“I’m a specific person.” He cups my face in his hands, and the touch sends warmth spreading through me. “Can I kiss you now? I’ve been craving it for a week.”
“Only a week?”
“Fine. Longer. Much longer. Since the first time I saw you, probably, even though I was too stupid to admit it.”
“That’s better.”
He kisses me, and it’s soft and slow and tastes like homecoming. Like relief. Like everything I’ve been waiting for.
When we break apart, he rests his forehead against mine. “Take me home?”
“Yeah.” I smile. “Let’s go home.”
“So,” he says as we reach my car. “What did I miss?”
“Gran started TikTok beef with some influencer in Hudson. Diego thinks I’m ready to tap some trees and boil sap. Oh, and Latonya is convinced we’re getting married.”
“Latonya doesn’t waste time.”
“She’s naming a breakfast special after me: Sunny and Sappy.”
“I would happily break my other ankle for eggs and pancakes right now,” Asher says, tossing his bag in the backseat. He turns to look at me. “And you? How are you?”
“Better now.” I reach up and touch his face, the scruff of his beard rough under my fingers. “I’m really glad you’re back.”
“Me too.” He catches my hand and presses a kiss to my palm. “I might be unemployed, but at least I’m home.”
We both wince, the specter of Asher’s financial situation thick between us. He looks at me with an intensity that makes my breath catch. “You’re home to me, Eva. You and Fork Lick and this unpredictable life we’re building. You’re the only variable I want.”
I don’t have words for what I’m feeling, so I kiss him instead.
22
Asher
Eva says I’m staring, and it’s probably true. I don’t want to look away from her as we sit in my kitchen nibbling dinosaur nuggets, holding hands. “You know,” she says around a bite of stegosaurus, “you’re starting to look like a caveman.”
I reach up to my beard. I haven’t felt up to grooming myself between the ankle and the loss of the only career I’ve ever known. “Yeah.”
Eva glances up at the clock in the kitchen. “We have a few hours before Gran is expecting us for family dinner.” She dabs at her mouth with a napkin. “What if I shave you?”
The suggestion lights up my circuit board completely. On the one hand, I look feral. On the other, there is no way I could contain myself while Eva stood in front of me holding a blade. “I’ll shave it.”
“But what if I want to?” She traces a socked-up toe along my calf. “I have a bar of goat milk soap from my sister… and I think it will be sexy.”
I swallow, unable to be chill a second longer after the word sex escapes her lips. I nod and stand abruptly, my chair skittering across the linoleum, and hobble toward the stairs and up to the bathroom.
I shed my shirt and sit on the toilet lid as Eva appears, holding a neatly wrapped cake of soap that smells of cedar and sage. She grabs a towel, turns on the tap, and rummages around for my razor. Somewhere along the way, she sheds her flannel until she’s in a white tank top, the cotton so thin I see the shadows of her areolas through the material. She’s not wearing a bra, and I grip the edge of the counter to avoid mauling her while she’s holding something sharp.
Eva grins. She works a brush against the soap, building a lather that fills the small room with woodsy, herbal scent. I watch her hands—competent, precise, almost meditative in their circular motion. She is exquisite and, somehow, mine.
“Tilt your head back.”
I do, and she steps between my spread knees. The position puts her stomach at my eye level. Specifically, it puts the soft curve of her belly, visible through the thin cotton, approximately four inches from my mouth. I close my eyes.
“Keep still.” She starts applying the lather with the brush, working it into the grain of my beard with slow, deliberate strokes. The bristles are softer than I expected—almost ticklish on my throat. Her other hand cups the back of my head, steadying me, her fingers threaded into my hair.
This is going to be a problem.
