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“I wondered if you’d skipped out.” Her tone was light, but her deep, dark eyes were heavy with all the things she didn’t—wouldn’t—say.
We were a pair, me and my ginger fairy. She wasn’t mine, but it was getting harder and harder to remember that.
Rather than reply, I dragged my guitar case in front of me.
Her eyebrows lifted. “I get a private show?”
I walked down the stairs to her and shrugged, channeling some of my best mate’s easy charm. I would never be as effortless as Ian, but I’d picked up some pointers after all these years spent with rockstars. “Maybe. If you play your cards right.”
She hit me lightly and I laughed, drawing her in for a hug and a quick kiss on top of her head. She didn’t detangle herself as we said goodbye to the others still lingering around the table with coffee and gossip. Nor did she move to separate us outside as we headed up the meandering gravel path toward the grove.
It wasn’t sunset yet, but from the soft golden light spearing between the budding and blooming trees, it wasn’t too far off. The crisp air skated over my skin, but nothing could touch the warmth from Ivy’s sweet body curved against mine.
She fit me just like my hand fit my Epiphone. There was a groove from my fingers where they notched just right. Somehow Ivy and I locked together in the same way.
As if it was meant.
As if we had known each other so much longer than the sum of the few hours we’d spent together.
It was the type of thing for which stories and songs and sonnets were written. Usually with a tragic ending, because how could anything so sudden and perfect be fated to last?
But that was for later. Tomorrow. Right now, she was still at my side. Sharing my air and smiling up at me with the rosy glow of the sun on her cheeks.
“So, you like my friends? Not that Kellan is one, exactly, as we’re just collaborators for now. But Ian—”
She came to a halt. Just like that, the easy moment between us vanished. “Why do you do that?”
“Do what?”
“Pretend not to care. Diminish what matters to you. Try to be so blasé about everything.”
I went cold. Inside, outside. I didn’t drop my arm from around her, but I definitely loosened my grip. “I didn’t realize I was doing that. Or that I’d done it enough for you to label it a trait.”
“And now the snooty Irish tone. Jesus H. Christ.” She moved away from me and threw up her hands. “You’re so frustrating, LC.”
Part of me rejoiced that she could still call me by that ridiculous nickname despite her irritation. The rest of me was peeved she was irritated, period. As if she had any right to be.
Okay, so she had plenty of right. But I’d never insinuated we were going to be a long-term thing. My mistake was in coming back to her again.
Your mistake or your salvation?
I gripped the neck of my guitar case. “My apologies.”
She stared at me, her eyes catching the dying rays of the sun and turning them into fire. If this was a super hero movie, I would be lying dead in the dirt while she waited for the wind machine to blow back her flowing locks. “Your obnoxious attitude should not turn me on.”
“No. It shouldn’t.”
“Yet it does. What’s wrong with me?” While I pondered that, she stepped forward and fisted her hands in my shirt. “It’s the accent,” she muttered. “Gotta be the accent.”
Then her mouth covered mine.
The craziest part was I could taste her anger. And her frustration. And underneath both, her sadness. They were layered with the sweetness from Laverne’s pie and Ivy’s natural essence.
“I’m really mad at you,” she said between kisses, slipping her fingers in the gaps in the buttons along the front of my shirt. Her nails teased over my skin and made me hiss.
“Fuck.” I nearly dropped my case in my urgency to tilt her head toward mine. Our tongues tangled, hot and needy. “I’ve been dying to get my hands on you again all day.”
Even as I said it, I dialed myself back. She was worth so much more than just this. Yet I kept falling back on my base nature to avoid the tougher conversations.
