by Ella James
“Scare you?” I laugh.
“Just a little.”
“Let’s get our blood pumping.” I point down the dirt road. “Want to race to that catch pen down there—the one with the brown fencing?”
He lifts his brows, and for the first time since we set off, seems to loosen up a little. “You sure about that?” He smirks. “There are no barrels on this track, so you won’t have the upper hand.”
I give him a mocking laugh and nudge Tango with my heel. We race off, leaving Burke and and Lulu in the dust. Both horses are galloping about a third of a mile, but they can’t recover from my dirty head start.
When we get to the chapel, he wipes a hand over his face and shakes his head. “You damn cheater.”
I laugh wickedly. “I know. But I won. No barrels in sight.”
He gets a good laugh at that as we guide the horses through the tall, green grass.
The chapel’s been shut up for years; it’s too expensive for me to restore—yet. Its pretty white facade has been overtaken by kudzu, but it’s still got a certain beauty. I’m pleased that he seems to agree. I show him the cemetery in its backyard, and Mama’s grave, and we get off our horses.
Burke kneels down and traces the stone-etched letters of her name. Somehow it’s the perfect gesture.
He stands up with something knowing in his eyes, and for a moment, I think he’s going to say something. But he just drapes an arm around my shoulders and pulls me against his side, and when I look up at his face, I find it kind and curious and gentle.
“How are you a nice guy?” I tease. “I so thought I had a read on you.”
“Different layers,” he says, teasing too, but I think he’s right. Everybody wears so many different masks. Who we are is constantly in flux—so who you get from someone else at any given time is something special, if you think about it. Relating to another person in a real way—even if it’s brief—is a rare gift.
“I like this layer,” I say as I climb back onto Tango.
“I like you.”
It’s sweet and simple. For a shining moment, as we ride under the hot sun, glancing at each other with our fleeting, bashful smiles as birds chirp and the breeze caresses us, the whole world seems to be.
We stop at a little tin-roofed shack known as the “water cooler,” where there’s a food pantry and free gasoline for everyone who works here, and we talk about all that: the farm’s employees, how they’re treated.
“Southern farms have history, so I’m careful how I treat employees. I don’t hire more if I can’t promise a living wage. There’s a college fund my Mama set up, too.”
I can see the shock in his eyes. For some reason, in that moment, as we both rip open candy bars I climbed down off Tango to grab, his surprise makes me snicker.
“Mama never wanted me to not get finished,” I explain, meaning high school. “It was my choice. And then I just…stayed. A lot of my employees go, though. In a weird way, it’s less essential for me. I don’t need college to tell me how to do a job my family’s done for generations.”
I see admiration in his eyes, and understanding.
“Also, by the way,” I add, “my farm is going to last. I know it looks a little dicey on paper, but I’ve got a master plan.”
“Shit, June.” He shakes his head. “I’m so sorry that I ever said that.”
I give him a bratty grin. “You know I like the sound of sorries. Just for that, I’ll take you one more place before we go back.”
We start down a red dirt road that’s lined by mossy oaks and follow as it winds up a slight hill into thicker trees. And there’s my parents’ house. Really my great-great grandparents’ house. I watch Burke’s face as we approach it, and I know he thinks it’s beautiful. It really is.
It’s not truly antebellum, but it looks the part. It’s big and white, with stately columns and a fine front porch, my grandma’s rocking chairs still on it, along with giant potted ferns that were my mama’s. I still come here to water them—me or Latrice. I know it’s weird, but I can’t stand to see this porch without my mom’s prized ferns.
“This place is mostly empty,” I say. “Would you want to go in, take a look around a real old Southern home?”
“If you do. Yeah. I’d like to see it.”
I show him a rusty metal post where people used to tie their horses, and he’s fascinated. He’s rapt as I lead him in through the big, pretty front door and then all through the first floor, with its vast, formal dining room, antique hardwoods, gold flocked wallpaper, and a wall-sized mirror with a curling scroll-style carving on top. There’s a piano in one of the parlors, and he plays a few keys, then winces at their lack of tuning.
When we get to the winding staircase, his hand catches mine. He’s quiet again until we step onto the balcony that hangs over the front porch. We stand side by side, a most unlikely couple—tech tycoon and farm queen, I think wryly—and I watch as he takes in the lush grass and stately trees around us.
“Beautiful.”
I nod as my throat tightens. “It was an amazing place to grow up. I felt like a princess. Sutton used to say she was the queen, so I was the princess.”
“Where was Mary Helen?” he asks, smiling.
“She was also the queen. Or also the princess. Depending on the mood of the day.” I laugh. “And I mean Sutton’s mood. She ran the show.”
That makes him smile. We wander back inside, and I show him my old bedroom. It’s empty but for an old oriental rug, since I moved all my stuff into the small house. I stretch out on my back on the dusty rug, and, to my surprise, he sprawls out beside me.
“Pretty,” he says, stroking my jaw as he turns onto his side to face me.
“You are.” I grin.
He shakes his head. “I’m dirty. Need a shower.”
His hand tunnels into my hair, and we kiss, gently this time, until I have a sneezing fit. “It’s the damn dust.” I rub my watery eyes. “Even though I have somebody come clean sometimes.”
Burke helps me to my feet, but I’m loath to leave. “All my memories are in this room. Feels like almost all of them, at least.” I run my finger over the windowpane where, in high school, I kept a row of scented candles, and he makes a sympathetic sound.
My chest starts aching, and I know it’s time to go. Lingering in this place only ever makes me want things I can’t have. I lead him downstairs, detouring briefly so he can admire a mural in the library.
“So this is it,” I say as we step back onto the wide front porch. “This is my mausoleum.”
We clasp hands, and I walk him over to a porch swing. We sit side by side, my legs swinging while his shoes on the porch floor keep us moving. He traces my wrist with roving fingertips, and I smile as I realize I was wrong about this as well—his hands are rough.
“Don’t be sad for me,” I tell him.
He looks into my eyes, and I can tell my gut feeling was right. Seeing this old, empty house—and what it once was—makes him feel a little sorry for me.
“Everybody’s story has a sad part. You have to get through them to get into the happy parts that happen at the end.”
“The happily ever after?” He says it with a teasing smile, as if it’s fool’s talk.
“Yeah.” I’m surprised to find I mean it in the moment. I believe it.
He scoots just a little closer to me. Then he drapes an arm over my shoulders and pulls me against his side. He doesn’t offer any words, is silent on the subject of the happy ending.
I wish I knew why.
His eyes are sad on the ride back to the house.
After we return the horses to their stalls, I take him to my bed, and we enjoy each other’s bodies again. His default is gentle, playful, but I make it so he’s groaning and tied up in knots in no time. We both laugh when he finds a small piece of kudzu clinging to a lock of my hair.
After we both scratch the itch, I fall asleep in his arms. When I wake up, he’s smiling like he’s content.
“C
an you stay?” I murmur.
“Mmm?” He widens his eyes, inquiring.
“Can you stay any longer this time?”
It’s a while before he answers, but I feel the tension in him. It makes me think I was wrong for asking.
“You want me to stay here?”
“I would love it if you could.”
He smirks. “What would you do with me?”
Chapter 27
Burke
She kisses my chest and drapes her soft, tanned leg over my hard one. “Well, I would talk to you, for one.”
“Talk to me?” I say it like that’s absurd. “What about?”
“Your favorite everything. All the things about Burke—the devil is in the details.” Her eyes shine as she sets an indulgent smile on me.
Despite the tightening feeling in my chest, I hear myself say, “Hit me with a question.”
She sits up and pushes her hair back over her shoulders. Her face is thoughtful, like she knows she just has this one chance and wants to make it count. She screws her face up almost comically, as if she’s thinking hard, then asks, “Do you feel smart because you went to MIT? The only way I really know it is from that movie Good Will Hunting.”
“Good movie.”
She thumps my chest. “That’s not an answer.”
I force myself to sit up, too. I lean back against her pillows, reaching out to trace her bare knee with my left hand. “No,” I say after a second. “I would say it doesn’t make me feel smart.”
“But you know you are smart.”
I shake my head. “There are lots of kinds of smart. I’m good at taking tests.” I narrow my eyes at her. “I bet you are, too.”
She shrugs.
I think it’s meant to be dismissive, but instead she just looks sly, like she’s keeping a secret.
“I’m right about that. You were, weren’t you?” I grin as I picture June in some small, country schoolhouse sitting up straight like she does when she’s eager for something. I can see her acing every test, being a little know-it-all.
“I was good in school,” she drawls after a second. “Nobody said I wasn’t.”
“College doesn’t matter. I’m so fucking sorry that I said that.”
“Even if you hadn’t said that, it does matter.”
“We’re just one meteor away from the world as we know it being completely different. And always just a second away from something way worse. Common sense matters. Business sense matters. Kindness matters. College, not so much.”
“Good thing Mama taught me to be nice.” June winks, and I shake my head.
“I’m not sure I’d use the word ‘nice.’”
She jabs at my ribs, and I swat at her. After that, there’s a weird silence in which she tilts her head at me as if she’s thinking something. I have this strong sixth sense she wants to ask about my mom. She doesn’t, though, and I’m grateful.
“Has anybody ever read your tarot?” she says abruptly. My eyes snap to her curves as she hops down off the bed. She’s still fully naked, which makes my voice catch when I answer. “Um…not sure?”
She rolls her eyes as she opens her nightstand drawer. “Then you haven’t. Trust me—you would know.” I try not to ogle her as she climbs back on the bed, but damn she’s gorgeous, with her hair falling over her shoulders, soft, curly ends brushing the pale globes of her breasts as she moves.
“I’ve just got a Rider-Waite deck,” she says, sitting cross-legged by me unabashedly. “My fancy deck is in my car, and I’m not walking out there, so we’re going old-school. We’ll just do a three-card spread,” she murmurs, shuffling the deck. “Let’s do…opportunities, challenges, outcome.”
She walks me through it step by step, and I try to be open to it, as she urges. I end up with the Magician, Death, and the Fool—a reading June goes crazy for. She’s still shaking her head at it as we step into the shower in the kids’ bathroom.
I watch her as she washes, especially when she can’t tell I’m looking. She’s about as perfect as I can imagine any woman being, and I don’t know when I’ll see her like this again, or even if I ever will.
“Tell me something,” she says as I scrub the mud and dust out of my hair. “Something about you, Sly.”
That makes me smile. “Something about me?”
She nods, looking solemn in the shower’s steam.
I don’t know why, but I decide to give it to her: “I like making things.”
“What do you mean?”
“I like making…furniture.” It feels so strange to say it that I stop and cut my gaze downward, away from hers. “Sometimes tables and chairs and things like that. But there’s something relaxing about working with wood.” I shake my head. “I know. You can go ahead and laugh.”
I look up at her, and she widens her eyes. Her face is serious; it’s interested. “I’m not laughing. Do you really do that?”
“Not much yet,” I confess. “But I have done some. I took a few classes, at a community college near my place. It was a table-making class and then a carving class. For stress relief when—” I shake my head.
“And you’re good at it?”
I laugh at her face; she’s practically got confused; recalibrating stamped on her forehead. “I’m pretty decent,” I tell her. “But I’d like to do and learn more.”
“Wow. That’s pretty cool that you’re techy and artistic, too. Will you send me pictures—like of something that you made in the class?”
“Sure.”
After our shower, I change out lightbulbs in high places, fix a broken blade on her lawn mower, and am in the yard looking at a crack in her bird bath when I can’t resist a look up at her. I find her smiling at me like she almost always is, and I blurt out, “Tell me something about you, June. You know…something special.”
She does a little twirl, reminding me of the cheerleader she used to be. And she says, “Well, I make cakes. Really good ones. I could be a chef or something, but I like being a farmer better.”
Unlike me, she doesn’t mind sharing about herself, so she shows me some cakes on her phone.
“Damn, that unicorn one…”
She smirks. “Self portrait.”
After that, we seem to drift toward the swing. When we sit down, she hooks her foot behind my leg, and I take her hand. Just one more time before I have to get moving.
She tells me about the peanuts—what her plan is for the year, in numbers. I give a few thoughts, based on the numbers.
Then a boxy, old white SUV is bumping down the driveaway. Which means the kids are back. When they get out, Leah won’t stop grinning at us, and she won’t leave soon enough. I’m not sure when I’m seeing June again, and I want a second to say my goodbyes in privacy. Just when I’m about to give up, Leah finally drives off.
June sets the kids up in front of the TV and steps onto the porch alone, with her hair twisted into curls at the ends, like it is when she’s been twirling it nervously, and a cigar box in her hand. She holds it out to me and smiles as I open its top, revealing a Ziploc baggie of something that looks like hardened caramel.
“It’s Southern candy,” she says with a proud smile. “Homemade peanut brittle.”
I bring the box to my chest. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome, Burke babe.” As she looks at me, her eyebrows pinch together and her mouth twists downward, like she’s reading our future and doesn’t like what she sees.
“What’s the matter, Juney?”
She blinks fast, then shuts her eyes, and then she wipes them with force. “I’m sad you’re leaving,” she says thickly.
I’m frozen in place, struck to the core by that look on her face. Like something precious is within her sights, but she knows she can’t grasp it.
She closes the distance in between us with two strides. Then her arms are locked around me. Her face is pressed against my chest, and she’s urging me to lean down so my cheek is on her hair. She pulls me down lower still, and our foreheads touch.<
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“Burke,” she whispers near my ear.
I kiss her temple. “Yeah?”
She just squeezes me more tightly. I wrap her in my arms and lift her off the porch. Then I kiss her cheek, her chin, her nose. She smiles, and it’s like they say in songs and poems—it’s like the fucking sun.
“You want me to send you mail?”
“If the mail’s you.” She sniffles.
“You want me to fly and see you Wednesday?”
Her mouth opens. Then she’s laughing. “What? You’d do that for me?”
I hug her close, so she’s cradled against my chest. Her softness feels incredible. She kisses my throat with her velvet mouth, and I’m surprised to hear a ragged groan pull from my chest. Something weird happens—I sort of shudder—and she hugs me tightly.
“Burke. I wish you didn’t have to leave today.”
“Me too.” I wish I didn’t have to leave her ever. Realizing that I feel this way—that somehow I’ve become addicted to June—makes my heart quicken with fear. But also fills it up with something bright and dense and…necessary. I have the sense that this feeling is vitally important.
I guide her to the swing, and we sit down together. Then I hold her so tightly, I’m worried I might hurt her. I can’t seem to let her go. We’re kissing—everywhere. Her lips are on my throat, my cheeks, my forehead. My fingers twine in her hair as our foreheads touch, and I try to look at her. We both go cross-eyed and then laugh.
“Don’t forget about me. Promise,” she whispers.
I laugh. “I’ll call you from the airport.” I hug her again, smelling the fruity smell of her hair. I kiss her lips again, and then we’re at it. We can’t stop. She pulls away first, breathing hard. “I could never forget about you. No one could. Trust me on that.”
The kids burst onto the porch at that moment, yipping all around me like the puppies do, trying to say goodbye, chasing me down the porch stairs to give me one final hug.
They escort me to the Jeep, and I give June a big grin over their heads as I hug them.
She blows me a kiss. When she moves her palm off her lips, they’re tilted at the corners in the sweetest little grin. It’s all I think about as I drop the Jeep back at Shawn’s and get into the car sent by the service I hired to take me to the airport.