Total pages in book: 45
Estimated words: 42882 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 214(@200wpm)___ 172(@250wpm)___ 143(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 42882 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 214(@200wpm)___ 172(@250wpm)___ 143(@300wpm)
Jay’s face widened into a grin. “Do you one better. I made Italian Gentleman. It’s in the oven already.”
My chest filled with fluttery strangeness. If this man wasn’t careful, I was going to want to tie myself to him with something way stronger than wisteria vines.
Chapter Six
Jay
Through the month of March, I took every opportunity to touch and kiss and suck Lane Desmond. To care for him and pretend he was mine.
I wasn’t fooling myself into thinking he actually was mine. Not really. There were about a billion reasons why he wasn’t and could never be—as many reasons as there were degrees on his walls and vocabulary words he knew that I didn’t, and those things mattered, even if Dunn and Tucker said otherwise—but I sure enjoyed pretending.
I rolled out of my bed quietly, one hand on the bed frame to keep it from creaking under my weight. Spring was arriving in the Thicket slowly but surely, which made getting out of bed in the morning a little bit easier… not that you’d know it to look at Lane.
The second I left the bed, he rolled into my warm spot and immediately pulled the covers around him, half his face buried in my pillow and the other half catching the pale morning light. The poor man’s hair stuck up in every direction, like he’d been fighting a hard battle… and I supposed he had since it was the start of calving season, and Alva had called him for an assist at Dunn Johnson’s place last night.
I leaned against my doorjamb for a second and watched him sleep like the creepiest creeper to ever creep. The man needed his rest, and I didn’t want to wake him… but dang, I really liked looking at Lane.
Even a couple of months ago, he’d carried himself like he was holding something back. For a man who always knew what to do when it came to animals, Lane had been nervous as a jackrabbit around the people of the Thicket. More and more these days, though—in these quiet moments when he was tangled up in my blankets, or when we sat on my couch drinking a beer, or even sometimes when he was out and about in town, chatting with Cindy Ann Johnson and some of the other ladies about Thicket happenings—he looked calmer.
More peaceful.
Happier, maybe.
God, I really, really hoped he was happy in the Thicket… and with me.
I shook my head at myself. “Don’t get used to it, Jay,” I muttered under my breath. “It’s not forever.”
Lane had made it clear that he wanted casual—light and easy, with no strings—and I was fine with that.
I was.
Completely fine.
Except… fuck, I really wasn’t.
The truth was, I had this stupid hope buried deep in my chest that one day Lane might be okay with getting un-casual. One might even say… serious. In short, I’d like to Entwine the hell out of the man.
I wanted more mornings like this, where Lane was sweet and sleepy in my bed, and more nights where the two of us laughed and teased and solved the world’s problems over Italian Gentleman. I wanted, really badly, for him to stop seeing me as a guy he was killing time with. But I wasn’t sure what to do about it other than what I had been doing—floating along, falling in love, and pretending I wasn’t.
I knew a whole fuckton about how to give other people what they wanted and needed, whether it was Mrs. Holcombe needing her groceries carried when her twins started throwing surround-sound temper tantrums in the middle of the grocery store or my grandma Emmaline needing a “wearable” Entwinin’ plaque for her husband Amos to commemorate him winning Best Mature Bovine Herder at the Lickin’ last summer.
But wanting Lane for myself was a whole other thing. It felt selfish and scary. It tied me up in knots… and not the pretty Entwinin’ kind.
The truth was, I’d just never found anything worth wanting before. Not the way I wanted him.
“Jay?” Lane opened one eye and blinked at me blearily. “Y’okay?”
My stomach tightened. I wanted to say, “Yeah, Lane. As long as you’re here with me, I’m very okay.” But that wouldn’t be casual, would it? I didn’t want to put pressure on the man. I definitely didn’t want to see him do his jackrabbit impression again.
“Oh, yeah. Sorry. Just got distracted thinking of my to-do list today. The Entwinin’ is tomorrow, and I’ve got like five wreaths I need to finish up. But first, breakfast for Dave and the gang… and then for my favorite veterinarian.”
Lane’s eye slid closed, but his face creased in a sleepy grin. “Always helping. S’cute.”
I snorted as I threw on a sweatshirt and let myself out to the backyard, where my flock of cocks strolled around their enclosure. Just as Lane had predicted, Disco Dave had laid off the peacock Viagra once he’d settled into his new enclosure, complete with roosts and lots of soft pine shavings. He still shook out his feathers, of course, but not in the aggressive, train-rattling way he’d done at first.