Every time I brush up against him, it sends electricity shooting through my body.
I’ve dated some random guys back in Seattle. Another influencer. A guy in law school. Even (though it was a mistake) a guy who lived in our building. But none of them ever mademe feel like this. Maybe Seattle isn’t a good place for romantic chemistry.
Or maybe I’d feel like this no matter who I was holed up with. Eventually, it feels like we’re going to run out of things to do, tasks to keep us busy, and there’s going to be just one option remaining.
Now, on the fourth morning of being stuck, I wake up to find Rowan standing over me. My first thought is that it’s finally happening; he woke up thinking of me and couldn’t stop himself from coming out here. My sleepy mind readily supplies the image of him lowering himself down onto the couch, flipping me over, cradling me in his strong arms.
I even start to shift, to make room for him, but he holds out a pair of leather gloves to me. They smell, and it takes my brain a moment to make out the shape of them in the dim light.
“What are these for?” I ask, yawning, thinkingkinky, until he speaks again.
“Chickens.”
Down in the city, the weather this time of year is cool in the morning and hot at the mid-point of the day, but not up here. Up here, it’s freezing in the mornings and cool during the day, like true fall weather.
I appreciated that when we were working on the rain barrels.
Now, I’m not that happy about it.
“Is this really how you treat your guests?” I grumble sleepily as we walk out to where he keeps his chickens. They, like everything else, are camouflaged fairly well, with something of agrass canopy over the coop, and some of the yard, so they don’t have to be out in the elements if they don’t want to be.
“I’m not sure you know what the wordguestmeans,” he says, and I know his face well enough now to pick out the slight curl to his mouth that means he really wants to smile, but he’s keeping himself from doing it.
For some reason, Rowan is being reserved around me.
The ground is a little firmer now, but I still have to reach out for Rowan’s arm for balance occasionally. He offers it each time, and each time, I feel myself letting my hand linger.
When the chickens see us, they start to cluck and coo instantly, pushing around in a little swarm to get to him. The sound of it sends me straight back to being a little girl, arriving at my dad’s place for the first time. I stop, standing a few feet away from him, holding my breath as I watch Rowan go ahead.
“Good morning, ladies,” he says, and the sight of him towering above all the chickens while they cluck at him is stupidly, ridiculously attractive.
With my ankle still twinging, I’m not a lot of help, but I watch as he pulls their water jug from the coop, spraying it out and refilling it. Then he opens a bag of food — which the chickens go wild for — and scatters it for them.
While they’re busy eating, he collects the eggs with deft hands, setting them in a tray and moving to the next. After a while, watching him move through the space calms me down, and when one of the chickens wanders up to me, I reach down, petting her.
“Wow,” Rowan says, and I glance up at him. He stands still with the egg tray in his hand, staring down at me.
“Wow, what?” I ask, laughing when another chicken comes over to me. I don’t want to get pecked, but they’re too cute to resist.
“Honestly, I half-thought the chickens might send you running.”
“Oh, is that why you brought me out here?” Before he can answer that, I shake my head. “Not my first rodeo.”
“You have chickens back in Seattle?”
I’ve been doing plenty of talking to Rowan — telling him about my journalism program, the stuff Maisie and I get into as roommates, my favorite places around Seattle — but I’ve never so much as touched on my family.
It’s not a topic I like to talk about with anyone. Not even Maisie. And there was something special about keeping it that way with Rowan. Keeping him a perfect outsider, someone who had no idea how far the hurt inside me went.
But, for some reason — maybe the grilled cheese, maybe the way he’s looking at me right now — I open up and tell him the truth.
“My dad had chickens,” I admit, swallowing. “After… he and my mom got divorced, he moved out to this place in Colorado. A real ranch-type thing. He had horses and chickens, actually. He tried to get me to learn how to ride, but I was terrified. I’d heard from one of the girls at school in the city that her brother was kicked by a horse and it nearly killed him, and another kid told me that horses could chomp your hand right off if you weren’t careful.”
I’ve started to ramble to cover up the grief that’s blooming in my belly. Like it does anytime I think about my dad too much.
Clearing my throat, I add lamely, “Anyway, yeah. My dad had chickens.”
“… your dad, is he…?”
