't want to ravage you. Please understand that."
The things I want to do to you. That's what he'd said, and it's been tormenting me relentlessly since.
He continues. "I know you and Duke have some kind of agreement, which I still need you to explain." He's looking at me, chin still in his hand, his head tilted. I can't believe we're having this conversation, so calm and matter-of-fact. "Daisy, I've never stopped thinking about you. Caring for you. I thought Icould come back here and make it out in one piece, but that was foolish, because a piece of me was always with you. I haven't been whole since I was thirteen. Since I was last with you."
Oh, my heart. It's twisting and turning, flipping and cartwheeling.
"Please believe me when I say it has been a unique form of torture to be around you and know you're engaged. In my mind, I have done all manner of delicious and dirty things to you. Touching you, making you see stars, would be a privilege, but I won't do it while another man's ring is on your finger."
I squirm as heat pools low in my belly. I want to take Penn in my house and see what I can do to get him to change his mind.
But I also need to be honest with him, just like he was honest with me.
"It's not real," I whisper in my quietest voice, one that makes Penn scoot his closer, until our knees are touching. "Duke needs to get his dad and the board of Hampton & Co. off his back. And my mom, she's..." My voice trails off. I hate thinking about the eventuality. "She wants to see me walk down the aisle in her wedding dress. It's been her dream since I was a little girl."
Penn reaches for my hand, his fingers threading through mine. "Do you really think she'd want you to marry someone you don't love?"
I've turned the same question over in my mind hundreds of times. And the answer is no, she would not want me to marry somebody I don't love. But she thinks I love Duke. She thinks she's going to leave this world behind, and her little girl will be happily married. It brings her peace to think I found the person I want by my side for the rest of my life, and how can I take that from her?
"It's complicated," I murmur.
"Sounds like it," is all that Penn says in response.
"Thank you for not judging me."
"I would never." He flips my hand over, tracing the lines in my palm. His touch creates a spark that goes flying through my limbs. "It all makes more sense now," he says, catching my gaze. "You and Duke have zero chemistry."
"Not like me and you, Pete." I can't help but tease him.
"Very funny," Penn says, a smile tugging at his mouth. "Open your present."
He drops my hand, and I reach for the box perched in my lap, turning it over to read the tag.
To make you smile.
Happy birthday.
Carefully, I unwrap the gift, revealing a mini-puzzle of a pygmy hippo family.
"Oh," I whisper, my hand pressing to my mouth. "They are my favorite."
"I was hoping they still were."
