There was a pause, and he took a deep breath. “I wasn’t okay for a long time. I’m better now.”
His voice was steady, but there was a vulnerability beneath it that made my chest tighten. I could see how much it had taken for him to share this with me.
“That’s good.”
For a second, the corners of his lips twitched, a faint smile flashing across his face before he turned his attention toward the road ahead.
“What about you?”
“What about me?” I repeated, a little thrown off by the shift.
“Any long-term boyfriends I’ll need to fight off?”
I laughed, but the suggestion in his words didn’t slip past me. The way he said it—“fight off”—implied something more, something possessive. It was as if he was laying claim, even subtly.
“Definitely not.”
“Phew. My next question was going to be how much bigger they were, so I’d know how many workouts I’d need before I had to take them on,” he said jokingly.
As I laughed, the sound filling the car, his hand slid off the steering wheel. Without warning, his fingers found their way to my thigh and settled there. The warmth of his touch seeped through the thin satin fabric of my skirt, and before I could stop myself, my breath hitched.
His grip tightened ever so slightly, a slow squeeze, and it sent a wave of electricity coursing through me. My skin tingled where his hand rested, his fingers flexing enough to make me hyperaware of every inch of him.
It wasn’t a gesture I could brush off because there was intention behind it. I didn’t move or pull away. Instead, I let the moment stretch. I wanted to savor the way his hand lingered.
“Not too much farther,” he murmured as we pulled off the highway and started to take the backroads.
I didn’t know where we were, only that we were south of the city.
“I don’t know anything about you except for the fact that you like to go to the lake at night and you take care of your sister after school.”
“Mhmm. That’s about all I do.”
“Come on,” I laughed. “There has to be more to you.
“Eh. What do you want to know?”
“I don’t know. Maybe we can start with what you do for work?” I teased, my eyes drifting down to where his hand still rested on my thigh.
“Not important.”
“What? That is such an important question.” I balked, playfully raising an eyebrow. “You could be a serial killer for all I know.”
He chuckled, his grin widening. “Guess you’ll find out in a few minutes when I pull up to the lake.”
“Stop,” I laughed, settling back into my seat.
“I help Evie’s dad coach kids during the day, then watch my sister after school until my mom gets home. She owns a café,” he explained.
“You’re a coach? For kids?” I repeated, surprised.
Sure, I’d seen him around Evie plenty of times, but he didn’t strike me as the typical guy you’d imagine coaching children. There was something about him—rough around the edges, a little guarded—that made me curious about the side of him I didn’t know.
“Yeah,” he chuckled, turning down a narrow back road, the gravel crunching under the tires as we left the main road behind.
On either side of us, the vast flatness stretched out, fields of corn swaying gently in the breeze. The stalks, once amber and full of life, were starting to fade into shades of yellow, signaling the slow shift of the season.
The sun hung low on the horizon, just about to dip into that golden hour where everything would be bathed in an orange glow. The sky stretched wide, endless and open, and the world felt vast, quiet, as if this moment was all that mattered.
