“You haven’t had your happy today,” he tells me, hands already reaching, stars on his skin and in his eyes and in the sky above.
My heart flip-flops in my chest. “And you’re gonna give it to me, huh?”
“Yeah,” he smiles, as full and bright as that damn moon. “I’m gonna give it to you.”
He’s wrong though. I have had my happy today. I’m practically drowning in it—in simple, quiet joy. The warm comfort of a perfect moment with a good man.
I stop right in front of him and he stares down at me. I trace the lines of his face and I feel like one of those meteors he loves so much. Tearing through the atmosphere, a giant ball of light.
“The last time you were here—” He cups my face with both of his hands and presses a gentle kiss to the tip of my nose, the space between my eyes. Everything in me shivers and melts, and my hands grasp at his elbows. “The last time you were here, I wanted to kiss you under this tree.”
“You hid it well,” I murmur as I follow his retreat, silently begging for more.
“Nah,” he says, his voice a rasp. “You just weren’t looking close enough.”
And then he kisses me.
And he shows me everything I missed.
“And that one?”
I point at a bright cluster of stars with my french fry, my boot knocking against his on the blanket. I shift my head against his shoulder and he follows the direction of my hand, nose brushing briefly against my hair as he angles to get a look.
“Cetus,” he says around a mouthful of burger. He swallows and tosses the wrapper towards his bag, settling back on his elbows with a happy sigh. I follow after him when he tugs once at my belt loop, my back against his chest. “The Sea Monster. Poseidon sent him to ravage some coastal town when Cassiopeia said she was more beautiful than the sea nymphs.”
“That sounds petty.”
He hums in agreement and curls his hand around my wrist. He guides my hand slightly to the right so we’re both pointing at another cluster of stars. “Aries is right there.”
His thumb drags a lingering half-circle against my pulse point and I feel it like a touch between my legs. I shift on the blanket and wiggle closer, my head under his chin. “And that one?”
“That’s an airplane, honey.”
A laugh slips out of me and I peek up at him. Relaxed, his face tilted towards the sky, a smile curling at the very edges of his mouth. He’s loose out here in the fields in a way he isn’t anywhere else.
“This is a good date,” I tell him quietly. The best I’ve ever had. “Thanks for bringing me out here.”
“Thanks for coming out here.” He looks down at me and plucks at the cuff of my sweatshirt. “Properly dressed.”
I glance down at the doubled up material stretched awkwardly across my chest. “Overly dressed, I think.”
He makes a sound against me, a deep rumble low in his chest that I feel against my back. His hand slips from my wrist to my elbow, up over my shoulder. Two fingers tuck into the collar and trace along my bare collarbone. My whole body shivers.
“Yeah?”
He catches the edge of my ear between his teeth and I grin. His first concession to the heat banked between us. I remember how much he liked that the last time we were together—his teeth against my skin, praise whispered with every rough scratch.
I nod. “Mmhmm.”
I shift and shimmy until I can tuck my arms through the sleeves, the movement clumsy. I laugh as the material gets caught around my head, two big hands grabbing and pulling until I can see the field and the sky and the trees again. Beckett looking at me like I hung the damn moon myself.
It’s so different from the last time we were together. Different, but exactly the same. He still looks at me with a ferocious heat—careful eyes mapping out exactly what he wants to do and where. What touch to give me first. But there’s wonder, too. Like he can’t quite believe I’m here with him, in this place. Affection and amusement and a bubbling warmth, deep in my chest.
He blows out a breath and scrubs his palm against the back of his head, watching as I lean back and prop myself up on both hands. I don’t think he meant it as a grand seduction, but it feels like one now, those sweatshirts sitting in a clump by his hip. I’m left in nothing but the threadbare t-shirt I pulled on before we left the house, the wide collar slipping over one shoulder. He catalogs the bare skin it reveals with heavy eyes, his tongue sweeping across his bottom lip when I shift slightly and it droops a little more.
“I want you,” I tell him, finally voicing the thought that has been running circles in my head since I first saw him step off the curb in the middle of town. Since I saw him step through the door of a dive bar. I don’t think I’ve ever stopped wanting Beckett, not really. I tiptoe my fingers up the delicate ink on his wrist and curl my hand around his forearm. Pull once. “And I think you want me, too.”
His eyes snap up from where they were burning a path across my bra strap and he gives me that half smile again, somehow better than the full grin that spills out of him like starlight. This smile feels like mine and mine alone. He gives in to my tugging and shifts up on his knees.
“Of course I do,” he says, sure and direct, impossibly Beckett. He says it like it’s something he’s been thinking about, too. Maybe since he saw me standing with my hip against a rental car. Maybe since he saw me sitting at a bar top with a glass of tequila in front of me. “Wanting you has never been a question.”
He maneuvers in front of me until he can grip my ankle, caressing it once with his thumb as he opens my leg wide, making enough space for him to move in between. We’re only touching at that one place, his hand against my leg, and already I feel it everywhere. In the small of my back and the tips of my breasts, the arch of my neck and the space between my legs.
His hand squeezes me gently and his palm moves up. The calluses on his hands catch on the rough material of my jeans, a stilted movement that’s better in its honesty. Another squeeze at my thigh, thumb dragging along the inseam above my knee. He hesitates there briefly, considering, and then reaches for my hip.
“If we do this again, Evie, there’s no running.” His eyes are serious, his body held perfectly still between my open legs. “I don’t want to wake up alone.”
I grip his shirt in my fists, regret slicing across my chest. For the way I left him all those months ago and for the ways I’ve left him since. I lean up and brush a kiss across his bottom lip. An apology, but a promise, too. “You won’t.”
“Alright,” he says, and his eyes flash darker, his tongue appearing briefly at the corner of his mouth. His hands flex at my sides, fingertips pressing and guiding. “Lay back then.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
EVELYN
I shake my head and urge him back until he falls with a grunt, my knees clambering up and over to hug his hips. I cup his jaw in my hands as he gazes up at me and trace once over the rough of his stubble.
“I want you to see the stars,” I tell him. Something behind his eyes flares and burns bright. Brighter than anything in the sky. My own private supernova.
He guides me further into him with his hand at the small of my back and trails small, biting kisses up the line of my neck. He sucks hard at a spot just beneath my jaw and then leans back, lingering there with his lips barely brushing mine.