“He takes after his old man.”
A bark of laughter escapes me, and JD bumps my hip.
Trevor washes his hands at the sink then sticks his finger in the cookie dough. Renee promptly smacks it away. “Patience. Geesh, you’re as bad as Dustin.”
He touches her shoulder, and she looks up at him, andholy shit. So many things become crystal clear with that brief exchange. Renee is crushing on Trevor. Does my brother feel the same way? How do I feel about it? Was Renee his mysterious Wednesday date? Are they sleeping together?Do you really want to know if they are? Nope. Not a picture that I want stuck in my brain.
Ben goes over and kisses Lillie goodbye with a promise to be back to pick her up in a few hours. “Thanks again,” he tells me, and I walk him to the door.
Standing out on the portico, I wave bye and watch Ben get into his car and drive away. Turning around, I smack into a hard chest. I know it’s JD without even looking up.
“You’re like a freaking ninja.”
He wraps his arms around my waist and for the life of me, I don’t understand why I don’t try to wriggle out of it.
“Knox here tonight?”
“No,” I reply, not able to look him in the eye as I wait for the guilt I know will creep up inside of me at the fact that my traitorous body is deliriously happy to be in JD’s arms. “He’s at the Fields tonight.”
JD slowly moves us until I’m backed up against the house. “That’s good,” he says with a bare whisper of his baritone voice.
I find the courage to gaze up and am met with fathomless navy-blue eyes. “Why is that good?”
“Because if he were here, I wouldn’t do this,” he tells me, then shows me as he takes my face and leans in, pressing his full lips to mine and holding them there.
It’s as if all the oxygen is sucked from my lungs and my senses heighten to hyper-proportions. His kiss is so simple, yet so devastating, and I’m left disoriented when he pulls back. No, disoriented isn’t the right word. I’m left wanting, craving, desperate, needy, ravenous. Those words better fit with how I’m feeling.
JD isn’t able to pull back far because my hands are clasping the front of his shirt in a death grip. He caresses the side of my face and my eyes close at his touch.
“You and me, sunshine. We’re happening. Get ready for it. No more running, for either of us.”
JD said something similar to me a long time ago after the first night we kissed. He takes a step back and runs the backs of his knuckles down my skin from my shoulders to my hands. “If you don’t mind having one more guest, I’d like to stick around.”
Clearing my throat, I nod, but I don’t speak. The man has rendered me speechless at the moment. I unfurl my fingers from his shirt. This back and forth between me and JD is going to be the death of me.
Knox. Think about Knox. Your promise.
“I thought you were hanging with Dustin tonight,” I finally say.
“I’d rather hang out with you,” he replies, smiling his signature crooked grin that has a habit of turning me into a blabbering schoolgirl with a crush.
I slide myself along the wall, needing a few inches of space to quell the effect he has on me.
“The cookies should be ready, and Renee must be wondering by now where I’ve gotten off to.”
“Hey, Aurora?”
I open the front door and twist around to see him. JD is illuminated by the porch lights and the lights from the fountain behind him. This time, unlike in high school, I do hear the choir of angels singing loudly as the light bends around his massive frame.
“Yeah?”
“You once told me that everyone leaves. What you failed to realize is that sometimes they come back. They stay.”
I nod, not having a response to that, and walk inside to the smell of freshly baked cookies.
Chapter 54
April in Highland, North Carolina can be both a blessing and a curse. It’s a blessing when the sun is out and temperatures hover in the lower sixties. It can be a curse when we get a stalled front that hangs around for days, releasing nothing more than a monotonous steady drizzle. Those days are the worst. I would rather it thunderstorm and rain buckets, or not at all. I hate the misty shit that seems to cling to everything. On those days, my hair frizzes out like Bozo the Clown’s and the earth carries the unpleasant aroma of mildew. Luckily, today is one of the good, sunny days. Well, it was a good day until two minutes ago.
