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Chapter Eleven
Slate could not stop kissing Jill. He’d been thinking about this moment for a solid week, and now that the moment had started and was going on and on…and on, he’d severely underestimated how amazing a kiss could be.
Her fingers in his hair sent pops of electricity down his spine. The taste of her mouth was almost like the cream cheese frosting on the cinnamon rolls, but with more strawberry from her lip gloss. His heartbeat sprinted through his whole body, beating and beating and beating with every stroke of her lips against his.
You’ve got to stop, he told himself, but he just kept kissing her. She didn’t stop kissing him either, and Slate finally pulled away when he needed to breathe deeper than kissing her allowed.
“You’re going to be late,” she whispered.
Slate opened his eyes and found Jill’s face lifted toward his, her eyes still closed. He couldn’t believe he’d caught the attention of a woman like her. She was so kind, and so…good.
“Worth it,” he said, smiling at her.
She opened her eyes, and Slate turned shy. He bent to pick up his cowboy hat and settled it low on his head to cover his eyes. He cleared his throat, and didn’t dare to look at her.
“Oh, are you embarrassed now?” Jill put her hand in Slate’s and led him to get the reins. “That was an amazing kiss. I actually think it was about ten kisses in one, which is probably why it was so spectacular.”
Slate’s heartbeat still hadn’t settled, but he managed to say, “Amazing? Spectacular?”
“Great,” she said in a deadpan as she started to lead both horses. “You didn’t like it as much as I did.”
“I don’t think that’s possible,” Slate said, and when Jill didn’t answer, he finally looked at her.
She grinned up at him with all the wattage of the sun they’d just watched come up. “So amazing and spectacular fit.”
He smiled back at her, all of his embarrassment and shyness gone. “They fit.”
She laughed and passed his reins to him. “It’s ten minutes on a horse, but at least twenty with human feet. Let’s ride, cowboy.” She put her foot in the stirrup and got on her horse, and Slate marveled at her.
“I didn’t know you rode a lot,” he said.
“I don’t,” she said. “I’m just grateful I managed to get on and off of this beast without embarrassing myself.”
He chuckled and realized he’d left the cinnamon rolls back on the pole. “My breakfast,” he said. He swung into the saddle and turned the pretty brown and white horse back toward the tree line. “I’ll be right back.” He urged the horse to go back to get his cinnamon rolls, and once he’d retrieved them, he returned to Jill.
“Are you getting ready for your trip?” Jill asked as they got moving back toward the homestead.
“Yeah,” Slate said. “As much as I can, at least.”
“What can I help you with?”
He exhaled heavily, trying to think about what he even needed to prepare. He could gas up his truck and drive all the way to Austin in about three hours. A flicker of fear touched his pulse. It didn’t seem far enough away from the man he’d once been—and the people he’d known in Austin.
He’d spoken to his mom several times in the past couple of weeks since calling her, and she really wanted him to come visit for his birthday. But the timing hadn’t worked out, and he wasn’t going for another week and a half. He’d call her later today, if she didn’t call him first. He rarely talked to his father, but he’d been getting texts from their phone with quotes about being a good person and how to work hard.
Those definitely came from his father, and Slate hadn’t figured out how to respond to the messages. He knew what he’d done wrong. He’d paid the penalty. He knew what difficult situations looked like, sounded like, and smelled like on a level most people didn’t.
“The truth is, I don’t want to go back,” he said.
“Why not?” Jill asked. “You want to see your parents. Well, your mom, at least.”
“Yeah, that’s going to be fine,” he said, though he had doubts about that too. “But I don’t want to go to the restaurant, and I don’t want to run into anyone I used to know.”
“You’ll only be gone for a weekend,” she said. “Just stick to your parents’ house.”
“We’re not staying there,” he said. “It’s not a very big house, and…I mentioned how difficult my father is, right?”
“You may have said so a time or two,” she teased.
