novelxo A False Start: Chapter 23
My private oasis in the mountains is suddenly my personal torture chamber as memories of the night in that tent pummel me non-stop. We spend the day working on fixing the front steps and replacing a few boards on the back deck. Nadia is helpful and a hard worker. We behave cordially, if a little stiffly, around each other. For Nadia, stiffly means keeping a safe distance away. For me, stiffly means my fucking dick twitches every time I catch sight of her ass in the cut-offs she’s wearing as she kneels on my deck.
When we finish, she takes off into the field of wildflowers, saying she wants to explore the property. I watch her stroll away, journal in hand, until she finds a spot amongst the flowers and seats herself right on the dirt before flipping the canvas bound book open and putting pen to paper.
If it weren’t totally creepy, I’d take a photo of her, sitting peacefully amongst a field of flowers who do nothing but remind me of her. Weeds at worst, a miracle at best. Something I can’t get rid of no matter how fucking hard I try.
I groan, mocking myself internally for turning into a total sap after one night with the girl. It’s so unlike me that I’m not sure what to do with it. So, I opt to break shit.
To winterize, I always make sure I have enough wood and kindling to get me through a storm. While Nadia looks all angelic in the field, I decide to pull my axe out and get to work on chopping wood.
I’ve always found physical labor to be therapeutic, and this is no exception. Line the stump up, raise the axe, drop the axe. Break shit. Rinse. Repeat.
The simplicity of the motions is easy to get lost in, and that’s what I do. I only stop to pull my shirt off once I’ve already soaked through it and it becomes downright uncomfortable. I’m not sure how long I chop. I lose track of time. The only proof of how long I’ve been going is the growing pile beside me.
Definitely more than I need.
But I keep going until the muscles in my back ache and my arms shake with exhaustion. I only stop when I feel it. It. The way it feels when I know Nadia’s eyes are on me. I can’t explain it, but there’s this pull between us, an energy, and there has been since the first day in that dirty bathroom in the back of an outdated bar with that absolute loser shoving his tongue down her throat like he lost something down there.
I hate that fucking kid.
I stop, tossing the axe onto the ground, panting as a droplet of sweat trails down the indent of my spine. “I can feel you staring at me, Nadia,” I say, without even turning around.
“You have no business looking that fucking good, Griffin Sinclaire.”
Her voice sounds better after her time in the field. More like herself.
I turn, grinning. I can’t even help myself. Hearing her say I look good is a weight off my shoulders. Like maybe she’s not disappointed about last night after all.
“You’re gonna make me feel like a piece of meat, Wildflower.”
She winks, all sassy and playful with her journal wedged underneath her arm. I’m so dead curious what she wrote in there. Something that turned her mood around, to be sure.
“You hungry?” I ask, wiping my brow with my forearm and trying to ignore the way a pink blush is crawling up over her cheeks, or the way she shifts her hip and looks away quickly like she doesn’t want to even recognize the dual meaning of what I’ve just asked her.
When she peeks back at me from under the fringe of her lashes, she points at me and raises a scolding brow. “For dinner.”
“Mind out of the gutter, Junior.” I laugh, tossing my gloves down on the stump and stride toward her.
“Can you put a shirt on?” She waves a hand over my bare torso, taking me in just a little too appreciatively to be truly offended.
“Why?” I pretend to be oblivious.
“Don’t play dumb, Sinclaire.”
Busted.
“Nah, I’d only be playing dumb if I pretended not to notice you eye fucking me while I unloaded hay bales yesterday.”
She barks out a laugh, walking back up to the house beside me. Coming closer than she has all day. “I was not!”
“You absolutely were. And I felt very scandalized about it.” I feign offense, pressing a hand to my chest. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you only want me for my body.”
“Who says I don’t?” She shrugs while forcing her face into a neutral expression, not missing a beat.
I point a finger at her sparkling brown eyes. The pools of truth that give her away every time. “They do.”
She blinks in confusion.
“You look at me like that too, Wildflower.”
She stops in her tracks, a little stunned. “I hate you, Griffin Sinclaire!”
I laugh at her feigned outrage and keep walking. Gotta feed the girl before I make her my dessert. “What is it they say? Hate and love are two sides of the same coin?”
“Huh. Must be a really old saying. I’ve never heard it.”
“Brat.” I grin, but don’t turn around as I march up the back stairs.
“I’ll teach you a lesson later after dinner, Wildflower!” I call back, hearing her musical laughter filter in behind me as I stomp into my house to make her dinner.
She sounds so good here with me.
The night is warm, and Nadia can’t stop staring at the view from the back porch. I’m not entirely sure if she’s enjoying the scenery or if she’s just avoiding looking at me, but I’m not overly concerned about it either way. It’s giving me the perfect opportunity to take her in without getting caught.
And by take her in, I mean stare. Gawk.
I’m here. In my space. With the woman who has occupied her own little corner of my mind for the last two years. I shoved her in there, thinking some dark corner in the recesses of my fucked-up mind might keep me from obsessing about her.
Now I realize how wrong I was. How monumentally stupid that was. I’ve forgotten and ignored a lot of mistakes I’ve made. I thought I’d be able to do the same with her.
The problem is, Nadia isn’t a mistake.
The night we met. The riding lessons. The horse I bought her. The fucking dog. It’s all one big cosmic joke, shoving her in my path at every turn.
“I want to go watch the sunset from the flower field.”
She’s trying to kill me.
“Alright,” I say, never wanting to stop her from doing anything she wants. Plus, I love watching her in that field.
With no further words, she stands and saunters toward the long wooden gate separating the field from the rest of the yard and paddocks. The small red barn to her left and the simple post-style paddocks to her right. This place isn’t quite Cascade Acres. I bought Cascade when I was all about glitz and glam and show. This place is . . . me.
It’s simple, it’s cozy, it possesses a wild and unruly sort of beauty.
She fits here perfectly.
I watch her go and feel a jerk at the center of my chest, like she’s got me by a leash and just gave me a tug. My lips quirk up. This girl has me by the throat, and I’m not even sure she realizes it.
Shit, I’m not even sure she wants it.
Up here is one thing. We’re in a bubble away from the realities of all the reasons we can’t be together. But it might be different once we get back down into the valley.
And if I only have tonight, then I shouldn’t waste it sitting here watching her. I should experience it. I’ve spent a lot of years watching my life pass me by, but with Nadia around, I want more.
I want a dog. I want friends. I want her.
My legs are moving toward her before I even have time to realize what I just figured out. I stop only to grab the gray blanket out of my tent, the one that I shoved into a corner last night to escape the way she smells. Those fucking sweet roses taunted me all night long.
Ducking through the fence, I take the quickest path in her direction. She turns, eyes finding mine over her shoulder, and my breath dies in my lungs.
She’s so beautiful, it almost hurts to look at her sometimes. The soft smile paired with her warm, wild eyes. Eyes that have seen too much for a woman her age. The dichotomy between how sweet she looks and what a spunky little devil she is gets me.
My little vixen in disguise. The girl with the innocent face who can handle a gun like some sort of fucking undercover assassin.
Hot.
And her looking over her shoulder at me like she did last night?
Hotter.
That’s going to be my favorite thing for the rest of time.
“It’s just so beautiful out here.” She sighs as her eyes flit across the field. “We overuse that word, you know. Beautiful. Beauty. Full. I think lots of things are appealing or pleasing to the eye. But this spot is truly beautiful. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen anything like it. It’s just so untamed or something. Utterly peaceful. I can’t get enough. I don’t even want to leave.”
She’s trying to kill me.
I swallow, my throat suddenly extraordinarily dry as I come to stand beside her. I haven’t felt this smitten with a woman in, well, ever.
“You match this spot perfectly.”
She makes a small, deprecating laugh and peeks up at me. “Yeah?”
“Beautiful and untamed. It’s what I love about this place, too.” I look away, suddenly shy, and spread the blanket in front of us before taking a seat, staring up at the sky splashed with gold and coral and hot pink. Dark blue creeps in around the edges.
After a beat, Nadia takes a seat beside me. Her bottom lip trembles as her eyes find the sky, too. “But not peaceful. I don’t feel peaceful. I feel so untethered. Like I’m lacking direction or purpose or my own family. I have Stefan, but . . . he has everyone else. And now he even gets Hank. I still get that asshole as my dad. And I feel behind somehow. I see all these people my age knowing what they want out of life, and they go to school, and they do it and they get the job, and their life just carries on. And then there’s me, just sort of swimming in circles.”
I grunt and lean back on my palms. I know that feeling well. “Didn’t you get into vet school?”
Her responding smile is tentative. “Yeah.”
“Then get in there and crush it.”
“I don’t know if I can. Maybe I should just use my inheritance to start up a rescue. For retired racehorses like Cowboy. I think I’d like that.”
I quirk an eyebrow at her. “You can do both.”
Her nose wrinkles, like she knows she has the money but finds it unsavory. Can’t say that I blame her really.
“I don’t know if I’m up to it.”
“You are.”
“Just like that?”
“Yeah, Wildflower. Just like that. It’s almost like that asshole who raised you made you think you aren’t worthy of more than whatever shit he left you with. But you’ll show him. I know you will.”
Our eyes meet and something passes between us . . . a feeling, a look. I can’t put my finger on it, but it’s heavy enough that it forces me to drop her gaze, staring at her manicured fingers instead.
“Did you always know you wanted to be a football player? American football player, that is.” When I peek up, she winks. Really gets a kick out of that.
“Shit no. My path is a real curvy one, Wildflower. Truth be told, as a younger child, I always figured I’d want to be doing what I’m doing right now. Living a simple life. Working with horses, just like my grandad.”
She lies back on the blanket, folding her hands beneath her cheek as she turns those big, brown eyes on me. “Tell me about it.”
“My parents aren’t horse people. I’m not sure if you picked up on that with the fancy coffees and golf obsession.”
She laughs, and it’s light and airy. And fucking music to my ears.
“I learned about horses from my grandfather, my mom’s dad. He grew up on a cattle ranch in the area with his family. He got me on a horse early. Taught me everything I know. I loved my days with him—until I threw a football and got a taste of everything my life could be with that. I did a few rodeos. Sat a bucking horse or two. But then I lost interest. My throwing arm became too valuable. Success became addictive.”
I sigh. Hashing out my childhood makes me feel like an even bigger failure than I already do. I have no good reason to have fallen into the shit I did. Greed and ego.
“Before my accident, I was a real douchebag. I don’t think you’d have liked me very much. I don’t like that version of myself very much either, to be honest.”
“How come?”
“Because I took everything for granted. My good fortune. My family. It was never enough. I wanted to win more, fuck more, buy more. I had it all, and it was never enough. I was greedy and cocky. I thought I was untouchable. The universe has a fascinating way of putting us in our place, though, and I think that’s what happened to me. I made a lot of really stupid decisions.”
“I think you’re too hard on yourself.”
“That’s because you don’t know all the shit I’ve done.”
“Okay.”
“Why do you always give me that out?”
She shrugs, looking up at me from where she lies on the blanket, hair fanned out around her like a halo. “Because me saying you’re wrong won’t make you believe it. I’ll save my breath.”
I chuckle and lie back beside her. “Sounds like a line from therapy.”
“It is.”
“Is this where you tell me I need therapy?” God knows my parents have tried.
“Would it make you go?”
I turn my head to meet her curious gaze. “It hasn’t in the past.”
She smiles, but it’s somber. “Then I’ll save my breath on that, too. You’ll know if you need it. I did.” I snort. “I still do.”
Rolling toward her, I mimic her position, folding my hands under my cheek. “How did you know you needed therapy?”
“Because I kept sabotaging every potentially good thing that was happening to me. Because the voice in my head that told me I was worthless was louder than the one that told me I deserved to be happy.”
“I have that voice, too,” I murmur.
“I know you do.”
“How do you know that?”
She laughs, but there’s no amusement in her tone. “Because I swear, I can see it in your face, in your body, when you’re listening to it. It’s like I can hear it, too.”
Our eyes lock for a few moments, and the air crackles between us. Her lips part, like she’s about to say something more, but she sighs and flips over on to her back, letting the cool air rush in between us like an invisible wall.
“Let’s watch the sunset. Then I’m going to bed.”
I should pull her back toward me. I should tell her I’m what she needs, that nothing is too complicated in the face of a connection like this.
But I think that would probably be a lie.