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My fingers reach for Connor and I touch his skin. It’s damp from the river water and sweat and it’s hot. So hot. I trace the edge of the lion’s regal crown, now discovering other tiny images tangled into the larger design: soldier’s stripes, like from a uniform, a star, a tube of lipstick ... I could stare at the artwork for hours, but I blink and take my hand away.
Connor shifts his feet and faces me, stepping closer. He leans forward and this time, I’m ready for what he’s about to do. I steel my body for the force of his kiss, but the impact doesn’t come. Instead, his lips brush mine softly. He kisses my bottom lip and then the top and then presses against my mouth, opening me to be tasted, licked, savored. And just like that, I’m slowly being devoured by the lion.
After a single, long kiss, he lets his hand drift to hold mine. Our fingers gently tangle together as he tugs me up on shore to a cool patch of clover in the shade.
We sit and then let our bodies stretch out to lie alongside one another. He’s cradling the back of his head in cupped hands, eyes closed. I watch as his chest and abs rise and fall softly with his steady breath.
Silence closes in around me and I feel the need to fill it, to fill his head with words and sounds so he’s not thinking of me — judging all the ways I’ll never measure up.
“Where do you think Ox and Tori are?” I ask innocently. I sit up and cross my legs and pluck at a white tuft of dandelion by my knee.
“Probably having sex somewhere over there.” Connor doesn’t open his eyes or move his body other than to tip his chin up to indicate somewhere on the other side of the creek in the dark shadows of a cluster of trees.
“Seriously?”
“Yeah, those two never got out of the honeymoon stage. They fuck like rabbits.”
I blush slightly at his candid language, and try to push the vision of the two of them from my mind.
“My mother used to tell me dandelions are good luck,” Connor motions at the one in my hand and several of them scattered throughout the field. “After the yellow flowers turn into white balls of fluff, you can blow on them and make a wish. Mom used to say you’re setting your wishes free when you do that. Go ahead, Lainey Bird, make a wish.”
All of my wishes got squashed years ago, not that I want to discuss that with him. “I guess I’m not one for making wishes,” I offer lamely.
“You should,” he says. “They just might come true.” He plucks a nearby dandelion and puckers his mouth, sending white fuzzy seeds into the breeze. I smile at his obvious optimism.
His eyes lock with mine in a long embrace of silence. I wonder what a man like Connor Rose could possibly wish for. Sweat erupts across my forehead and my face grows pink.
“It’s getting late. We should probably get back, don’t you think?” I force out. I instantly regret the words. The last thing I want to do is leave.
Conner keeps one eye the squinted to block the sun and looks at me. “You’re not having a good time?”
“I feel like I’m living a dream,” I admit. “Meeting one of my rock star heroes and finding out his wife is this wonderful, beautiful creature, and then my first motorcycle ride and being in this beautiful place. With you. You’re kidding, right?”
“Then why do you want to leave?”
I shrug my shoulders because I’m not really sure.
“You don’t like the quiet, do you?” he suddenly asks.
“What makes you think that?” I feel exposed that he can see through the thin veneer of my facade. Like he’s unearthed some hidden part of me.
“You chattered on and on like a little bird all night. Even drunk. If we stopped talking about one subject, you started in on something else.”
It’s a terrible habit, my incessant chattering. Still, no one has ever called me out on this before. Not even my family. I’m not sure how to respond. “I guess you’re right. I don’t like the quiet.”
“It’s loud here,” he says twisting his head to look up into the trees again and closing his one open eye.
“Loud? Maybe for you. You could hear a fly burp,” I say. This draws a laugh from Connor. It’s such a good sound. I want to hear it again and again.
“Lie down, Lainey Bird, next to me.” I do as he commands.
“Close your eyes.” Again, I comply, not really sure what it is about the way he orders me around that makes me want to do everything he says. I slowly let my lids fall closed, and I feel his fingers reach out and touch mine again. He curls them around my hand and we lie there in the grass under the hot Georgia summer sun.
“Now, just listen, Lainey. You can hear the wind in the trees, the birds, the river, even your own heart. But you have to stop talking to hear all the noises around you. You don’t have to fill the space. It’s already full.”
I take a deep breath and try to calm my nervousness. Why does the quiet bother me so much? “You’re thinking I’m a nut, aren’t you? Because I always need to talk?”
“Shh,” he whispers.
