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He collapsed next to her, pulling her back against his chest. She stared up at the sky, a blanket of stars that somehow made this even more intimate.
Too soon, her mind kicked back into gear, replaying every single word he’d said since they left the restaurant. She fought to keep her body relaxed, but his sigh proved just how sucky she was at it. “Relax, sugar. We’ll talk in the morning.”
Maybe. Or maybe that would give him time to reconsider whatever he’d meant when he said he wanted a future with her. She bit her lip so hard it was a wonder she didn’t draw blood, barely able to wrap her mind around it.
A future with Adam Meyer.
It was the one thing she hadn’t allowed herself to consider. And why would she? He wasn’t staying in Devil’s Falls.
But what if he did?
Jules liked him—a lot. She liked that he didn’t seem to think she was boring or “good ole Jules” or feel the need to patronize her and tell her how he knew better. In fact, he’d done nothing but empower her.
She liked the way he obviously loved his mom. He might not have spent much time back home over the last decade, but he still cared a whole lot. And Amelia loved her son more than anything else in the world. Jules knew that because she was a shameless eavesdropper when it came to her customers. Amelia was always telling Lenora about Adam’s latest escapades with the same tone of voice Jules’s mom used to brag about her good grades. It was really sweet.
And there was the sex. Good lord, the sex. It really wasn’t fair how out-of-this-world good it was.
He was kind of prickly, but he had a dry sense of humor that she adored. And Aubry didn’t scare him. That alone was a big point in his favor. Not to mention, since her best friend hadn’t hacked into his cell phone or something else insane, she’d pretty much given her seal of approval. That mattered.
Adam brushed her hair to the side and kissed the back of her neck. “You’re doing it again.”
“I’m sure I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“I’m just as sure that you do.” He grabbed the blanket on the other side of her and covered them both with it, settling down again at her back. “It’ll all still be there in the morning, sugar. Obsessing about it now isn’t going to change a damn thing, except you’ll lose sleep.”
Easier said than done. She turned in his arms to face him. “Can you do that? Just turn it off?”
His face was little more than a shadow in the darkness. “Some days I’m better at it than others.” There was a world of…something…in his voice. Something she didn’t have a name for.
She couldn’t ask if he was staying. It wasn’t the right time, and if he said no, it would just hurt her. So she went with an equally dangerous topic—but one that had nothing to do with her. “You never mention your dad.”
“Not much to mention.” He sighed. “He was a leaver, as my mama likes to say. He managed to stick around for four years after I was born, but it killed a part of him to be stuck inside these town limits. He rolled back through a couple times as I was growing up, but Mama was never all that happy to see him, knowing she’d see the back of him again before too long. I’m just like him.”
He didn’t say any of it with anger, more with a quiet fatality she didn’t know what to do with. “Adam, there’s no such thing as fate. You make your own future.”
“You don’t understand. I have this…I don’t even know what to call it—restlessness, for lack of a better word. It starts in my chest and builds and builds until I feel like I’m coming out of my skin. It’s been there ever since I was a kid, and the second I was old enough to get out, it eased the feeling. The only thing that takes it away completely is being on the back of a bull.”
How could she compete with that? She’d heard stories about rodeo widows, women who loved a man who loved the rodeo. How could a flesh-and-blood person stand against the roar of the crowd and the adrenaline rush of trying to stay on a rage-filled animal’s back for eight seconds? It didn’t sound all that wonderful to Jules, but she was unforgivably biased.
Adam leaned against the tailgate. “And now with my mom sick… I just don’t know how it’s going to end up.”
Meaning the cancer could take her.
If it did, not only would Devil’s Falls lose one of its favorite ladies, but Adam would lose the last anchor drawing him back to this place. She didn’t fool herself for a second into thinking Quinn and Daniel were enough to bring him home, not when he’d be faced with memory after memory of his mother.
