She shook her head. “No, I think you should do it.”
“Yeah, I’ll probably smash you if you go first,” he said, chuckling.
“Smash me?” Lila Mae looked at him with alarm, and he glanced at the hammock, and then back to her.
“Have you ever laid in a hammock, honey?”
She shook her head, and Trap once again marveled at what a perfect creature she was.
“Well, it’s really pretty easy,” he said, his pulse pattering a little bit. “You just lay there and let it hold you up. It’s perfect for a day of rest.”
He turned around and sank into the hammock, coaxing the fabric up under his knees. “The trickiest part is getting in and out. But like I said, you just commit to it.” He laid back and pulled his feet up, toeing off his cowboy boots as he did so. The hammock swayed and rocked, but he grinned as he positioned both hands behind his head. “See? All-in.”
“Yeah, you made that look easy.” Lila Mae eyed the hammock with distrust. “Plus there’s not even room for me in that thing.”
“Of course there is,” Trap said. He grabbed the edge of the fabric and pulled it up. “See? It expands.”
She put one hand on her hip and blew out her breath. “I don’t know, Trap.”
He reached for her but couldn’t quite get her hand. “Then let me do it. You just gotta commit,” he said. “It is easier if you go backward.”
“Fine.” Lila Mae turned around. Trap wished he could put one foot down and steady the still-moving hammock for her, but he couldn’t. She started to sit, and Trap leaned up and wrapped his arms around her, pulling her into the hammock and to his side. She yelped, and her feet flew up, but after only a few tangled, frantic moments, she turned, now nestled into him from shoulder to toe.
“See?” He chuckled at her disgruntled harumph. “Yeah, this is really nice.” He blew out his breath and closed his eyes. “Thank you for lunch,” he said, though he’d already told her how delicious the chicken fried steak and eggs had been.
She claimed to not have learned to cook growing up, but later as an adult. As Trap lay there, breathing in and out with Lila Mae, he realized it didn’t really matter when someone learned to cook, that this difference in their upbringings was inconsequential.
“I’ve been watching this woman online,” Lila Mae said. “She mills her own flour, and makes her own granola bars and thingslike that. It actually looks pretty easy, and I think I’m going to try that this week.”
“That sounds great,” Trap said. “I’m happy to be a taste-tester anytime.” He couldn’t see Lila Mae, but he somehow felt her smile, and her arm across his waist tightened.
“Trap.” Her voice came out almost as a whisper, and he didn’t want to disturb this leafy, beautiful silence any more than she did.
“Hmm?”
“I don’t know how to say this,” she said. “So I guess I’ll just fumble through it and see where we end up.”
His heartbeat jumped, as he hadn’t thought she would bring up anything unrestful on their day of rest together.
They’d sat together at church again, though he hadn’t made the drive out here to pick her up and take her with him. They’d sat with Ty and Winnie, and Colt and Jonas and his mother, as apparently, Sariah had left that morning for a trip down to the district banking office for training this week.
Trap wanted to ask Colt how his double date with her sister had gone, but since it had just happened last night, he hadn’t wanted to be too nosy.
“I guess I’ve just been thinking about what your daddy said,” Lila Mae said. “And then you going to look at a farm this week, and I don’t know, it seems kind of silly.”
“What does?” Trap asked, because she’d brought a lot of ideas together into that single sentence.
“You buying your own place,” she said. “I haveeight hundredacres here, Trap, and what am I going to do with all that?”
“I thought you had a pretty solid plan for the cat sanctuary,” he said.
“Yeah,” she said with a sigh. “But I could definitely dedicate fifty acres, even one hundred, for personal use.”
Trap chuckled. “You need one hundred acres of lawn, Lila Mae?”
“Of course not.” She lifted her head and pushed herself up on her elbow, using his ribs as her solid foundation.
He grunted. “That doesn’t feel great.”
