He spun around, his dimples on full display, and lifted his hands at his sides. “It was as smooth as I’m capable of,” he said before sniffing the air. My shoulders went rigid before the next words came from his mouth. “The pancakes are burning.”
Chapter Seventeen
My days at Willow Springs were spent working, and my nights were spent with Jesse in some room, or field, or barn, or . . . whatever we could find. The summer flew by. July was ending before I knew the month had begun.
It had been the best month of my life.
That was no exaggeration, no form of the melodrama Jesse still liked to say I was partial to. It was the truth. I had found an adoptive family by most definitions of the word; I was in love with the kind of man who seemed too good to be true; I had found a handful of girlfriends with the Walker sisters and Josie; I’d managed to steer clear of Garth and he of me; and mom had thankfully delayed her grand scheme of flying herself and her new boyfriend out for a little get-together. My dreams, for the first time in years, were back to color. I’d even squeezed in enough drawing time to fill an entire sketchbook.
If months got better than that July did, I couldn’t imagine it.
Plus, other than one night when Jesse had to camp out with the herd because one of the calves had gotten sick, we’d spent every night together. Some nights we did nothing more than talk until we fell asleep. Most nights we talked, then made love until we fell asleep. For being a virgin a month before, Jesse had meant it when he said he was committed to fine-tuning his sex skills. I’d be under-exaggerating if I said Jesse had mad skills in that department.
Neil and Rose might have given us the thumbs up in the dating department, but even Jesse hadn’t worked up the courage to tell them about us sleeping together every night. Thanks to a lock on my door and the unspoken rule that no one ever went into his attic room, no one had walked in on us unexpectedly.
I didn’t like omitting the truth with Neil and Rose, but I left that to Jesse. He knew his parents better than I did, and if he thought keeping our sleeping arrangements to ourselves for the time being was best, I was good with that.
After he’d described his parents as old-fashioned modernists, I couldn’t look at Rose and Neil the same way. Jesse said they might realize we were sleeping together and they would support us because we were both consenting adults, but they didn’t want to know it was happening a room or two above their bedrooms.
So July was legendary. The best on record.
And then August 1st rolled around.
I was busy in the garden picking early tomatoes when Rose came up to me with a stoic expression. Rose didn’t do stoic, so my heart was already thumping before she’d said a word. My mom had called her, probably because I’d been ignoring her calls all summer, to tell Rose that she and boy-toy had a rare three-day-weekend coming up and would fly in that Friday night.
She didn’t ask. Didn’t wait for Rose to run it by me. She dictated. She steam-rolled. Like she’d been doing all eighteen years of my life.
From Rose’s expression, I’d thought she’d come bearing the news of a loved one’s death, so I was relieved for all of one second when I realized no one had died. My mom was just coming to dinner with her boyfriend. My moment of relief shifted to panic.
I knew it was silly, but Willow Springs felt like my something special. It was my world free of her and her toxicity. I didn’t want to ruin things.
My mom wasn’t the issue as much as the storm we created when we were together. We might have both been a bit unstable on our own, but together? Things got downright volatile. I didn’t want Neil and Rose to witness that. I didn’t want Jesse to witness that.
I didn’t want to experience that either. Not anymore.
The summer had given me a new perspective. The lenses I’d been viewing life through for so long had been exchanged for a different set. A new lens that showed people as basically good and life as pretty damn great when I opened myself up to it.
I’d changed. Not entirely, but enough. A lot.
From Rose’s description of Mom’s call, I knew she hadn’t changed. So I had and she hadn’t. Would our relationship change? That was the question I couldn’t answer and one I really didn’t want to get to the bottom of over a steak dinner with the Walkers.
Too bad it was six o’clock on Friday night, minutes away from when Mom and Mr. Boyfriend would be pulling up. It was too late to call a time-out and cordon Mom and I off on our own little island so we could work out some serious shit I wasn’t sure could be worked out.
Jesse snuck up behind me where I fretted over the fruit salad. “For the millionth time, relax.” His hands lifted to my shoulders and his fingers pinched and rolled the muscles running down my neck and shoulders.
“For the millionth time,” I replied, closing my eyes. Jesse’s hands could work magic of all different kinds. “It’s easy for you to say, but you’ve never met my mom. I don’t think I’ve ever been relaxed around her.”
“Yeah, but are you relaxed around me?”
I gave up trying to layer the blueberries on top of the kiwi just right, dropped my head, and let Jesse’s fingers work. “Sometimes.” I pressed back into him to further explain.
He chuckled. “Right now are you relaxed around me?”
It was impossible not to be when he was massaging my neck. “Yes.”
“Good news then, Rowen. I’m going to be with you all night. I won’t leave your side, so anytime your mom starts making you feel all panicky, just take a hit of my ultra-relaxing aura.”