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I’d never shared anything I’d written, and as far as I knew, I was the only one who even knew I’d written them. Maybe they weren’t as good as being able to talk through some of those feelings, but they were better than nothing…and I sure as hell needed some guidance right now.
But I only had about five minutes to myself with my old scribbles before I heard a creak from the ladder behind me, and I whipped around as my heart leapt to my throat.
The faint lamplight illuminated the top half of Jason. We locked eyes for a few moments.
“Hey,” he said at last, as if he’d been invited up here. I swallowed.
“What are you doing here, Jason?”
For the first time, I thought I saw those ravenous eyes soften sheepishly for a second. “I uh…,” he rubbed the back of his neck and climbed the rest of the way up to the loft.
“Heard the roof creaking when you left the house, saw you headed for the barn. Thought you were going for the truck,” he gestured down to the truck full of valuable alcohol down below. “Figured you was—”
“—Gonna steal your moonshine, take off down the highway in a nightgown and leave the farm behind for one truck of bootleg?” I couldn’t help but laugh, crossing my legs as I tried to be discrete about putting my poems away.
Jason didn’t look amused. Even as he stooped to move towards me, he seemed as tall and intimidating as ever, the light from my lantern flickering on his nose as though he were a bull striding towards me. I saw his hand leaving his back, and a chill ran up my back.
How close did he come to pulling a gun on me over some booze?
His look softened as he approached, though, and I realized his eyes were on my box.
“What’s that?” he asked suddenly, and I instinctively I put my hand over it—the worst possible decision, I realized a moment later.
Immediately, his arm reached around me, and he had snatched the box of my deepest feelings.
“It’s nothing! Hey, give it back!”
“What’s the problem if it’s ‘nothing’?” He was laughing at me, and I felt my face flush red. I yanked it back from him while he was laughing and hit him with a sharp elbow to the stomach.
“That personal, huh?” he coughed, rubbing where I’d hit him and settling down.
“Yeah,” I grumbled, carefully opening the box and picking out a somewhat less embarrassing poem, knowing he’d grab for it a moment later. “You’re right, it gets a little too quiet here from time to time. I write a little to let it all out. When I get a chance, you know. Here and there. Not so much these days.”
I winced preemptively, expecting him to scoff, but it never came. I only felt a gentle tug at the paper as he tried to take it from me, and swallowing my pride, I let him have it.
There’s no way not to feel embarrassed when someone is reading something of yours in front of you, but this was one of the most personal things I’d ever put on paper.
My face burned hotter than the lamp that was letting those sharp green eyes scan the little sheet of verse. Every moment passed like an hour.
“I uh…I’m not much of a poetry guy,” he started reluctantly, and my heart plummeted hard. Oh god what if this turns into just an awkward weird thing and he leaves? Why did I let him look at that?!
“…but this is pretty great, Heather.” He looked back up at me and gave me the first sincere smile I’d seen from him in my grand total of eight hours of knowing him.
My heart soared.
“You’re lyin’.” I tried to hold back a beaming smile, and even I wanted to laugh at my own drawl as it came out, more pronounced than if my grandma had spoken.
“No, no,” he insisted, smacking me playfully with the paper, “I mean it!”
We were laughing together now; half of it was my feeling lightheaded at a stranger taking a liking to something so private, so personal. The other half was the simple fact that I realized just how comfortable I felt with his being next to me.
Here he was in the most private hideaway I’d had in my entire life, and now I knew I wanted him to touch me like nobody ever had.
The lantern light flickered in his eyes, and I saw the familiar hunger in him—now genuine, where it had been just lustful before.
I was surprised to feel his hand on my side—not because it was unwanted, but because I thought I’d only been fantasizing about it. We met each other’s mouths halfway and he dug his tongue into mine as I climbed into his lap and wrapped my bare legs around his waist.
Without even realizing what I was doing, my hips started grinding against his body even as I clung to him, fully clothed. A moan was coming from my throat, but it couldn’t have been me—it was some animalistic desire inside me that this criminal from out of town was awakening.
