AllFreeNovel
Share Us
The water sighs softly against the platform, moving it just enough to see. Patches of bright green grass dot either bank. Above it, the sky is enormous. Clear. Lit up with summer and sunset.
I’m only twenty miles from town. But I feel a world away. I feel…open out here. Like I can breathe deep.
It is all quiet and pristine and perfect. Carolina low country at its finest.
The heat of Luke’s skin seeps through my tank. Making me sweat a little. A good kind of sweat.
Inside my chest the ache sharpens. So much want in this moment. The steady, sure way he wants me—never have to guess or ask. The way I want to be a part of this place and this man and his story.
I want to choose this. This. The sex and the fantasies and the relationship, too.
I want to choose Luke.
Is that all it takes? Is setting fear aside a conscious decision, something we have control over, something we can decide to do and then just…do it?
I’m starting to think this fear of being hurt, of being rejected for who I am, will linger forever if I let it. Luke’s been nothing but excellent this whole time.
Patient. Considerate. Communicative.
If he can’t bring these walls down, no one can.
No one but me.
What if I just choose not to be afraid? Even though I am?
What if I practice it, over and over again? A conscious fearlessness? Choosing that over being afraid?
In a way, I’ve already been doing that. Telling myself to be brave when I could’ve been careful instead.
There’s gotta be power in making that a habit.
The idea is liberating and arousing and, yes, scary. But I let it wander through my brain anyway. Leaning back against Luke, feeling his solid warmth bump along with mine as evening sets in and we make our way around the farm.
He shows me streams. Fields. An ancient looking red barn and the ruins of an old plantation house that the Union Army burned down during the Civil War. Oaks that are three hundred years old, and a family of herons that lives nearby.
We circle back towards the house, coming at it from the opposite side we left. But then Luke makes a little turn into a side drive and parks the tractor. It turns off with a growling wheeze.
“Where are we?” I ask, peering through the trees.
“You’ll see. Here, stand up for a sec.”
I do as Luke tells me. He hops off the tractor—I’m reminded of the way Lady Jane admires how yummy Max looks getting on and off his horse, cheekily named Woody—and reaches his arms up toward me.
Looking down at him, my heart sputters to a stop inside my chest. This. His skin glistening with sweat. Rounded slopes of his shoulders huge and sinewy and reaching for me.
I put my hands on his forearms—ah, they feel as good as they look—and he puts his hands on my waist. Sets me down on the sandy grass beside him. Hands lingering on my body a beat too long before he nods his heads towards the woods.
“C’mon. I wanna show you something.”Chapter Twenty-TwoGracieLuke twines his fingers through mine. Pulse jumping—brave—I twine back.
His grip is firm and dry.
Oh, yeah. Yeah, I can be brave with this.
Now that the engine is off, I inhale a deep lungful of air. The air is different out here. Crisper. Cleaner.
Luke leads me down a path to a clearing by the river. In the middle of the clearing, there’s a building that hovers on the edge of the bank. It looks like some kind of barn.
The first thing I notice is how old it is. It’s constructed out of wooden slats that are weathered and warped with age. The glass in the small windows is wavy in the evening light—hand blown from what I can tell. Its sloping roof is a bit lopsided.
But its age—and the quirks that come with it—give the building an almost storybook quality. It’s two stories, about the size of a house, with a big waterwheel on the outside that’s partly submerged in the river. Gigantic oak trees, branches strewn with hanging moss, crowd the structure on the other three sides.
The building could definitely use a little TLC. But there’s something special about the whole thing. It’s got patina. A sense of history and place.
There’s a story here.
A thought that’s confirmed when I glance at Luke and see the look on his face. He’s taken his sunglasses off, tucking them into the front pocket of his jeans, and his hands are on his bare hips. His eyes rove slowly—lovingly—over the building.
The pride in them is clear as day.
“It’s beautiful,” I say. “What is it?”
Luke turns that pride on me. My stomach dips.
“It’s a grist mill,” Luke replies. “Place where wheat and corn and the like are ground up into flour, grits…that sort of thing. The actual stone mill inside dates back to about 1930. It’s been operational for close to ninety years. Wanna see it?”
