“You got lucky, Jake.”
Jake heaves out a sigh. “I know.” He grins at me. “Just don’t tell him I said so, or his head will swell up so big we won’t be able to fit him in the truck.”
30
Abigail
A gentle rain begins to fall around seven o’clock. I hear the pings on the tin roof and look out the screen door and watch as fat raindrops splat against the porch. I open the door and step outside. A cool wind lifts my hair, blowing it back from my face, and I inhale deeply.
I know I’m not going to be able to stay here forever, not without a job. So I either have to get a job and decide to stay, or I need to go home. But I don’t know how Ethan feels. I know he likes me—he has said as much. What I don’t know is if he can love me. Or if I can love him back.
If anyone were to ask me right now this very minute, I’d have to say that I am falling in love with him. I think about him all the time, even when he’s not around. I wonder what he’s doing and if he’s happy. I wonder how people are treating him, and whether or not they’re treating him well enough.
He’s gone now with Jake and Mr. Jacobson to the fire and rescue meeting in advance of the coming storm. But I’m pretty sure I know what kind of reception he’s going to get, and I know he’ll be heartbroken over it.
My walk takes me up to the big house, the house on the hill where the Jacobsons live, and I find Katie in the yard with her children. Her older two children are kicking a ball around with her two little ones, and she has a baby in her arms as she occasionally runs after one or the other of the small ones. She looks up as I approach.
She smiles at me. “Are you enjoying the rain?”
I walk over toward her brood, taking in the chaos that surrounds her. But she doesn’t look the least bit put-out by it.
I hold my palm out toward the sky. “I think it’s stopping.”
“The weather app said it would only last a few minutes.” One of her younger boys falls down hard, and his cheek skids in the damp grass. He whimpers a little, but she doesn’t make a fuss over it. She cups her hand around her mouth and whispers to me, “If I don’t notice he fell, he won’t either.” She grins. “Mom trick,” she adds with a wink.
“Good to know.” I look from one to another of her rambunctious children. “How do you do all this? And keep your sanity?”
She shrugs. “Jake actually does a lot of it. The older ones are in school all day. The little ones nap.” She shrugs again. “It works out.” She looks at me. “Have you ever wanted kids?”
“I’ve never really thought about it,” I admit. Charles and I agreed that we would wait to have children, and that day never came. I never missed it. Not really.
“Well, Ethan has Mitchell,” she says slyly, like she’s inviting me to have a conversation about Mitchell.
I nod. “Yes, he does.”
She grins at me. “Pop has seen Ethan leaving your cabin every morning this week,” she says. “He can’t keep a secret to save his life.” She holds up a hand when I start to protest. “Don’t worry. Ethan knows he approves of you.”
“What?” Mr. Jacobson approves of me? Did I hear that correctly?
She looks a little uncertain. “I’ve overstepped,” she adds, her eyes suddenly wary.
“No, no, that’s not it.” I just didn’t know that Ethan needs for Mr. Jacobson to approve me to be in his life. “I didn’t know about that. That he approves.” Or disapproves, for that matter.
“It’s not like that,” she rushes to say.
“Then what’s it like?”
“It’s just… Ethan doesn’t have very many people on his team. But Pop is definitely Team Ethan.” She takes a breath, but then she rushes on to say, “Pop has known your grandmother since they were young. They still talk sometimes.”
Suddenly, it all becomes clear. “So that’s what this is about,” I say. “Gran has been talking.”
“I don’t know.” She looks down into her baby’s face and says in a childlike voice, “Mommy messed this all up.”
“I think I might love him,” I admit suddenly. The words just spill out of me. I instantly regret that I didn’t say them to Ethan first. I wish I could grab them in the air and bring them back to my lips, but they’re already out there.
“Nobody deserves to be loved more than Ethan.” She looks down at her watch. “I’m actually surprised they’re not back yet. I hope everything went okay at the fire station.”
“Knowing how the people in this town operate, I sincerely doubt it.”
But then we see the lights of Mr. Jacobson’s truck as it comes slowly toward us down the lane.
“Guess we’ll find out,” Katie says softly.
Mr. Jacobson gets out and Jake and Ethan climb out of their side right after. Jake lets out a heavy sigh, and Ethan winks at me right before they start to unload the pans, which I guess the meat was in, from the back of the truck.
“Take that one home with you,” Mr. Jacobson says, with a nod toward the one in Ethan’s arms.
Ethan looks down at it. “Are you sure? There’s still a lot in here.”
“There’s just as much in this one,” Jake says. “We’re going to be eating ribs for days.”
“Wait,” Katie says. “Why do you have leftovers? You never have leftovers.”
Jake grins at her. “You should have seen him. Pop walked around and jerked full plates out of people’s hands, and he even yanked a rib bone out of one guy’s mouth, I swear, and then he told us to load it all back up.”
“Then he told them all that God don’t like ugly, and we left,” Ethan adds, but he’s grinning too. He stands there with the pan hitched against his hip. “They didn’t want my kind there,” he says. But he doesn’t look torn up about it. He looks fine. He looks happy, in fact. He realizes I’m standing there just staring at him and he walks over to kiss me.
“Are you okay?” I ask him quietly.
“Fine,” he says, that grin still on his face.
“So Pop showed his tail pretty good,” Jake continues. “We should be good for the next year or so on public displays of lunacy.” Jake looks at me. “Pop is only allowed so many episodes per year.”
“I fight for what’s right,” Mr. Jacobson objects. He pops a toothpick in his mouth and grins at Ethan. “All day long.”
Ethan lifts the pan he’s holding in my direction. “You feel like ribs?”
“Sure!” I reply. I still can’t understand why he feels so happy after getting kicked out of an important town meeting.
“We’ll see you guys later,” Ethan calls out. “Thanks again, Mr. Jacobson,” he says a little more quietly. Mr. Jacobson gives him nothing more than a tilt of his chin.
Ethan is still smiling when we get back to my cabin.
I can’t contain my curiosity any longer. “Why do you look so happy about getting kicked out of a town meeting?” I ask, as he sets the pan down on the table and retrieves two plates from the cabinet.
“Honestly, it’s because I want to be Mr. Jacobson when I grow up.” He puts two ribs on a plate and pushes it toward me, and he takes two for himself.
“That’s all you’re going to eat?”
“I ate about ten of them while we waited for Mr. Jacobson to finish gabbing with all the old people at the nursing home. I think the man has probably forgotten more about Macon Hills than most people will ever know. He knows every person, every story, every secret, and every scandal. And he’s not afraid to wield them as appropriate. He has bigger balls than anyone I’ve ever met.”
“So what happened?” I ask as we sit down to eat.
“He refused to feed them all when they tried to kick me out, and then we left.” He shrugs, but he’s still grinning.
“Why has this got you so tickled?”
“It’s been a long time since I’ve felt like I could just own what happened,” he says quietly. “But after tonight, I’m ready to own it. I made a mistake, and the woman I loved died. She’s gone now, and I paid
for my mistake, and now I think I’m just about ready to be done with it.”
“That’s quite a leap.” As early as this morning, he was still doubting his place in the world, his value to anyone.
“Well, now I have some shit worth fighting for,” he says. He reaches over and squeezes my hand, getting barbecue sauce all over me.
“Hey!”
He picks my hand up and licks the sauce from the back of it.
He’s laughing until he hears the hitch of my breath. Then he freezes. “Something wrong?” he asks, a slow quirk forming on his full lips.
I pull my hand back and swallow. “No, nothing’s wrong.”
“Uh-huh,” he says. He shoves his chair back. “I’m going to go take a shower really quick.” He kisses the top of my head as he brushes past me. “Be right back.”
I grab my phone and walk out onto the porch. “Hey, Gran,” I say when I hear her answer.
“Make it fast, Abigail,” she says. “My stories are on.”
“Hit pause, Gran,” I reply. “It’s the little button that looks like a sideways equals sign.”
“Oh, okay.” She waits a beat. “There. How do I start it back?”
“Hit it again.”
“It better work,” she warns. “What are you doing?”
“Gran, did you check the mail today?”
“Yes.”
“Did I get anything?”
“Yes.”
“From where?”
I can hear her sorting through paper. “Looks like a credit card bill. And a letter from a doctor’s office.”
“Can you open that one for me and tell me what it says?”
When I called the doctor’s office earlier today to get my test results, they’d said they couldn’t tell me anything over the phone but that an official result would arrive in the mail.
I hear her tearing into the envelope. I hold my breath.
“All negative, Abigail,” she says after a minute of reading. “All negative,” she says again.
“Oh, thank God.” I lay my head back against the wall and stare up at the stars.
“You happy?” Gran asks quietly.
“Very.”
“Then I’m happy for you, Abigail.”
“I’ve got to go, Gran. I have a hot man in my shower and he’s naked.”
“Use a condom, Abigail.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I reply with a giggle.
“Love you, Abigail,” she says quietly.
“Love you too, Gran.”
I hang up and dash through the house, pulling off my clothes as I go. I can hear the water running in the shower as I walk into the bathroom. Steam rises over the top of the curtain, and I can hear Ethan humming. I slide the curtain back and step in behind him, completely naked. He must feel the coolness enter the small space because he turns to face me, and his eyes go wide.
“Hey,” he says. He grins as he sticks his head under the spray to wash the soap out of his hair. Water sluices down over his face and he shakes his head to clear his eyes, which makes me laugh. “You going to stay way over there?” he asks, his eyes getting smoky all of a sudden.
“Is it okay that I’m here?” I ask, my voice so quiet I can barely hear it over the water.
“Depends,” he says, as he stares at me with one eye closed. “Why are you here?”
I look down at the top of my hand and hold it up for him to see, even though there’s nothing there. “You licked my hand.”
“I did.” He grins at me, but it’s a hot, smoldering grin. One that makes my heart trip faster.
“And I liked it.”
“Hmm,” he replies. He wraps one arm around my waist and pulls me against him. We are skin to skin.
“I just got some good news,” I tell him.
His brow furrows. “What’s that?”
“When I went to the doctor, I had them test me for sexually transmitted diseases, and all my tests were negative. I just now found out.”
He points to the shower floor. “You just found out. Just now?”
“I’m clean.” I touch his chest, the tautness of muscle a juxtaposition with his soft skin.
“Shy gave me condoms,” he says, as he sucks my earlobe between his teeth and nibbles gently.
I push back from him. “Shy did?”
He laughs and pulls me back toward him. “Yep. He threw them at me as I left the other day.”
“That dirty old man,” I say. “I might have to thank him.”
He palms one breast, testing the weight. “I knew you’d be perfect,” he says. Then he bends and takes the nipple into his mouth. I fall back against the wall and he follows me, his lips holding tightly as his tongue slowly licks back and forth across my nipple. “I have wanted to taste you for so long,” he says close to my ear as he lifts his head.
I can feel his manhood pressed against my belly, hot and hard and ready. I part my legs and wait for him to notch it between my legs. But he doesn’t. Instead, he licks his way down my body, paying attention to every part of me on the way. When he parts my lower lips, I jump. He looks up. “Is this okay?”
“I don’t know,” I reply honestly.
He leans forward and blows against my tender skin, his cool breath against my hot skin a balm and an ignition all at once. My pulse begins to pound. “What does that mean?”
I swallow noisily. “I’ve never been with…anybody who wanted to…spend a lot of time down there.”
His brow furrows. “Nobody wanted to lick your pussy?”
“Oh, God,” I say as he licks up my slit, his tongue stopping at the top to rub, the flat section of his tongue moving back and forth.
“Nobody?” he asks again.
I shake my head, unable to even open my eyes.
He lifts my leg over his shoulder and breathes against me, his fingers parting me even more. “This is my favorite thing,” he says. He licks up my slit again, and this time when he reaches that bundle of nerves near the front, he stops and gives a gentle suck that nearly has my knees buckling. I reach for the top of his head and hold on tight. “Have you ever come like this?”
I shake my head. “No.”
“Remember I told you sex is supposed to be like a religious experience?”
I nod, unable to speak. When he slides two fingers inside me, though, I cry out “Oh, God,” again.
He grins against my skin, but he doesn’t stop. Instead, he adds a hum to his steady rhythm of licks and sucks.
“I think I’m going to…” I stop, because completion is hanging there just out of my reach. It’s there, and I can feel it. I can feel it in my bones, in my muscles, in my skin, and in my heart. I can feel it all over. My legs tremble. Then I come apart. I hold him against me, only then realizing that my hands are wrapped tightly in his hair, and that I’ve been pushing his face against me. “Sorry,” I whisper, as I loosen my hands.
“Don’t be,” he replies.
He washes his face under the spray of water, and then reaches out of the shower and grabs a towel, and he dries us both off really quickly. He hitches me into his arms like I weigh nothing and wraps my legs around his waist. I can feel him pressing against me right there. “Do you have those condoms?” I ask him.
He gently lays me on the bed, reaches into the pants he took off and retrieves a condom from his wallet. “Put it on me,” he says. His hands shake a little as he holds the condom out toward me.
I take it, open it, then roll it down over him. After a moment of my fumbling, he shoves my hands away, lifts me higher on the bed, and climbs on top of me, his hips settling between mine. He pushes at my entrance, but he doesn’t slip inside. “This might go really fast,” he tells me.
My legs are still weak as water from what happened in the shower. “I don’t care.” I let my legs fall open wider, and he pushes inside me slowly, ever so slowly taking up all the space inside me. He’s inside my body, but he’s also inside my heart. He’s filling me up, and I have never felt so good. When he’s all the wa
y in, he stops, closes his eyes, and stays still.
“You okay?” I ask. I reach up and thread my fingers through his hair.
“Yeah.” But he still doesn’t move. “Just a minute.”
“Sure.” But I give him a squeeze with my most intimate muscles.
He chuckles and sits up a little so he can look down at me, at us, where we’re joined. His eyes roam from the top of my head to the place where we’re one, and then they come back up. “I am pretty sure I love you.”
I laugh. “Tell me that when you’re not inside me.”
He stares directly into my eyes. “I plan to.”
“I plan to reply,” I warn him.
“God, I hope you do.” Then he pushes inside me in one swift movement. He puts his weight on me, the only motion that of his hips as he pulls all the way in and out, quickly then slowly, quick then slow. He holds my hands and stares into my eyes. “Are you feeling like testifying yet?” he asks with a grin.
“Not so much,” I reply, grinning back, just to see what he’ll do.
He sits up and lifts one leg, putting his weight on the back of my thigh. “How about now?” he asks as he pushes hard and fast inside me.
“Better,” I say breathlessly. He pushes my other leg forward so that my feet are next to my head and puts his weight on me. “Oh, Jesus,” I cry, as I suddenly feel pressure and fullness the likes of which I have never felt before.
“There we go,” he says. He watches my face, looking for signs that I’m ready. He’s as hard as steel inside me, and a bead of sweat runs down his temple onto his chin.
“You don’t have to wait for me,” I say. “I already came.”
Suddenly, he flips me over and pushes my legs apart, lifts my hips and slides inside. “Oh, there,” I say. I freeze. “Right there.” I bury my face in the pillow and cry out, “Don’t stop.”
Feels like Rain (Lake Fisher Book 3) Page 21