“You know what you want and you go for it.”
“I didn’t always.” He had lovely hands, smooth and strong, like Michelangelo’s David. “I wanted to be a great artist. Remember?”
“You are an artist. You were just searching for the right medium.”
Something burned the back of my throat, the alcohol or the compliment. I swallowed. “I think that’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me.”
“Then the guys in New York must be blind. Or dickheads.”
The cocktail warmed me all the way down. “Let’s just say they don’t focus on my work ethic.” I took another sip of my drink. “My sisters used to say I was all over the place.”
“Nope. It took you a while to figure out what you wanted, that’s all. But you don’t give up.”
“Even when I should. Remember my quilting phase?”
“Was that before or after pottery?”
He knew me so well. “After pottery. Before sculpture.”
“You tried to make a mold of your hand.”
“Ididmake a mold of my hand.”
“You got stuck in the plaster.”
“And Jo had to cut me out.”
I’d never had this with another guy, this common language, thisshared history. Like when I got together with my sisters, all of us talking at once, completing one another’s sentences, finishing one another’s stories.
“Do you still have a scar?” Trey asked.
I rotated my wrist, exposing the thin white line where Jo had stabbed me, freeing me from the plaster.
He stared down at it for a long moment before he turned his hand over, revealing the puncture at the base of his thumb where he’d jabbed himself baiting my fishhook when I was twelve years old.
He smiled crookedly. “We match.”
Feeling flooded my chest, a rush of lust and tenderness. I touched the tiny scar with my finger. “Thanks for letting me tag along.”
“I didn’t always. Remember the time you followed me and Jo in your father’s canoe?”
Was he really going there? To the times I’d been unwanted. Left behind. “I was stupid.”
“Fearless,” he said. “You’re not afraid of anything.”
“I’m afraid of lots. Afraid of failing. Afraid of disappointing people.”
His gaze was steady on mine. “You’ve never disappointed me.”
“Because you don’t want anything from me.”
“I want you,” he said. “But only when you’re ready.”
He took my breath away. “No expectations, huh?”
“No pressure,” he said, his voice scraping low in my stomach, and, oh God, I wanted him, his basic decency, his dark, stormy eyes, his lightning-quick smile.
I wanted him, and it didn’t matter this time that it wouldn’t last, that it would hurt—so much—when I left and it was over.
