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“Forget your wallet?” I asked Rye without turning around. I’d learned quickly that if his head wasn’t screwed onto his neck, he’d forget it.
“Nope,” Abey said. When I jerked my head around to the sound of her voice, she was coming straight for me. She looked official and sexy as hell in her uniform, but she wasn’t wearing her hat. Her hair was pulled tight into a bun. “Anybody here? I saw Rye leave.”
“No. We’re alone.”
“Good.”
When she reached me, she steered me backward with her hands on my hips, and my feet shuffled as she moved us behind the murder curtain.
Her breath caressed lightly over my lips, and then her mouth was warm on them, her tongue hot as it slid over mine. I reached up and tugged gently at the bobby pins holding her hair in place. I stuck them in my front pocket as long blond tendrils fell around her face and over her shoulders, and I ran my fingers through them. I loved how it looked, light against dark, as the static between our bodies drew her hair to my black “Hike it Red Wild style” T-shirt.
She moaned as my fingernails scratched lightly over her scalp. “That feels so good. I swear I hold my stress in my hair follicles.”
I laughed and kissed her harder.
“I only have a minute,” she whispered, “but I couldn’t think of anything I wanted to do more with that minute than kiss you.” She looked at me in the dark of the storeroom, a little V forming between her eyebrows. “What’re we doin’ here, Devo?”
“Makin’ out,” I said, grinning, and pulled at her bottom lip gently with my teeth.
“No, I mean”—she gripped my hips over my jeans and pulled me closer—“between you and me. Where’s this goin’?”
“Dunno,” I said, peppering little kisses below her mouth, nuzzling my lips against her neck as her hand slid up the back of my shirt slowly. “We’re gettin’ to know each other, aren’t we?”
“Yeah, but I mean, is it only sex? Is it just casual?”
“I don’t want just casual,” I said, moving lower and feeling the warmth of her chest with my lips as far down as her uniform shirt would allow.
“Me neither.”
Untucking one side of her shirt from her pants, I slid my hand up her stomach. My goal was always her breasts. They were so full and soft, her nipples perfect, round disks that had become the stars of my dreams. “Okay, so then we’re datin’.”
Before I could reach them, though, she pulled away.
I leaned back, looking up into her eyes. “We’re not datin’?” I said, confused. “I thought you wanted to take me to Yellowstone?”
“I do, but…”
The look on her face, the hesitation and fear—it was enough to tell me what I needed to know.
No matter how good it felt to be with her, no matter that we were doing absolutely nothing wrong, weren’t hurting anyone, all of that was just a lucky benefit of a bigger disease.
She wasn’t willing to be in a relationship with a woman, not out loud in the world where the men in her job could see. Where the residents of Wisper could see.
We’d both been kidding ourselves.
How had I not realized it before this moment? Now, it was a glaring truth right in front of my face. Maybe the thing with Sylvie had brought it too close to home for Abey.
I wanted to deny what I was seeing on her face, the fear I could feel coming from her. It was like an electric forcefield all around her, but there was a resolute feeling winding its way around the fear, like barbed wire.
She took one step away from me, and all I could do was nod. I finally understood, and my heart shattered into tiny little shards that stabbed at me. Her beautiful blue eyes were arresting, even in the dark, but there was still fear in them.
“You want to take me on a date, but only if no one sees us on that date.” It wasn’t a question. I already knew the answer.
She whispered, “Devo.”
I backed away and tripped on a box behind my feet. Abey reached for me.
But I wasn’t going to depend on her. “No,” I said, and I caught myself from falling backward. “I don’t get how we went from kissin’ to this, but am I right? How did I not see it?” I hadn’t really expected an answer. I adjusted my shirt and pulled it back into place. “You took me out to your brother’s place, which is miles from town, and then we went even further off the grid to eat lunch. If lunch had been at José’s Diner, would you have invited me?”
