by Cranford, B.
“Fair. Lucas would’ve done the same for me.”
“When we get an animal in that’s been badly hurt—I’m afraid that I won’t be able to save it. And sometimes I can’t and . . .” He trailed off and looked away, and Rose knew he needed a moment.
Here was a man who loved animals enough to learn them and love them and look after them. Of course, seeing them hurting, or losing them despite his best efforts, would be scary as hell.
When he turned back, his eyes held a truth that made her heart ache. “And you. I’m scared of losing you, even though I just found you. Hell, because I just found you.”
She gripped his cheeks without conscious thought, pulling him down to her level so she could plant a hard, frantic kiss on his lips.
They had so much to talk about, that hadn’t changed. She wasn’t ready to make any commitments or talk about it yet, that hadn’t changed either.
But the fact she cared about him? That was truer in that moment than it had ever been. And it didn’t matter that it had only been one extra day since he’d first not-brought-up what was going to happen when she left for Australia.
She was falling head over heels for him.
She just didn’t know how to deal with it.
Chapter Seventeen
Two Weeks Later
Rose rolled over and smiled, only to grit out a “fuck” a moment later when her phone landed on her face.
“Everything okay?” A grumpy-sounding Kassi called from outside the door to her bedroom.
Shaking her head at her stupidity, Rose called out, “Yes, just brained myself with my phone,” which—surprisingly—earned her a laugh.
Returning her attention back to the message that had her smiling at six thirty in the morning, she re-read the text from Liam.
Liam: I’ll pick you and Wilby up at nine.
She loved how often he included Wilbur in their plans. Loved even more that he’d taken to calling her little friend—who was currently lying on his back in her bed, scrabbling at the air in a fight with something only his puppy eyes could see—by that nickname he’d bestowed at the end of their first date.
Rose: We’ll be ready :)
Dropping the phone beside her on the bed, she sat up and rubbed at Wilbur’s soft belly. She couldn’t believe the change in him. It had been right around four weeks since she’d found him on the porch, and he was noticeably bigger. He was also, thankfully, potty-trained, something that had come with more than a few trying moments. But Liam had helped her figure it out—and had become a fixture in their day-to-day life in the meantime.
If it wasn’t texting, it was phone calls. If it wasn’t phone calls, it was quick visits or overnight stays after work. And if it wasn’t any of those things, it was dates.
They’d been on so many now, there seemed to be no point in calling them dates any more. But Liam had been making a point to take her places she hadn’t been, giving her experiences that she might not have had in the States if she’d never met him.
She loved it, the care he took to make their time together special. Because, even though they still hadn’t talked about what was going to happen come mid-December and her flight back to Australia, there was no denying that their time together was special
No matter what happened.
Because she was totally and utterly smitten with the man and so, it seemed, was Wilbur. A fact that was readily clear when she started chatting to him about their plans for the day. Yeah, so, she talked to her dog. She knew she wasn’t the only one. And moreover, she was sure that he understood her. “We need to get up outta bed, little guy. Liam is coming over to pick us up and take us on an adventure.”
Wilbur’s ears perked up at the sound of Liam’s name, something that had started happening after only a few days of knowing him, and that made Rose’s heart dip a little each time. Dogs were intuitive animals, and hers loved Liam. If that wasn’t a sign, maybe the fact that she thought about him every four to five minutes and made a point to see or speak to him daily was?
Or maybe the fact that when she pictured walking through the international arrivals gate at Melbourne Airport, she pictured doing it with him by her side was the sign?
Could go either way, really.
Sliding out from under the covers, she kept talking to her furry friend, who was obviously listening intently. “We’re going to a pumpkin patch. I didn’t really believe that was a real thing people did, but apparently . . .” She trailed off, looking around the floor for her pajama bottoms. Although she loved long, warm, flannel pajamas—preferably with some wild print—she hated actually sleeping in them. She’d taken to slipping them off every night as she crawled into bed, a fact that Liam had been very interested in when she’d mentioned it during one of their earliest phone calls, before they’d started sleeping together and he’d acquired the knowledge first hand.
“You really don’t have pants on?” Liam’s voice held a note of wonder, which made Rose laugh.
Well, she was laughing at the wonder and at the fact that her pantsless state was a thing at all.
“I really don’t have pants on.”
“You probably shouldn’t have told me that.” He groaned, then added, “I won’t be able to stop thinking about it now. You, in bed, no pants. That’s like a perfect storm of factors and . . .”
His voice trailed away, but Rose didn’t want him to stop talking. “And what?”
“And nothing,” he replied quickly, rustling on the other end of the call telling her that he was moving around.
She knew he was in bed, because he’d mentioned it earlier, and that was how they’d come to be talking about her bedtime habits.
“It’s not nothing. Are you okay?” She grinned, knowing she was poking at him but enjoying it too much to stop. He made her feel wanted every time she saw him, but this particular conversation was doing that and then some.
He sounded like the idea of her in bed, stripped down to an old singlet—she’d already had to explain that it was like a tank top, to his amusement—and her knickers, was something akin to a dream come true.
“Okay? No, not really.” More rustling. “I can’t get comfortable.”
Grabbing her discarded PJ bottoms from the floor and stepping into them, her face heated remembering the rest of the conversation. It hadn’t lasted long—Liam had admitted that he needed to get off the phone and get some relief, and she’d let him. Now, she wondered what it would have been like if she’d kept him talking.
If she’d told him about how the sound of his voice in her ear made her entire body sensitive. Even just the brush of the sheets across her bare legs had given her a shiver that crawled up and over the length of her body, and she’d bitten down so hard on her lower lip, the next morning it’d still felt tender.
Ever since that first night they’d been together, it was like her body had been conditioned to react to his. But even before then, the sound of his voice had affected her in ways that should have made her shy away.
I don’t want to shy away from him anymore.
“Anyway,” she said, shaking off the memory and her thoughts, she resumed her chat with Wilbur. Who was now sitting on the bed and looking at her with interested eyes. “I always thought the whole ‘pumpkin patch’ thing was just for movies and shit. But today we’re going to see one.”
Wilbur’s eyes tracked her as she moved about her room, gathering the clothes she’d need for the day. “I wonder if we get to carve the pumpkin, too. Like, I know that’s definitely a thing here, so surely that’s part of the plan for the day, right?” She thought about it, and nodded, deciding that even if it wasn’t, she was going to make it so.
She only had a handful of weeks left in America but she was planning to make those weeks the best ever. That she was planning on doing it with Liam was just icing on the cake. As long as she ignored the looming shadow of her departure, and the fact they hadn’t talked about it much.
Except to agree to still not talk about it.
“Talking to your dog again?” Kassi was seated at the table, staring blandly at her from behind a mug of coffee, her not-a-morning-person persona switched on full blast. In front of her, the obits page was open.
“Apparently, I’ve become a crazy dog lady.” Rose shrugged, not caring in the slightest. “I swear to God, though, he totally knows everything I say to him.”
“I’d believe it.” Kassi bent down and called Wilbur over, proving that even she wasn’t immune to the happy cloud that seemed to follow him around. He cheerfully trotted to her, tail up and wagging full force, giving Rose the chance to make her breakfast without the little fella weaving in and out of her feet. Gathering everything she needed for her favorite meal of the day—the only one that didn’t overwhelm her with choices, since she always had the same thing—she listened to Kassi baby-talk the dog, telling him over and over that he was a “good boy” and the “best boy ever,” which Wilbur clearly agreed with.
“Are you seeing your vet again today?”
Putting the final touches on her yummy bowl of muesli, fresh fruits and grains, Rose turned to face Kassi. “He’s taking me to a pumpkin patch.”
“Fun,” she replied, sounding like she thought it was anything but. Except then she added, in a slightly more upbeat tone, “We used to go every year when I was in elementary school. It’s been forever since I went to one.”
“I for real thought it was just something from the movies,” Rose said with a small laugh. “I’m kind of excited about it, to be honest. Is that stupid?” She cocked her head, waiting for a response.
“Why would it be stupid? You’ve never been, and it is actually pretty fun. Besides, I would bet anything you’re excited for more than just the pumpkins. Not even someone as committed to the vegetable-loving life as you”—Kassi gestured toward Rose’s bowl—“could ignore the fact that your sexy vet is the one taking you.”
Frowning at the way Kassi had added an emphasis onto “taking,” she started to ask what the hell she was talking about when it dawned on her.
Possibly the fact that Kassi was wiggling her eyebrows made her intent a touch more obvious.
“He’s not taking me at the . . .” Rose let the sentence die, because she really didn’t know what to say. “Anyway.”
“Anyway, what?”
“Nothing, I don’t know. Stop looking at me like that.”
“Like what?” Kassi leaned in and propped her head on her hands, fluttering her eyelashes and looking more awake this early in the morning than Rose could ever remember seeing her.
“Like you’re picturing me and my boyfriend”—her giddy inner Rose twirled at calling Liam that—“doing things that we aren’t, you know, going to do.”
“I’m not picturing it, picturing it. But come on, throw me a bone here.”
They looked at one another before sharing a small snicker at the unintentional innuendo. Still, Rose wasn’t going to relent. “I will do no such thing.”
Kassi made a face that implied she wasn’t happy with Rose’s refusal to “throw her a bone,” then changed the topic. “You’ve been talking to your parents more lately. Is everything okay?”
Surprised that not only had her cousin noticed, but that she’d brought it up during a time when she was famously grouchy—known to most people as morning time—Rose nodded. It was true that the closer she got to heading home, the more she seemed to be talking to her mum. On a near daily basis, in fact. “Yeah, of course. Why wouldn’t it be?”
“I dunno. But you never used to call every day, so I figured maybe . . .”
At first, in the early months of her time in the States, when she’d still been high on being overseas, on escaping the life and the job that had been the cause of such distress in Australia, the calls had been more like once a week. But, for whatever reason, as the clock ticked down to her flight—and as she got happier and more settled with Liam—the more she ached for home.
Her heart sometimes . . . she couldn’t explain it. It was like she wanted to be exactly where she was—as long as where she was, was with her dog and her vet—but at the same time, all she wanted was to be home.
She wanted to be able to drive the familiar roads around the house she’d grown up in and find herself in the center of “The Village”, as it was called. She wanted to know that the beach was no more than ten minutes away, so if she felt the need to bury her fingers and toes in the sand and watch the gentle waves of Port Phillip Bay roll in, she could.
She wanted two things, and they didn’t quite seem to make sense together. Looking down at her cereal, she waited for Kas to keep talking.
“He makes you happy.”
“What?” The comment had come from nowhere. Or, at least, it seemed that way.
“Liam. Your hot vet.”
Rose nodded, because her cousin was dead on. He did make her happy. So happy sometimes it was like a giant bubble building inside her. But then that weight, that loss, she’d felt time and again over the passing weeks reared its ugly head, and her bubble threatened to burst.
Turning to look out the window, not wanting Kassi to even catch a glimpse of the war she was fighting within, she replied with a lie. “I barely know him.”
Liar, liar, pants on fire.
God, was this what she had come to? Trying to swiftly build some kind of wall around her emotions, lying to Kassi—and to herself—because she didn’t know what else to say.
Because there was no denying the fact that she did know him. She knew Liam so well now that it felt like she’d always known him.
It might only have been four weeks, but it had been four weeks of daily contact of some form or another. And besides that, she’d felt the same way from their first date—like he was someone and something important.
And she felt sure he’d say the same.
“So?”
So? She wanted to mimic her cousin’s cool tone at the same time she wanted to give in to the sudden, overwhelming need to cry, because she could feel that pressure building in her chest; that pressure that was familiar in the way it made her question her decision-making.
That same pressure had sprung out of her horror at the way she’d been treated at work, and that had ultimately caused her to quit her job and fly halfway across the world to try and find out what she wanted.
I want Liam, she thought plaintively, even as she committed to categorically denying that fact to Kassi, who was looking at her with curious eyes.
Rose wasn’t interested in her curiosity or anything else. She felt like her heart was on the verge of splitting or maybe spitting madness everywhere. Which might explain why her next words came out so harsh. “So, it’s just—it’s not like this can really go anywhere.”
Kassi leaned back a little, as if Rose’s words had struck out at her. “Why not?”
Because we haven’t talked about it going anywhere.
Because I haven’t let him talk to me about it going anywhere.
A sick feeling curdled in her gut, but it was too late to admit that she’d let it go too far—that she’d too long been avoiding the conversation she and Liam had to have. Instead, she let sarcasm color her next words. “Um, because I live in Australia?” Shaking her head as if not quite believing that Kassi didn’t see that what she and Liam had—if they had anything at all—wasn’t going to be a long-term thing, she added, “And he doesn’t?”
If they had anything at all. What a joke.
They had something all right, and it was something that Rose hated to think of ending.
Almost as much as—or, shit, maybe more than—she hated the idea of not being back in Australia, close to her family and her beach and her village again. Of taking back the part of her life that Mister Bradley had tried to steal from her.
The fact was, she didn
’t want what they had to end. Not when she boarded that flight home.
Not ever.
Because she loved him. It wasn’t an expression or a random thought.
It wasn’t falling anymore, either.
It was straight-up, flat out, no-holds-barred love and it fucking sucked.
She loved him. God, it hurt like a motherfucker to admit that when she had no clue what would, or could, happen next.
“So?” Kassi repeated, holding up a hand when Rose opened her mouth to reply. “No, listen to me, okay? You guys are clearly good at the whole talking on the phone bit. I’ve heard you on the nights when you’re not together. Besides that, I’ve seen you together. You can’t tell me there’s not something amazing happening there.”
“Kassi—” Rose really needed her cousin to stop talking. Her blood was pumping so hard and so fast that even as her cheeks reddened with rage, she could feel the urge to run and to hit something ratcheting higher with every passing second.
“Maybe you don’t want to admit you love him. Not yet, and fuck, maybe not even soon. That’s fine, you don’t have to. But Rose, you’re a grown-ass adult. If you want to do a long distance thing with him, you can. And, believe it or not, you don’t have to live in Australia if you don’t want to.”
But I do love him. And I do want to live in Australia, she thought wildly. With him. She wanted it badly, except she didn’t say that—she couldn’t. Not when it made no sense for him to come to her, when she knew, she knew, that the person who had far more flexibility at this point in their life was her. So, instead, she tried to feign ignorance, replying with a flippant, “Excuse me?”
“And he doesn’t have to live here.”
Rose once again opened her mouth to respond, her annoyance growing to quell and replace the upset that came from the very center of her heart.