Eating bacon on his lap.
thirty-four
Jesse
Itold her I loved her.
It wasn’t planned, but the truth is so absurdly bright inside my chest I couldn’t keep it to myself. I’m glad that we don’t talk about it, and even more when she goes off with Derrick to tend to the horses. I need time to sort through my own feelings.
Not that I regret what I said to her. Not even a little bit. It’s the truth, and I’m glad it’s out there, but I wish I had said it in a more romantic setting. The breakfast table under Major’s glare is not exactly the right place.
My heart takes a leap, and I absently rub my chest as I shovel the shit in the barn. It’s not a luxurious chore, but the physical labor helps me think.
Once I’m done with the barn, I find more jobs to keep me moving until I’m starving, and I return to the house to shower and grab something to eat. I make quick work of both, and then I move to the porch with my guitar and sit right at the steps leading to the house. A quiet place to enjoy the time for myself before everyone arrives.
Her song is the first thing that comes to mind. I don’t have the lyrics yet, but the melody plays inside my head day or night. I take a deep breath and start playing, slowly, enjoying the moment.
“That’s pretty.”
I smile even before lifting my head. She looks like an angel with her halo of curly hair illuminated by the sun behind her. Her smile is kind, her perfume just a hint of sweetness under the musk of sweat.
“Come here,” I say. She sits beside me, but that doesn’t feel like enough. So I pat my knee.
“You have a guitar already on your lap.” She smirks.
“So just rest your head on my knee. I need you closer.”
She doesn’t deny me, and I chuckle when she mouths, “Cute,” before moving to the ground and putting her head over my knee.
“Are you comfortable?”
She sighs. “Surprisingly so.”
Satisfied, I return to the guitar, playing the notes that make me think of her, and all the hope I hold to my chest that one day I’ll wake to her fevered skin on mine, and I’ll know she’s in heat and it all was triggered by me.By us.
“What’s this song? It’s hauntingly beautiful.”
“Why, Miss Veda, thank you. This one is all me.”
She sits up right away, her eyes wild, and I chuckle at her reaction. “You wrote this?”
“I don’t have anything written, no. But the tune keeps coming to me. It’s a whole song now.”
“It’s beautiful. Thank you for sharing it with me.”
Her voice is so tender, so true, it twists me in knots. I already love the woman, yet she keeps taking away pieces of my heart, little by little, changing me from the inside out. I put the guitar away and extend ahand to her. Feeling the knot inside my heart lessen when she takes it, I tug her until she’s straddling my lap.
Brown eyes to brown eyes, feeling more love than I thought was possible, I kiss her. Slowly and full of purpose, letting the kiss be the lyrics to my song.
“That song is yours, you know?”
Her mouth red from my kisses and eyes dizzy, she takes a minute to understand what I mean. “Mine?”
“It started playing in my head when you arrived. Just a few notes at first. I didn’t think much of it, but now I can see it all. It’s all you.”
“Jesse,” she whispers between my lips. “I—”
“I know I said big things this morning, and I know I might have scared you, but I’m a man of truth. All the things inside me tell me you’re mine.”
