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I leaned in and kissed the words back into his mouth. “Don’t wish it away.”
“Never.”
“Good.” I patted his chest and he let me down. “I don’t regret a moment.”
Then I rushed out of the room before I climbed back into his arms. I couldn’t do that. I wouldn’t rearrange my world for a man again.
Even Beckett Manning.
Chapter12
Beckett
Chewed Up & Spit Out
The drive back to the main part of the orchard was quiet.
I didn’t know what the fuck to say to her. The fact that I was the one who was churned up about the morning after pissed me off.
This was what I did. Had a great night then moved on.
Nothing different.
Lies.
Everything about last night was different. Dangerously different because it felt like it had been more than just sex.
And she’d been the one to say no regrets and she meant it.
My fingers tightened on the steering wheel. I forced myself to unclench and the ache in my shoulders reminded me of a jarring fall from a tree I’d had when I was twenty. It had taken a half bottle of Hayes’ moonshine to let me sleep comfortably that night.
I had a feeling it might happen again.
Waking with her vined around me this morning had felt far too right. Not the cloying, race for the door kind of reaction I usually had. In fact, I’d laid there for ten full minutes just stroking the silky smoothness of her arm draped over my chest before I climbed out of bed and looked for my smokes.
I’d thought a cigarette would settle the jangling nerves flooding my system. An itch under the skin that wouldn’t leave.
Instead, it just reminded me that some things were hard habits to break.
Before that day, there’d only been one thing on my list.
I swore as we bottomed out over a rut in the gravel road from the storm yesterday. Helena gripped the dashboard as she slammed back into her seat after catching some air.
“Sorry.”
“It’s okay.”
“The rain really ate up the roads.” I sighed. Replacing the gravel with blacktop was on the ever-growing list of updates needed now that the orchard was expanding. We were all right with capital at the moment, but the actual blacktopping was a huge ordeal that I wasn’t really up for.
Evidently, I needed to move it further up on the list.
“I imagine both rain and snow can be rough on all the trails you have. It felt like we were in a maze of them yesterday on Storm.”
“Yeah, that is one of the reasons I got Storm. He could get me around the property faster than the tractors and trucks.”
“Just you?”
I relaxed at the inane conversation. The orchard I understood. “My brothers weren’t interested in learning to ride, but we have added a few on for the hayrides in the fall. I managed to lure a couple guys from a nearby ranch over here who were interested in doing something less labor-intensive.”
