She thought of Devon. Of that world. Of the way it had taken and taken until there was nothing left that felt like hers.
Finn was still watching her, that same grin lingering. "If I were your boyfriend, I’d take you out on a candlelit date and dazzle your palate."
He stepped closer.
Ivy met him halfway without thinking. "I don’t want to go out with you."
His brow lifted, just slightly.
"I don’t want someone else cooking for me. I want to stay in with you. I want you to cook for me."
Another step. Now they were close. Close enough that she could feel the warmth of him, the shift of his breath as it matched hers.
"I want you to dazzle my palate," she finished.
There was barely an inch between them now. Close enough that the space felt intentional. Chosen.
Finn’s gaze dropped to her mouth, then lifted back to her eyes. "So, I guess that makes me your boyfriend."
"I guess that makes me your girlfriend."
The words settled between them, simple and enormous all at once. And then he kissed her.
It started softly. Finn's hand came up to her jaw first, the way it always did, his thumb tracing the line of her cheekbone like he was checking something he already knew the answer to. She felt the calluses on his palm — three years of farm work, of soil and wire and early mornings — warm against her skin, and the contrast of it, the gentleness of those hands, never stopped doing something to her.
Ivy kissed him back. She had cooked with a hundred flavor profiles and written about all of them, and none of that vocabulary was available to her right now. There was just this. Just him.
Her hands found his flannel and held on. He made a low sound when she did, and kissed her deeper, his other hand finding the small of her back and drawing her in with unhurried certainty because she was his girlfriend. She kissed him back — not urgent, not demanding, just absolutely sure because he was her boyfriend.
Her heart was doing the thing. The truck engine thing. That uneven, urgent pounding that started in her chest and moved outward. The pounding made her aware of her own pulse in her fingertips, in her throat, in the hand she had fisted in his shirt. She thought distantly that she should probably do something about her knees, which had developed opinions about load-bearing.
She didn't do anything about her knees.
Finn pulled back just enough to breathe, his forehead dropping to hers, and she felt his breath warm against her mouth and the slight roughness of his jaw against her cheek and the smell of him close like this — flannel and coffee and soil and something underneath all of it that she had no name for except Finn, specifically Finn, no one else — and her heart did the other thing. The settling thing. Like something had found its correct speed and intended to stay there.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
He'd been ready for forty minutes before he left the house. He put on the good flannel — the dark green one Boyd had once described as the one that means you're trying — and his clean boots and told himself he was leaving at seven and left at six fifty-two because standing in his apartment being ready was worse than just going.
He stopped at the greenhouse on the way to the truck. The florist in town did good work. He'd driven past it that morning, considered it, and then kept driving. Ivy Lopez had a better eye than anyone he'd met, and there was something that felt wrong about showing up with something store-bought when he had a greenhouse full of things he'd grown himself. He selected a vine of Cherokee Purples at perfect ripeness — deep, heavy, the color of a good bruise — and a trailing stem of Sun Golds still on the branch, and a handful of the small Green Zebras she'd correctly identified by flavor alone on her visit. He wrapped the stems in the brown paper he used for the market and tied them with twine.
She was waiting on the steps outside her apartment when he pulled up. Finn had seen Ivy Lopez in cotton shirts that did nothing to hide her curves and jeans faded at both knees fromthe hard work she did in the kitchen and in her food truck. He'd seen her flour-dusted in the farm kitchen and windblown at the market and half-asleep over a legal pad at The Vine. He had, he realized, constructed a complete and detailed picture of what Ivy Lopez looked like, and it had not prepared him for this.
The dress was the color of warm honey, something between gold and amber, with small white flowers scattered across it that he would not have been able to describe to anyone who asked, but that he was going to remember for a long time. It moved when she moved. It had short sleeves and a neckline that was not dramatic and didn't need to be. It landed just below her knee in a way that made the most of every inch between there and the ground. Against her skin — warm brown, the gold of someone who'd been spending time in late summer sun — the color was something a painter would have chosen on purpose. Her dark hair was down, which he didn't think he'd seen before, falling past her shoulders in a way that made him aware he'd been missing information.
She was a stunner.
That was the only word that arrived, and it arrived complete. He sat with it for a moment in the cab of his truck with the engine still running and his foot still on the brake and the gearshift still in drive.
And then she looked up at him, and the world tilted when her lips spread into a grin. Finn hopped out of the truck to get to her. When the truck rolled forward, he shook himself and put the vehicle in park. Turned off the engine. Got out on legs that were steadier than he deserved, given the previous thirty seconds.
Held out the vine as she came towards him. Perhaps he'd done it to slow her down. He still needed another moment to gather himself before she got too near.
She looked at it. The Sun Golds caught the evening light and glowed. She looked up at him.
"They're at peak," he said. "They won't keep."
She took the vine with both hands and lifted it. "It's perfect."
