Page 26 of Stuck With the Smokejumper

Somewhere behind me, Tessa waves a hand toward Beck and Nolan both. “You two just watch us the first time.”

Beck looks over. “You two?”

There's something in his voice I can't quite place. Amused, maybe. I don't think much of it. Everyone assumes what everyone assumes: two new guys who probably don't know how to line dance, lumped together for convenience.

The next song starts. Everyone falls into position. Beck falls into position too. And he's not watching anyone's feet.

He's moving with the rest of us, steps clean, turns easy. He's not showing off. He's just doing it, the same unbothered way he seems to do most things, like this is simply one more thing he happens to know how to do. His boots know where to step. He doesn't glance down once.

I stare at him. So does Nolan, who has apparently decided watching Beck is more useful than anything Cassidy has told him so far.

Beside me, Dani leans toward Beck. “Wait. You knew how to do this?”

Beck doesn't break stride. “Nobody asked.”

The song carries on. So does my brain, several steps behind everyone else on the floor, still processing the fact that Beck Hale has been holding out on us.

“Where did you even learn this?” I ask, once the song lets us catch our breath.

He shrugs. “I’ve moved around a lot. Spent time in a lot of towns that only had one bar, and that bar only played one kind of music.”

Somewhere between songs, one comes on I don't recognize. “Who’s this?”

“Jason Aldean,” Beck says, already moving again.

A little later, same question, same answer, different artist. I don't ask a third time. I’ve learned how this goes.

I dance with Tessa for a while, both of us laughing more than we're executing the steps correctly. At one point she spins me the wrong direction, and we nearly take out a table of strangers, which only makes us laugh harder. I check on Nolan, who's improving, probably because he finally stopped thinking so hard about it. I talk to Dani about a book she's been trying to get me to read for two months. I steal a fry from Trevor's plate. I’m having fun, the kind that has to do with a town I love and people I've known for years.

Beck's having his own night too, somewhere on the other side of the floor, laughing at something with Reid, getting pulled into a dance by one of Nolan's endless string of teachers.

Then the music shifts.

The fiddle drops out. Something slower comes up in its place, a two-step rhythm, and around me the whole dynamic of the floor changes. People start pairing off. Tessa finds a partner near the bar. Cassidy ends up with Trevor. Dani and Reid drift together simply because they're standing close when the song starts.

I look around, and Beck is standing a few feet away.

He holds out a hand. “Looks like you're stuck with me.”

I take his hand. It closes around mine, warm and strong, and then his other hand settles at my waist. For a second I forget the mechanics of the dance. I've held this man's hand only once before, the morning after I fell on him, when he pulled me up off the crew-house floor. This is different. It's just Beck's hand at my waist and my hand finding his shoulder and the two of us moving into the first step like we've done this before, even though we haven't.

He leads well. I don't have to think about where my feet are going, which is new. Usually I'm the one doing the leading with Reid, correcting his count, telling him where to put his hands. Beck doesn't need any of that. He just moves, and I move with him, like my body agreed to something my brain hasn't caught up to yet. The bar noise fades into something distant. For a few measures it's just the two of us and the rhythm he's setting, loose-limbed and confident.

“You're full of surprises,” I say.

“You only ever see me a few days at a time.” He says it lightly, but there's something underneath it. “Guess there's a lot you haven't gotten to know about me yet.”

I don't have a response for that. I'm too busy feeling the pressure of his hand at my waist, steady, sure, like he's not thinking about it at all. His shoulder is solid under my palm. I already know he has strong shoulders. I found that out at Alder Lake, when I sat on them and helped take down half our crew in a pool-noodle war. I didn't expect to be reminded of it quite so directly, quite so soon.

He turns me, one smooth pivot, and for a moment we're close enough I catch the same clean, woodsy scent from Mercer’s Market the day we drove into town — soap, and beneath it, warm skin from a night of dancing. My hand tightens slightly against his shoulder. His eyes are on mine, and I'm aware of how close he is. Then the turn carries us apart again, back into the rhythm of the dance, and the moment passes.

The band doesn't stop at one song. Another comes right behind it, and neither of us makes any move to leave the floor. Beck starts singing along, quiet. Tennessee Whiskey. The words come out low and easy while he keeps us moving.

I look up at him. “You sing too?”

“A little.”

“A little is not what that was.”