Page 59 of On One Condition

His lips find mine again. Softer, gentler, desire sated for the time being, before he collapses on top of me.

Ledger’s weight, half on me, half off me, is a welcome feeling. My hand runs lazily up and down the line of his spine, our hearts pounding against one another’s.

I don’t know what happens in two months or even tomorrow, but I know seeing you again brought me right back to those summer nights I spent with you.

A soft smile plays on my lips because those will be my words to live by. That will be the mantra I repeat.

“I guess you’re right.”

I can feel his mouth curve into a smile against my shoulder. “About?”

“It was definitely better the next time.”

When he leans back to look at me, his grin is blinding.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Asher

Ledger’s broad shoulders fill the window frame and block the early morning light coming into the kitchen. The steam from his coffee curls up above his shoulders.

I study him as he takes in my farm and its fields, the early morning mist weaving itself through the rows.

How did this happen?

I keep thinking I’m going to shake my head, and last night, this past week, will all be a dream. How does fifteen years pass and you still have a connection with someone as strong as ours feels?

It’s the weirdest thing to feel like you know someone when you truly don’t know much about them anymore at all. Their likes. Their dislikes. How they take their coffee. What their late-night fridge raid choice is. Their taste in music. The hobbies they like or the company they keep. What they’re like after a bad day.

All things I used to know about the man standing in front of me, yet now feel like a complete mystery.

And yet none of those things mattered last night. Nor do they in this moment that I need to enjoy instead of overanalyzing.

I don’t know what I expected to happen after that incredible sex, but waking up beside him, seeing him standing in my kitchen, definitely wasn’t one of them.

“You’ve expanded quite a lot,” he says and then hisses when the coffee he takes a sip of scalds his tongue. “I don’t remember there being lavender on the slopes over there.”

“We had a fire burn through here about six years ago,” I say as he turns to look at me. He has a way of doing that right at the perfect time to show me I’m being heard. “The house was saved, but almost everything else was lost. The Lavender. Machinery. Tools. Cars.”

“I had no idea. I’m sorry.”

I shrug and take a sip of my own coffee, recalling the devastation and the weight it put on Pop’s shoulders. How it felt like he aged so quickly during that time. “It was a disaster. The lavender was burned through and the heat of the fire somehow triggered the seeds of an invasive species called mallow to crack and sprout.”

“Seeds? Where did those come from?” He takes a few steps toward me.

“We learned that lesson the hard way. Apparently, they can lay dormant under the soil for years, and then extreme heat like a fire, can trigger them to imbibe, crack, and then grow.” I shake my head, remembering Pop’s despair. “The mallow took over the fields. Stole water nutrients from the new lavender seeds we were trying to propagate. They’d start to grow and then die. We tried everything but ended up having to use a ground clear.”

“Which means the soil was poisoned and couldn’t grow anything for a certain amount of time, right?” he asks.

“I’m impressed,” I tease. “How does a man who lives in a concrete jungle know about ground clear?”

“We have a family home in Sag Harbor. We’ve had to use it there.”

Of course, he has a house in Sag Harbor. Just a small reminder of what different worlds we live in.

“So you understand why we couldn’t grow in our existing fields. It forced us to buy more land.” I point to the slopes he was referring to. “Gran and Pop were so stressed taking out a second mortgage on this house to pay for it when they didn’t have any viable lavender to harvest and profit from. Their anxiety was a constant around here, regardless of how hard they tried to hide it.”

“Understandably.”