“Yeah, you did, babe.”
Eyes still closed, I grimace. “Babe? Gross… God, I need to lie down.”
“How about you sit down first?” Beck’s hand closes around my bicep, and as wiped out as I am, I have to acknowledge again that he’s a fast learner. It’s not a tentative, wimpy, light grip that I’d want to slap away. And it’s not the stern, almost painful, corrective grip Mom resorts to when she’s frustrated with me.
It’s firm. Grounding. Solid, but not forceful.
I draw in a long breath and nod.
Beck steers me back to the Adirondack. I slump into it.
I really need to lie down. Or crawl in a hole.
His chuckle is low and close. “I can’t dig you a hole, but I’ve got a blanket in my truck.”
“Oh shit. I said that out loud too,” I groan. “I’m so weird.”
Beck’s hand moves to my jaw, again firm, but not forceful. “Hattie, can you look at me?”
I open my eyes. Beck is in a low squat beside my chair, eye-level with me. Damn. I’m really glad I opened my eyes because I wouldn’t have wanted to miss seeing him squat in those jeans. But it’s the warm honey look in his eyes I would’ve most regretted not witnessing.
“If you want to go home, I’ll walk you to your car, and if you can’t drive, I’ll drive you home.” He’s not smiling. Not really. But his expression is so kind—so down-to-his-soul good—that it sort of feels like he is smiling. “But I don’t want you to leave. Not yet, anyway. And if you let me go grab the blanket, I’ll lie down with you in the park for as long as you want.”
Lie down with me?
That sounds pretty nice.
And that’s not too weird. Lying on a blanket in the grass at the park is a thing, right?
“It’s definitely a thing,” he says with a chuckle.
“Shit. I did it again,” I croak, my eyes closing.
He grabs my hand and squeezes it. “Promise me you’ll stay right here. I’ll be quick, I swear.”
I push the word from my lips. “Promise.”
He squeezes my hand again. “Be right back.”
And I think I can feel when he’s gone. If I had to guess by the sound, he took off at a run. I hate running. Which might have factored into the picked-dead-last-for-PE thing, now that I think about it.
But if Beck is running, he’s doing this horrible thing… for me.
I force my eyes open, and, yep. He’s running.
But on him, it doesn’t look like a horrible thing.
Quite the opposite.
Beck looks damn good running.
He looks easy. Natural.
Beautiful.
Like his body was built to move with ease and grace.
I can’t imagine anything worse than running in jeans. But his muscled butt in the back of those jeans? Hot damn.
