I follow him out of the barn. The late afternoon sun teases the horizon, painting the sky with colorful rays, and the crickets begin to sing their ode to the day. It’s so peaceful here. It’s unlike any other place I’ve ever been.
Just like its owner.
Peck is a few feet ahead of me. I happily remain a few steps behind. Today has been a whirlwind. When I woke up this morning, there was no way I thought that I would be bunking with Peck by the end of the night. I would’ve said I would’ve been way too nervous to share a house with a man at all, let alone one I barely know.
But I’m not.
I don’t know how to feel about that yet.
He stops at the steps leading up to the back porch. “You comin’ or what?”
“You walk too fast.”
His smile touches his eyes. Leaning against the rail, he waits on me to catch up.
I stop next to him. A warm breeze trickles over my skin, bringing the scent of pines and freshly cut grass with it. It smells like a candle you’d buy with hopes that it would take you back to a vacation or a moment in time when you had no worries in the world. It’s that smell.
He climbs the stairs after me, giving me plenty of room.
“That’s all your stuff, right?” he asks.
“Yeah. The rental company will be by tomorrow to pick up the empty storage container.”
The back porch squeaks as I step on it. A grill sits to my right and a porch swing to my left. Some type of orange lily grows in a pot at the end, stretching toward the setting sun.
We step inside the house, and Peck flips on a light. He washes his hands and then busies himself with pouring two glasses of lemonade. I take his spot at the sink.
“Thank you,” I tell him. “You didn’t have to do this.”
He glances at me over his shoulder. “You’re welcome.”
“I want you to know that I won’t take this for granted. I’ll be on the lookout for a place on my own starting tomorrow. I won’t wear out my welcome.”
I dry off my hands before taking a glass from him.
He moves around the kitchen, wiping off the counters as I sip my lemonade. The kitchen is on the small side anyway but looks even smaller with him in it. It’s not that he’s huge—I’d guess he’s right at six foot or so—but he fills out a space somehow. I’m not mad about watching his muscles flex and ripple as he moves.
Not mad at all.
The sweet drink quenches my thirst as I watch him tidy up. Everything he does, he does with intent. It’s like tying up the garbage bag is an important project he’s taking on, and he’s doing it with care. There’s a quality about that I find soothing in a strange way.
He tosses a sponge in the sink. “So …”
“So …”
I set my drink on the table.
What happens now? I have no idea.
This isn’t like sharing a space with Navie or another friend. This is Peck Ward, a guy I’ve known a few days but somehow trust implicitly. Even if Navie didn’t already know him and adore him, I think I would’ve. Or maybe it’s because of their friendship that ours is so easy. It’s as if I’ve known him for a long time. And through Navie, I guess I have. I’ve heard so many stories about this man, stories that have made me laugh until I cried. Through the tales, I picked up that he’s been in Navie’s corner since she arrived in Linton.
Maybe he’s in mine too.
There’s a kindness in his eyes that settles all the anxiety I think I should be feeling. But I’m not. At all. How could you feel nervous when he’s so nice?
I bet they said that about serial killers too.
It hits me that this is the modern day, grown-up version of getting in the car with a stranger. Only, instead of a car, it’s a house. And instead of a puppy, it’s puppy dog eyes.
I’m probably dead.
My mouth opens to ramble something random, something to take up the space between us until I can figure out how to dart out of here before he carves me up with a knife, when he laughs.
“What?” I ask instead.
“What are you thinking?”
“Why? Can you read my mind?”
He snorts. “No, thank God. I have a feeling that inside your mind is a scary place.”
I pick up a saltshaker from the table. If nothing else, I could wield it at him and give myself a couple of seconds to run if this goes awry.
“You know what else would be a scary place?” I ask.
“Inside one of your boxes?”
“Very funny. I was thinking something more like …” I toss the shaker in the air. Surprisingly, I catch it with the same hand. But I have no time to celebrate how cool that probably looked. I have work to do. “Soundproof rooms. Trunks of cars. Barns with power tools.”
His brows pull together.
He’s even cuter when he’s serious.
Damn it.
“You got something you wanna tell me, Dylan?”
“Not if you don’t have anything you wanna tell me, Peck. If that’s even your real name.”
A light bulb goes off over his head, and he begins to laugh. Humor dances across his face, his hand dragging the jawline that’s speckled with the day’s stubble.
“You’re having second thoughts, aren’t you?” he asks.
“No,” I say too quickly. “I mean, not really. You know … totally am.”
My lips smack together. I toss the shaker again, but this time it lands on the floor in front of me. “Shit,” I mumble as I bend to scoop it up.
“You don’t think I pressured you into this, right? Because I’m not that guy, and if I did or said something that made you—”
“No.” I shake my head fervently. Heat tinges my cheeks as I feel very, very silly. “I’m just nervous, I guess. I’m sorry for acting like a weirdo.”
“Why are you nervous?”
It’s an honest question. He stands tall, facing me completely as if to demonstrate his openness.
A lump settles in my throat. “I just get a little enthusiastic sometimes and was worried that maybe I jumped into this too soon. I mean, I don’t really even know you.”
“You were kind of quick to accept my offer.” He tosses me a wink. “I’m kidding.”
“I’m not. One time, I told someone I liked kids and, the next thing I knew, I had a part-time job at a daycare watching a bunch of babies for minimum wage. And then I tried to quit, and they wouldn’t let me and …” I sigh. “I can get in over my head fast.”
He walks across the kitchen, his jeans showing off a set of thighs that were probably crafted by the hands of God, if I were guessing, and picks up his lemonade. The longer it takes him to down the lemonade, the antsier I get.
Finally, he drops his glass in the sinks and smiles. “If you don’t want to stay here, I get it. Although I might bitch—meaning I will—about packing your shit up again, I’ll do it. A woman should never stay anywhere she’s not comfortable.”
“It’s not that, Peck, I am comfortable with you—here, I mean,” I say, correcting my misspeak. Because although the first part is true, it sounds weird. Like I mean it more than I do.
“Good.”
“Everything just happened so fast that when I had a second to look up, I realized you could be a serial killer, and all I had was this saltshaker.” I set it on the counter.
“And what were you gonna do with that?”
“Hit you in the eyeball.”
His laugh is quick and loud and, even though I know it’s at me, I laugh too.
“I might just cancel my home security with you around, Hawkeye,” he chuckles. “A saltshaker? Really?”
“It’s all I had.”
“Just a helpful hint—knives are in that drawer,” he says, pointing behind me. “Unless you have some super skill I don’t know about, they’ll come in handier than a damn saltshaker.”
He crosses his arms over his chest. The veins flex in his forearms beneath nicks and scrapes and scars. I look away before I get dist
racted in a very real way.
“Tell you what,” he says. “I’ll give you two minutes to ask me anything you want before we leave.”
“Leave? What do you mean, leave? Where are we going?”
“One minute, fifty seconds.”
I grin. “What’s your name?”
“Wesley.”
“Aha! I knew it!”
“You knew what?” He laughs.
“Your name wasn’t Peck.”
“I told you it wasn’t Peck, genius,” he teases. “I just didn’t tell you what it was.”
“Why?”
He shrugs. “No one calls me that. Sometimes, I forget my name isn’t Peck.”
“Wesley, huh? What’s your middle name?”
“Chapman. Wesley Chapman Ward.”
I ponder that. It’s a very strong name and reminds me of a pastor in the Old West that would shoot you with his six-shooter if you acted up.
“I like it,” I say.
“Well, good, because there’s not a damn thing I can do about it.” He looks at his watch. “Anything else? Or are you sure I’m not a murderer?”
I raise a brow. “Well, I’m fairly certain you’re not. Wesley sounds much more good guy than bad buy.”
“And you’re pinning your safety on that? My name?”
No, I’m pinning it on that smile.
“Yeah. You got a problem with that?”
“Nope. Your life.” He grins. “Now come on. We have somewhere to be.”
“Where are we going?”
“Somewhere.”
“Unless that’s the name of an actual place, that’s a cop-out.”
He laughs and heads for the door. “Come on, Hawkeye.”
“I’m not dressed to go anywhere,” I say, looking at my dirty shirt and shorts. “I’m not presentable.”
The light fills the room as he pulls the door open. He stops with his hand on the knob and looks at me. He grins. “There’s not a damn thing wrong with how you look. Now come on before dinner gets cold.”
He bows his head and heads out the door. I follow, my cheeks aching from the smile on my face.
Ten
Peck
“Here we are,” I say.
My truck rolls to a stop next to Nana’s rose bushes. I cut the engine and take a deep breath.
Although I’ve never lived in the white house with black shutters, it’s the place I think of when someone says the word “home.” It’s where I’d go if I had a bike wreck—or a car accident as I grew up. This is the place for pot roast on Sunday afternoons, and where my cousins and I would gather to watch baseball games or fighting events because she’d fix us so much food we couldn’t eat it all. Christmases have always been held here, and the lawn has hosted more Easter egg hunts than any place I’ve ever been. Even now that we’re all in our late twenties and early thirties, we still hunt candy-filled eggs each spring just because it makes Nana happy.
And maybe us.
I look over my shoulder and see Dylan looking at me.
“Why do you look nervous?” she asks.
“I’m not.”
“Liar.”
Either I’m way too easy to read, or she’s making a stab in the dark, but she’s not altogether wrong.
I’ve never done this. Sure, I’ve watched my cousins bring girls to Nana’s house dozens of times, but I’ve never walked through her door with a woman. It’s always felt like a big deal to me. Like bringing a lady to meet the most important person in my life would be the moment I knew I’d found the person for me.
Yet here I am, sitting in the driveway with a girl I barely know.
I just invited her to tag along like I was heading to Carlson’s Bakery or something. I blurted it out before thinking it through beforehand—something Walker and Sienna say I need to do more often.
Clearly, they’re right.
Dylan leans against the door, squaring her shoulders to me. “Just because I’m staying at your house for a while doesn’t mean you have to cart me all over the world with you.” Her eyes glint with mischief. “I mean, unless you think I’m gonna steal your stuff while you’re gone or something.”
I laugh. “I have a history with you that makes me believe you’re anti-theft. Plus, you have this vigilante justice thing going on—ouch!” I say as she takes a swipe at my shoulder.
She laughs too. “Honestly, though. I can see you’re having second thoughts about bringing me here. I can just sit in the car. I’m totally cool with that.”
I consider for a split second backing down the driveaway and heading toward Carlson’s after all, but the longer I take in her button nose and the spray of freckles across her cheeks, the more I kind of want to take her into Nana’s with me.
She’s just a friend. It’s not like I’m taking a girlfriend.
Totally different thing.
I think.
“Come on,” I tell her as I pop open my door. “Let’s go.”
“Peck …”
“If you don’t come on, there won’t be any food left, and I’m not gonna feel bad that I’m stuffed and you’re starving.”
The passenger’s door squeaks as she pushes it open. The metal clinks as she swings it shut. I stand at the front of my truck and wait on her.
She rounds the corner, shaking her shirt. “You could’ve at least let me clean up.”
I could’ve. But something tells me Nana will like her just fine the way she is.
“Nah,” I say.
“This will be a terrible first impression.”
“Don’t worry,” I say as we head toward the back door. “You’ll never get the honor of being the worst impression anyone has ever made on Nana. That goes to a girl Vincent brought here in high school. In a bikini.” I laugh at the memory of Nana’s reaction. “I think she was a little drunk too.”
Dylan’s eyes go wide. “What? Drunk and naked? Was he out of his mind?”
“I’m not sure Vincent was ever in his right mind back in those days.”
I pause at the ramp leading up to the back door. Dylan eyes me carefully with a smidgen of trepidation in her eyes as she walks slowly up the wooden planks. I follow, gazing at a trail of dirt down her right side. It bends at the curve of her hip and slides down the back of her shorts.
Focus, Peck.
“Hey,” I tell her as we get to the top.
She turns and looks at me. My chest rises and falls so quickly that I’m aware of it. So many things are running through my mind, and I can’t sort them all. Especially knowing Nana has undoubtedly seen us by now and is waiting on us to come in—probably loaded with a hundred questions and even more presumptions.
“I should’ve warned you before now,” I say. “But, um, this is kind of a new thing for me, and I don’t know what Nana’s going to say or think or … whatever.”
I take in her rosy cheeks and the soft curve of her lips. I’d be damn proud to walk in there with her hand in mine. It would thrill Nana to death. Probably literally. I make a mental note to be this sure of the woman I do take to meet my grandma someday.
Dylan sticks her tongue in her cheek. “So what you’re saying is that she’s going to think we’re screwing?”
I cough like I’ve been knocked in the gut. And in the balls. They both ache like a motherfucker.
She laughs at my reaction, grabbing my shoulder as I sputter. The contact doesn’t help. At all.
Cringing, I take a step back.
“Please behave,” I almost beg.
“Define behave.”
“Why do you have to make everything hard?”
She fights back a laugh as I realize the innuendo she just ran with. “I make things hard. Good to know.”
The inside of my cheek burns as I bite down on it.
“Sorry.” She clears her throat. “So I should make it clear that we aren’t screwing?”
“Can we not talk about us screwing on my grandmother’s back porch?”
She spies my discomfort like the litt
le troublemaker she is. My attempt at adjusting myself doesn’t go by unnoticed. She doesn’t even pretend to have missed it.
“Oh, so we are screwing? I thought we weren’t?”
My lips part when a tapping sound rings out from the sliding glass door behind Dylan. Nana stands on the other side, her face lit up.
This is gonna be fun.
Giving Dylan a narrowed eye, I venture past her—being careful not to touch her—and slide open the door.
“Hey, Nana,” I say as unaffectedly as I can.
“Well, hello to you too.”
Her smile is too bright. Way too bright. Shit.
“I didn’t know you were bringing a girlfriend,” she says. The happiness in her voice can’t be mistaken.
I look at Dylan. She looks at me. And smirks.
She’s getting way too much enjoyment out of this.
“Nana,” I say, forcing down the lump in my throat. “This is my friend that’s a girl named Dylan.”
The emphasis is lost on my grandma. She doesn’t even hear it. She blocks it out like she does when Machlan tells her that cake for breakfast is bad for her blood sugar.
“Dylan, it is a pleasure to have you over for dinner,” she says, taking in my friend. “Please, come in. Have a seat. Make yourself at home, dear.”
Dylan saunters by me, bumping me in the side with her shoulder. “I think she likes me,” she whispers.
“Behave,” I mutter. But if she hears me, she ignores me.
Par for the effing course.
“Look at this kitchen,” Dylan says as she climbs on a barstool. “It’s so lovely.”
“Why, thank you. My husband had this redone for me the year before he passed away. I’d like to update it a little, but I don’t quite have the heart.”
“Well, I happen to love it.” Dylan smiles genuinely at my nana. “It feels like a kitchen should, you know? All warm and cozy.”
My grandmother beams.
I lean against the wall completely forgotten as this little mischief-maker wins over Nana. A chuckle passes my lips as I wonder what Nana would think if she heard the shit that usually comes out of Dylan’s mouth.
Dylan hops off the bar and gets into a discussion with Nana about cookie jars. I couldn’t chime in even if I wanted to. The sight of the woman who’s been like a semi-comfortable nail in the bottom of my foot chatting it up with my silver-haired grandma like they’re the best of friends is enough to make my head spin.
Gibson Boys Box Set Page 105
