I force my eyes open. Above me, Jeremy Winslow looks like a man losing a fight he never expected to be in. I reach up, my thumb wiping a bead of sweat near his hairline, and he leans into my touch like it’s the only thing keeping him tethered to the now.
My climax builds slowly this time, a rolling breaker rather than a sudden strike. As my internal muscles coil around him, his pace turns urgent, his movements losing their purposeful cadence as he buries his face in the crook of my neck.
“I’m close.” My voice cracks. “I’m?—”
“I’ve got you, sweetheart,” he repeats on a low growl.
He reaches between us, his thumb finding my already sensitive clit, and the added friction sends me over the cliff. I shout his name into the quiet apartment while my body convulses in a rhythmic release that seems to go on forever. He follows a second later, and the desperate sound that tears from his throat as he collapses against me fills me with an emotion I’m nowhere near ready to name.
We lie there afterward, tangled together on my new sheets that are—true to his word—definitely wrecked. His arm is a solid weight across my waist, and my leg is still hooked over his, neither of us quite ready to let the physical connection go.
I stare up at the ceiling, stained with water marks from a long-ago leak. On my first night in this apartment, those ugly brown stains felt like a reminder of everything I had lost when I left my old life behind. But with Jeremy’s heartbeat thudding steadily against my side, I don’t feel like I’m failing at life. It feels like the future is just getting started.
19
AVAH
The register dingsas I hand the older woman her change, and she peers at me over her reading glasses like she’s trying to ID me in a lineup.
“Are you the one upping The Shack’s cinnamon roll game?”
“JP and Winnie are great bakers,” I say as I slide the white bakery box across the counter, my smile feeling less forced than it would have an hour ago. “My cinnamon rolls aren’t special.”
The woman, likely the last customer of the day, leans in close enough that I can smell her vanilla latte breath. “Honey, they’re beyond special.” She kisses her fingertips like an Italian grandmother in a pasta commercial. “You bake magic.”
“Thank you,” I manage around the lump in my throat.Damn. I really suck at taking compliments.
The bell above the door jingles as she leaves, and I exhale into the brief quiet of the empty shop.
Monday morning at The Sugar Shack, and I’ve been running the front counter and register for the past hour while Winnie’s at a doctor’s appointment. When she asked, I said yes before my brain could catalog all the reasons it was a terrible idea. Sure, I can pitch a marketing strategy to a boardroom full of C-suite executiveswithout breaking a sweat. But standing behind this counter, face to face with the people of Skylark who watched me swan around town for years with my unearned superiority complex? It requires a kind of bravery that’s largely unfamiliar to me.
This town now knows that the me I pretended to be for years was a spectacular act. I was living a life so perfect from the outside, you’d never guess it was slowly smothering me.
Very few know about the physical violence that defined my childhood and after. I prefer to keep that humiliation locked away in a box I don’t open in public, even if it means being painted as the villain in the asshole’s narrative.
No doubt it’s already common knowledge that I’m splitting kitchen shifts with JP. Small towns, as Winnie would say. But I’m still mostly running before dawn and sticking to my book friends like glue. So I was braced for cold shoulders and sideways glances during my time in the front of the shop. Instead, I got compliments and friendly small talk.
I guess it shouldn’t surprise me. Skylark is special. But I’m still recalibrating what I deserve from the world, and kindness from near strangers continues to catch me off guard.
I grab a cloth from behind the counter and start wiping down the espresso machine, replaying the weekend in my head like a movie I’m ready to cue up on repeat. Jeremy in my bed Friday night, whispering my name like it was the only word that mattered, and then waking up Saturday morning tangled in my new sheets, his breath warm against the back of my neck. I’d had to fight the urge to slide out from under him and wreck the moment way worse than the sheets. Kick him out and reestablish those necessary boundaries. Because real life isn’t a game I can win.
Then I’d rolled over and studied the way sleep softened his normally serious features. How the hard angles of his face relaxed and the furrow he gets between his brows smoothed to nothing. And instead of kicking him out, I brought him coffeein bed. My apartment might not have the latest gadgets, but I know my way around a decent pour-over.
He’d asked if I wanted to spend the day together. Maybe hit the farmers market.
I’d looked at him like he suggested we streak down Main Street. Clearly the guy doesn’t understand how small towns operate.
He seemed amused but undeterred by my panic, which was annoying and also charming in a way I refused to examine. Billionaires aren’t used to being told no.
So I’d countered with the Boulder farmers market, far enough away that nobody would snap a pic for the Skylark Facebook page.
Who knew a guy like Jeremy would have such strong opinions about heirloom tomatoes. It was both laughable and endearing, and the morning had turned into a full day together, so easy that you don’t realize it’s perfect until the sun is setting.
We spent that night in his big bed, and he made pancakes (no protein shake in sight) Sunday morning. When he dropped me off at my apartment after breakfast, I played it cool, telling him I had a busy week and not to count on seeing me any time soon.
Not sure I fooled him. Definitely hadn’t fooled myself, but I was nothing if not committed to the lie. I know a lot about lying.
So when the book club got together for dinner at Sadie’s Sunday night, I kept my mouth shut about all of it.
