“Is it that important?” I asked.
“It’s a client.” And for a second there, I thought he was going to answer it, but then he put it on silent and slipped it back into his pocket. “They can wait.”
“Good. Because I was about to throw that phone away.” He laughed, and it sounded so good and familiar and wild, like the man he ought to be. “Now, where were we? Right. A party and a dance. I owe you one.”
“Just one?”
“At least,” he replied.
I laughed, taking the flower crown off my head and placing it on his, and together we left the garden of somedays, and stepped into the present, at last.
43
firgun
The bicentennial lasted until dawn, but I certainly didn’t.
There was music, and dancing, and at some point Eula locked eyes with me from across the Grove and immediately noticed Cyrus beside me. She gave a not-so-subtle thumbs-up. I quickly looked away, pretending like she didn’t just aim thatstraightfor me, but who was I kidding? Eula was as subtle as a fire truck coming up the drive.
Sometime around midnight, after dancing and singing along to Wykofski’s very nineties selection of songs, watching Juliette fall deeper and deeper for Oliver, I found myself on the outskirts of the party, content to watch. Rus found me, and pressed his mouth against my ear and asked, “Are you ready to go?”
And I all too gladly slipped away with him into the darkness of Lilymoor.
The path back to the cottage was lit with fireflies, and I wanted to burn the way he looked in the moonlight into my memory. The soft lines of his face, the shimmer of his hair, the gentle touches of his fingers against my lower back and the way his arm wrapped around mine, sure and solid andhere.Because I had saved him.
But I think, in other softer ways, he’d saved me, too.
The next thing I knew, we were in my cottage, and we were closing the door, and his mouth found mine. We stumbled, tumbling, across the living room, where I pushed him down on the couch. It creaked with his weight, and then mine as I climbed atop him.
He gazed up at me, unkempt and unraveled. “There you are,” I whispered, because it was a gaze I’d seen so often from him in the garden, raw and laid bare and wanting. I leaned over him, raking my fingers through his lovely curls. “There you are,” I repeated.
My Rus.
He cupped my face in his hands. “You’re so beautiful, Sophie.”
I kissed him, tasting his words. Straddling him, I felt him—andgod, did I love that he already wanted me so much. I rocked against him, slowly.
“Sophie.” He groaned my name like a prayer. “I think …”
I kissed his cheek. “You’ve thought of me?” I teased.
His fingers, delicate, slid up under my borrowed dress. “All the time. Ever since I met you. Every time you left.” As he said it, he traced my bottom lip, as if wanting to memorize every curve. “I was always so afraid you’d never walk through that door again. Or worse—that you would, and you’d just hate me more.”
“I thoughtyouhatedme.” I traced the hardened planes of his chest down toward his stomach, then the buttons on his trousers. I’d wrestled them off before, though then it had been under a willow tree. The cottage was decidedly different.
“Hateyou? Never. I think I fell in love the moment you threatened to throw me off the cliff.”
I laughed. “I did not!”
“You definitely did.”
“I did,” I amended, “but I didn’t mean it.”
“Oh, youdefinitelydid.”
“Well, I didn’t do it, did I?”
“No. But I wish I had taken you up on that tour of the gardens. I wish I would’ve walked with you along every path and marveled at the way you brought Lilymoor back to life.” He sounded so earnest, it made tears come to my eyes.
