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She bumped her shoulder against his arm as they walked back to his SUV.
“When we first got here, I thought for a moment you were going to try to get me into a hotel room,” she teased, as he walked her around to the passenger side of the truck.
He turned her to face him and brushed the backs of his fingers over her soft cheek. He bent slightly towards her smiling face, his own serious as usual.
“The first time I fuck you will not be in a hotel attached to a Denny’s.”
Her smile slid off her face as her mouth dropped open in a gasp. He held her eyes and brushed his fingers oh so softly against her cheek. She closed her eyes and turned her face to nuzzle against his hand. His stomach flipped and his heart settled in. It was going to be a long, bumpy ride but so long as she was with him in the end, he was ready to take it with her.
Chapter 7
The Wedding
Willa
I lost count of the number of moments I’d stolen to feed my fantasy relationship with Barrett. There were so many at this point it was beginning to seem like less of a fantasy and more of a burgeoning reality.
I pushed that thought away. Had I entertained it further, I would have forced myself to stop collecting those moments, and I was not ready to do that.
Two weeks after dropping me off from our late-night-early-morning breakfast date, Barrett picked me up and we walked into Rebecca and Rhys’s wedding together. I leaned back ever so slightly against his large, gentle, guiding hand at the small of my back.
He stood tall and beautiful beside me in his dark grey suit, crisp white shirt, and charcoal tie. He had trimmed his beard and pulled his long hair pulled back at the nape of his neck. I preferred him in his worn jeans that he typically wore on the weekends, but this look far from sucked.
I wore a black dress with a full skirt and a deep vee that dipped low between my breasts. His beautiful eyes had wandered from the top of my head to the toes of my stilettos when he first saw me.
Although he didn’t compliment me with words, he smiled a slow smile, took me by the hand and spun me slowly around. He kissed the back of my hand, making me laugh out loud with happiness. I felt his warm gaze often on my profile and I packed away the warmth of that feeling as well.
Bex had chosen grey, white, and black for her theme colors, and asked us all to dress in those shades. We were multi-tasking our roles as guests, family, and wedding party, and she wanted a cohesive look for the photographs.
After the formal festivities, the theme changed to jeans and flannel and the photographer stayed until late capturing photos of families old and newly formed, couples, friends, and various combinations of all of us. There were several pictures taken of just Barrett and me, and I wondered how I could get my hands on those without alerting Rebecca to my feelings.
I caught Mara and Zale looking at us speculatively throughout the evening. Putting a little bit of distance between Barrett and me would be wise, but I lacked the willpower to resist his pull, and I greedily wanted a few more stolen moments, moments in which I pretended he was mine.
At heart, I was a romantic, and I wished for happily ever after for everyone I loved. I even dreamed about it for myself, no, not dreamed, fantasized. Dreams were attainable, fantasies were not. While happily-ever-after was a dream worth pursuing, I simply did not have it in me to put so much of myself in someone else’s hands, at anyone else’s mercy. I controlled my destiny. I decided my path. I’d done it for a long time, and it had made me selfish and self-centered.
The last thing I wanted to do was saddle him with that when he could have so much more. He would give up on the idea of us eventually. So, I stole moments for my fantasy, and I told myself it would have to be enough.
After the vows, which were beautiful, after the dinner, which was delicious, after the petting zoo, which was a riot, came the firepit, the marshmallows, the floating lanterns, and the wine coolers.
Barrett drove so I felt free to celebrate with my girls, Mara and Bex, and celebrate we did. God, they were beautiful. All of them. Love flowed abundantly through my life. I looked around and it was all I saw. Love, love everywhere.
Some of it was even for me.
Around eleven o’clock Barrett packed me into his truck to go home. Silence weaved a web of intimacy around us in the dark cocoon of his vehicle, and the wine coolers did their part to blur the edges of my reality.
When he parked, I waited for him to walk around to my side. I watched him circle the front of the vehicle. He was too big to be truly graceful, his body solid, his walk slow and deliberate. I imagined with those long legs he had learned to walk slow or everyone around him would be running to catch up.
I imagined this was my life, that coming home with him was routine. I imagined that his serious face would wake beside me every day, that his infrequent smiles would warm me, his huge arms would hold me tight. When he opened my door, I smiled into his serious face as I placed my hand in his.
At my door he took my house key from my hand and let us in. I sighed. These were the small things, opening the door, handing me out of the car, his hand at my back, secret smiles, comfortable silence, drinking from his mug, a gentle touch, the small things that were really the big things in the end.
I sighed again.
“What’s up, curly?” he rumbled behind me, “Why the big sigh?”
He had stopped in my front hall and the door closed behind him. I turned and took him in, his stillness, the warmth in his eyes, his large frame. He wore an olive-green flannel open over a tight tee, faded jeans that fit exactly right, and distressed leather desert boots. His hair, that he had pulled back in a ponytail for the wedding, had long since been freed and it hung like a curtain to one side of his gorgeous, rugged face. His eyes, those eyes that captivated me, burned holes in mine as I walked slowly towards him.
Nothing would stop me from trying to steal this moment as well.
