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But hey, I know better than anyone how busy you are when you’re dealing with little kids. We’ll talk in the morning when the kids go back to his ex.
Taking a deep breath through my nose, I hit the button on the side of my phone and drop it in my purse, which is hanging from the hook on the back of the door. Apparently, even the employee bathrooms at Blue Mountain Farm Resort are showstoppers: the three-stall room is impeccably designed, from the carved wooden doors on each of the stalls to the gleaming white subway tile and brass light fixtures hanging overhead.
It’s like the set of a Nancy Meyers movie, one that would star Reese Witherspoon and Matthew McConaughey as erstwhile enemies-cum-lovers who engage in verbal fisticuffs by day and an altogether different kind of sparring by night.
Makes my heart hurt a little, being back here after all this time. The farm was so different when Rhett and I dated. Much simpler. Much more rural. But it still feels the same—wild with a sense of anticipation heavy in the pine-scented air. Like anything is possible.
For a while, it was.
Until the fairy tale came crashing down on my head.
I nearly jump out of my skin when I hear the bathroom door being shoved open, followed by the sound of heavy footsteps that echo across the rustic floorboards.
“Amelia? You in here?”
My nipples pebble at the whiskey-roughened sound of Rhett’s voice. A rush of relief—relief and something else—shoots down my spine. I wobble.
Grabbing the dispenser, I steady myself. Straighten. Then I press my palms to my boobs. “Yup. Middle stall. I’m so sorry to take you away from the party—”
“No apology necessary.” The shadow of his feet darkens the sliver of space at the bottom of the door. “Are you okay? You sound a little . . . out of breath.”
Panic.
That’s why I’m breathless. Because I’m stuck in a bathroom stall, and I’m panicking. Not because my body suddenly feels like a live wire with Rhett so close.
He came.
He looked so, so handsome. Sad too.
I hightailed it out of the party before I did something stupid and asked about that sadness. The gruffness in his voice. Why he was clearly intent on getting shit-faced.
“I’m all right. I just want to get out of here. I have no clue what happened. I closed the door and locked it, no problem. But when I went to unlock it, the deadbolt stuck.”
The knob jiggles again as Rhett tries it from the other side.
The sound of his frustrated exhale is so damn close. I imagine I can feel it on my skin.
Despite the warm pressure of my hands, my nipples get harder.
“Y’all have a key or something?” I ask.
“No keys for these doors, no.”
“A screwdriver, then, to take the whole knob off?”
“That would work, yeah.” His voice strains, like he’s looking up. “But I think lifting you over the door would be quickest. You seem like you’re in distress, so . . .”
I look up at the empty space by the ceiling. It didn’t seem so far away a minute ago, but now that I’m actually contemplating what it would feel like to fall from that high . . .
“Seriously?” I say as much to myself and the universe as to Rhett.
“Seriously. I’ll catch you.” His hands appear over the top of the door. “It’ll take ten seconds. C’mon. I promise I won’t drop you. Just climb up on the toilet, and I’ll do the rest.”
I’m wracked by a full-body shiver at the sight of his broad, blunt fingertips.
At the idea of him putting those hands on me again.
I close my eyes against the memories that hit me out of nowhere. That bed of pink azaleas behind his house.
That day on the river, when I kissed him for the first time, and he slid his hand inside my T-shirt. He didn’t feel me up; he just pressed his palm to my bare stomach and left it there, the pad of his thumb working a slow, lazy circle over my skin.
Stop.
I have Jim now. No use revisiting all that teenage angst. Because that’s exactly what Rhett and I were—teenagers, young and stupid. These memories are probably part fantasy anyway. Rhett couldn’t have been that good. Not then.
I wouldn’t want to find out about now, either. What Jim and I have has the potential to be something real.
Something good.
“How much whiskey have you had tonight?” I manage.
It’s his turn to chuckle. A low, warm sound. “I’ve lifted a lot more weight when I was a hell of a lot less sober.” He flexes his fingers, waving me on. “Time’s up, buttercup. Let’s do this.”
It’s his casual confidence, the kind that bordered on cocky in high school, that finally gets me to bend down and take off my heels.
