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“Because it’s different now!” I shout into the quiet night air, quickly clamping my mouth closed when a dog starts barking down the street.
Ford steps closer into the shadows with me, and my pulse pounds in my ears, along with the slow countdown of the bomb.
Tick, tick, tick….
“Why is it different?”
His voice is quiet and calm, but a muscle pulses in his jaw as his eyes search mine.
“Because it’s too much, okay?”Liar. It’s not enough, and that’s the problem.“We don’t dotoo much,” I remind him, my voice shaky while I try to quiet the one in my head. “We’re friends. We hang out. We work together. We watch movies together, and I drag you kicking and screaming to all the Harvest Grove festivities. I talk nonstop for thirty-one days, and you grunt a few words about trees and logging equipment.”
“I’ve talked about more than trees and logging equipment.”
“Have you? Have youreally?”
Ford ignores my attempt at sarcasm and takes another step toward me, until I have nowhere left to go when my back bumps into the side of the house behind me, and he’s standing so close our toes are touching.
“Is this because of Noah?” I blurt out when Ford rests his palms against the house on either side of my head, caging me in as he dips his face down until our eyes are level.
“You mean how you spent the entire evening, before you disappeared, ignoring me and helping him carve pumpkins? It’s beneath you to play games, Sidney.”
Jesus, he’s right. I’m glad that with just the glow from the jack-o-lanterns on the railing, it’s dark enough on this porch that he doesn’t see the guilty blush coloring my cheeks. I knew what I was doing, avoiding Ford and sticking close to Noah earlier tonight. I wanted him to get jealous. My brain had been in a constant state of disarray ever since he admitted he lost sleep thinking about another man’s hands on me. I wanted him to feel what I felt every damn time a woman in town handed him a Tupperware container for the last six years. Noah didn’t even think about so much as smiling in my direction earlier with the way Ford glared at him like he was three seconds away from picking up one of the knives on the table and carving a frown in the middle of Noah’s stomach instead of one of the pumpkins.
The fact that he’s callingmeout for playing games brings me right back around full circle to being pissed off at him again.
“You’re one to talk!” I lift my chin defiantly. “Why now? Whythisyear? If it isn’t because of Noah, then what is it?”
“There are a lot of reasons, and none of them matter right now.”
“They matter to me!”
Tick, tick, tick….
Ford removes one of his hands from the side of the house to swipe it through his hair in frustration, cursing under his breath again before his eyes find mine in the dark, drilling a hole right through me with the intensity in them.
I’m panting, every inch of my body tingling in anticipation for what he’s gearing up to say, my back pressing against the house behind me so hard the wood is digging into my spine. The final ticks of the bomb in my ear fade into ahisssas Ford stares at me, and then… a pregnant silence.
“Why now?” he prompts. “Because I can’t fucking take it anymore.”
And the bomb explodes.
Ford smacks his palm against the side of the house, the next words out of his mouth ricocheting around in my head, leaving a path of destruction in their wake.
“Because I can’t put my hands on you for another month straight without being able to put them everywhere. Because I can’t be in the same room with you for more than five seconds without wanting to fuck you until this pain in my chest goes away. Because I just spent the entire night getting bitched at by half the town when I wasn’t setting up the jack-o-lantern display to their exact liking, and I would do it again in a heartbeat if it made you happy. Because it’s my job to take care of you, and for some reason, you don’t want that this year, and my sanity is at its goddamn breaking point.”
Oh…
Oh my God.
Holy shit.
Jesus…
“What the hell?” is all that comes out of me on a shaky whisper.
“I told you I wasn’t fucking around.”
All the air in my lungs leaves me with a quiet whimper, my heart pounding in my chest and butterflies flapping around in my stomach after what he just said. There’s so much anguish on his face I can’t breathe, realizing how much I’ve been hurting him by acting like a total bitch.
