I look around his face, cataloging the way his scruff comes to just below his cheeks, and the way his lips have the most perfect Cupid’s bow, the warmth of green and brown in his hazel eyes, and the way his dark hair frames all of it, even pulled back. I don’t understand why I believe him now, even with the history we’ve had, but I do.
“Today, I stood in that lecture hall, and I hated it so much that I almost couldn’t breathe. I was in the same room, the same place in life physically that I had been, but I’ve seen and been through too much to still be there. And then you walked in, and all of a sudden...it was the same feeling as the other night. I could do whatever I wanted, like I finally had permission to take and lead.”
He looks away and back toward the airfield. “Careful, Crowne,” he says, smiling, bringing his gaze back to me. “You might just make me fall in love with you over stuff like this.”
The second I hear him say it, my pulse picks up, nerves taking off like a shotgun at the start of a race, and I ask myself, would that be such a bad thing?A man like him falling in love with a woman like me.A smile spreads across my face when I say, “You’re the only person who calls me that—Crowne.”
He hums, like he’s agreeing with what I’ve said. “You wear it well.”
I laugh first and then sigh as my stomach flutters, thinking about all of the different ways I can interpret that. “I never used to feel that way.”
When I take another sip from the flask, this time, it’s less jilting. “Once you can get over the proof of the alcohol”—I raise my eyebrow—“the cinnamon is strong, but I wonder if it wastoned back slightly and then offset with something like dried apple and hibiscus, it might taste like a dessert.”
Julian leans back, bracing his weight on his hands when he says, “You like to pair flavors. You did that in Montana with your tasting flights.”
I shrug my shoulder, even though I love that he recognizes that about me. “Result of a hobby that became my whole personality."
He looks over at me after a few quiet minutes. “In case you weren’t aware, I’m fairly drawn to this whole personality of yours.”
“I’ve noticed,” I whisper. He keeps his attention on me as I watch the movement down the hill below. I don’t mind being watched and observed. It makes me wonder what he sees. If he could see the broken parts, or if it’s the professor or the woman he left back in Montana. I don’t see any broken parts of him. He has a twinge of arrogance beneath his surface, a questionable hobby and family legacy, but then again, so do I.
I turn to look at him and ask, "What did you mean when you said you thought you knew everything about your father?"
“You might be the only person who really listens,” he says, running his fingers along his opposite palm. “Haven’t had anyone like that in my life since my dad—listening and just being there.”
I lean over and draw along the same line he was mindlessly roaming over. “I couldn’t see it there,” I say, tapping his palm and along the edge of his heart line. “Figured it couldn’t hurt to ask.”
That gets a laugh out of him, but it also has him opening his palm wider, allowing me to lightly touch and draw along the places I had once read.
“My father had been doing cleanup jobs for your family for at least two decades, maybe more. But then your Uncle Tommyshowed me a workspace inside of his barn that had some of my dad’s stuff, things that he purposely left to work on whenever he was here, and I have questions, ones that I won’t get answers to from him.”
“But maybe you can get some from Birdie? She would be the most levelheaded of the two people you could ask,” I suggest. It takes him a moment, but when he turns back to me, he masks a bit of his feelings with a reassuring smile, his hazel eyes glassy. His fingers close, pressing my palm to his, holding my hand.
“Did Birdie ever mention anyone? Or did you happen to see her spend time with?—”
I’m already shaking my head slowly before he finishes. “For as many men as I’ve seen my mother cycle through over the years, there’s never been anyone with Birdie. My grandfather died long before my mother ever had me, but Birdie has always been Birdie. A big, bold personality that my sisters and I always thought had been beyond finding someone for herself like that.”
He nods, working something around in his head. “Mickey at Moonie’s said he knew my dad too.” He runs his hand behind his neck, beneath the long hair that covers it. “Which isn’t something he would’ve allowed to happen on jobs.” He shakes his head. “Regardless of whether he came to the same place repeatedly, it wouldn’t be smart.”
Being smart sometimes doesn’t have anything to do with why we did things; he and I are the case and point. I run my fingers along his leather cuff, feeling the smooth edge of it, and thinking about all of the things he’s done that he might catalog as “not smart.”
“And here you are, pulling up a chair at my family’s dinner table, ordering dealer’s choice at The Whispering Fool, and making friends with Mickey at Moonie’s.”
He turns his body slightly toward me, close enough that I watch as his eyes focus on my mouth just as his tongue wets his bottom lip. “I know why I’m doing it.”
It’s really hard to think about anything else when Julian is looking at me like this. My cheeks feel flushed again, and I’m lost on any logical reason why we shouldn’t be sharing this moment together.
“You play dirty, Crowne. Brought me to an airfield, got me to tell you more in the last few hours than I probably have told anyone in my entire life,” he says with a smile dancing on his lips. “Pretty sure you’re the one doing the romancing now.”
I laugh, and he reaches up, pushing a piece of hair that fell, his fingers twirling the strand as I really look at him. The things I didn’t notice until now, like the small dimple to the right of his mouth that only pulls when his smile seems devious. I like that he talks to me.
“You call it playing dirty, I call it learning,” I say playfully as I shift a bit closer to him.
“I’m trying to figure out what you want,” he says softly, lifting my palm to his mouth and kissing the center.Thisis what I’ve never had before—feeling important enough to someone that they wanted to divulge the hard things.
“So am I,” I answer quietly and honestly.
“Can I ask you something?” he says, looking at my palm and then back up to me. “With your colleague, Reed, at Moonie’s, it wasn’t a date. But does he know that?” Julian asks with a smirk.
