“WHERE ARE WE GOING?” I ask as he passes me. The gravel crunches beneath his feet as he passes the front of Peck’s truck. “Walker?”
He draws a line across the top of the Charger with the tip of his finger as he all but storms past, my legs struggling to keep up in the low heels I stupidly decided to wear for church. Stopping and leaning against the car, I take them off and carry them as I feel the gravel turn to soft earth beneath my bare feet.
He’s halfway to a tree line, still not looking back.
“Damn it, Walker,” I yell after him. “Answer me.”
I want to take a shoe and throw it at his head, both as a way to get his attention and to ease some of the frustration that’s causing my teeth to grind together.
There’s nothing worse than being ignored, except when that person asks for your attention and then flips it back around like you’re begging them.
To hell with that.
“Screw it. I’m going back.”
His feet plant just inches from the trees. The shirt, the first time I think I’ve ever seen him in anything but black, stretches across his wide shoulders, the pockets of his jeans hugging his ass. Strands of hair hit the top of his collar and I want to run my fingers through them and ask him why he’s hell-bent on driving me nuts, but I don’t because he’s still not looking at me.
Flying him the bird, an un-ladylike gesture that feels like a huge moment of rebellion, I take a step back towards the house when I hear him speak.
“I didn’t say I regretted anything.”
Our positions now flip-flopped—him looking at my back, me refusing to look his way—I focus on the back of the old barn bearing a few streaks of paint leftover from an old tobacco ad.
“Sometimes you don’t have to say things to have them understood.” My voice is clear over the bright green grass, floating across the bunny that’s standing on its hind legs watching us, and through the band of evergreens. “I think you’re the master at not having to say what you mean to get your point across.”
The sun hits my face and I feel all the mixed emotions of the last few days just kind of lump together and fall, sinking in the warm afternoon. I’m almost numb, not really feeling any certain way. I stand at the back of the yard, my face to the sky, and wonder what I should do. Then again, I wonder if it’s even worth my energy.
I have a phone full of numbers, social media accounts brimming with contacts, of men I could call up and go out with. Handsome men, charming ones, guys who would wine and dine me senseless. Some of them have names every household in America would recognize, some have faces every female in the country could name.
Yet, none of them have the appeal of Walker Gibson. That’s something I don’t understand.
I’ve always known I wasn’t cut out to be arm candy for some trust fund baby. I’ve dated my fair share and being expected to not have an opinion, to look the other way, to have my hair, nails, and eyebrows ready to go at all times is not my idea of a good time. It actually makes me want to punch people in the face. But that doesn’t mean I have to go polar opposite with work boots and grease, does it?
His shadow creeps up beside me, stretching much longer than mine. Even it keeps a distance.
“I mean it.” His voice rushes across my skin, the genuineness in his tone a balm to some of my aches. “I don’t regret it. I never said I did. That was you putting words in my mouth.”
“That was me drawing lines between what you were saying and doing.”
“Fair enough.”
Surprised that he’s giving in that easily, I ease up on the clench of my fingers around the straps of my heels. Blood rushes back into my digits, divots dug into my palms.
“I’m glad you came today,” he says. “I mean, I know it probably doesn’t seem like it, but . . .”
“It doesn’t seem like it,” I say, my voice struggling against the tightness in my throat. “It seems like you think I’m out to make your life miserable. I assure you I’m not.”
“Could’ve fooled me,” he mumbles under his breath.
Not sure I was supposed to have heard that, I did, and I’m not about to let him get away with it. I practice the art of the fake smile as I rein in my annoyance. “Fooling anyone isn’t in my plans. A big ‘screw you’ for even insinuating that.”
“Sienna.” The way he says my name, like he’s wrapped everything he has around the three syllables, makes my knees weak despite my anger. “I didn’t mean it like that.”
“Then how did you mean it, Walker? Because I’ll be honest—I’m exhausted from trying to figure you out. I’m sick of doing this with you.”
A storm crosses his face, a steeliness settling on the hard lines of his jaw.
“That. Right there,” I say, pointing a finger at him. “That’s what I’m talking about.”
“What?” There’s a sharpness to his tone, a bite that seems to warn me off of prodding. Most days this would work. I’d stop and just let him go on about his day. Today is not most days. Today I’m tired of it.
I’m not sure it even matters and I’d put my money on the fact that it doesn’t. Even so, there’s an exhaustion in my shoulders from carrying around all of the guesses I put together about why he acts the way he does and an acute sense of curiosity as to what’s real—his verbal spars or the zing of his touch that says otherwise.
“One minute, you and I are having a conversation and teasing each other and laughing—well, I’m laughing. I’m not sure you’d do such a thing,” I say, rolling my eyes. “And the next minute you’re dismissing me like some woman you can’t shake. Like a bad habit. Like a quick fuck,” I eke out. “Yet you give me just enough rope to hang myself.”
“That’s not true.”
“Could’ve fooled me.” I give his words back to him, a little salt dashed on top as I throw them back his way. “I’ve never met a man who twists me up like you do. Like you get some thrill out of keeping me flailing around, unsure if you like me or hate me.”
“Stop it,” he growls.
“I’m not going to stop it,” I shoot back. “I’m done with this shit. If you want to string some woman along, fine. Go ahead. But it won’t be me.”
“I don’t want it to be you. I mean,” he roughs a hand against his head, looking anywhere but at me with a scowl. “Damn it. What I mean is, that’s not true.”
“Oh, it’s true and you know it.”
Refusing to back down, I meet him glare for glare. He stands taller; so do I. He angles his head and I do the exact same thing. I won’t budge an inch.
“You wanna know what’s fucking true?” He takes a step towards me, his hands coming out of his pockets in a quick rush. “Here’s what’s true—you’re making my life so goddamn miserable I can’t see straight. I can’t sleep. I can’t think. I say shit I don’t mean on purpose because pushing you away feels like saving you from myself. I can’t work on an engine without smashing my knuckles off the side like some rookie.”
He flashes the back of his hand my way. It’s cut across the top, the skin sliced and rough.
“All because of you.” His boot sinks into the grass as he gets closer, his Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat. “I’ve not been able to stop thinking about you since I saw you on the sidewalk trying to hide that bat behind you.”
His gaze peers into me like there’s nothing else in the world to look at. Like the entire world has stopped—the axis stopped turning, governments paused work, people suspended mid-whatever, just so Walker can concentrate on me.
“I’m sorry, Sienna.”
“What are you sorry for?”
Shifting my weight, my feet feeling the coolness of the ground, I try to find my center in the midst of the chaos playing through every cell of my body.
“I thought you’d be out of here by now,” he says, his voice having lost the grit from earlier. “I figured I could push you away and you’d just go.”
“Just maybe I am hardheaded.”
“Um, no doubt,” he chuckles. “But I am sorry for a lot of things, but mostly for what I said to you Friday night. And the way I made you feel. For the record, I wanted to pick you up and carry you to my truck and take you home with me.”
My heart zips in my chest as I struggle to process that. “I don’t understand.”
“I didn’t expect you to still be here.” He takes a deep breath. “I thought we could kind of fuck it out and you’d be over it. But here you are.”
“Is that okay?” I whisper. “That I’m here?”
“I’m so glad you are.”
Taking my shoes from my hand, he rubs his thumb across my knuckle. He watches each stroke, his eyes glued to the movement as he speaks. “Nana talked about you last night. I was over here helping her fix her sink drain. She waited until I was on my back and under the sink before peppering me with a million questions.”
“What did you tell her?” I ask, trying desperately to keep my voice steady.
His thumb stops moving. Looking up and into my eyes, there’s a softness there that, if he weren’t holding my hand, would catapult me over.
“I didn’t tell her anything she didn’t already know.”
His thumb stills, pressing into the top of my hand. I can feel his struggle, the war within himself, at saying that aloud. He didn’t say anything. Not really. But in typical Walker fashion, he didn’t have to.
As my heart flutters in my chest, a shaky sigh quietly passing my lips, I try to give him a soft spot to land after that semi-admission. Even though I don’t know concretely what Nana already knew, I have an idea, and it wasn’t that I bake great muffins. It would explain the way his palms are dampening. It would make sense as to why he seems unable to find words to follow. And even though I’m still angry, it’s a feeling that’s becoming harder to maintain.
“Hey,” I say, scrambling for a way to give him some space. Over his shoulder, just a couple of rows in front of the forest, is a little structure up in a tree. “Is that a treehouse?”
The relief is evident in the way his shoulders sag. “Yeah.”
“Is it solid? I mean, can we go up?”
He squeezes my hand, his thick and calloused skin rough against my own, before dropping it to the side. Chuckling, he shrugs. “You want to?”
“Can we? I know it’s random, but it’s the one thing in my life I’ve always wanted and never had.”
He turns towards the trees. “I didn’t have you pegged for a treehouse kind of girl.”
“My father didn’t either,” I admit, just a few steps behind him. “I asked for one every year for Christmas for about four years straight. One of my brothers fell out of one when they were younger and Dad had some big machine there in the morning to rip it down. He refused to let my sister and I have one. It was the only thing we couldn’t have.”
“That explains a lot.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I laugh.
He stops at the base of the tree and plants one hand on the bark. Leaning against it, his eyes the color of the dark soil beneath our feet, he considers his words. “You seem like a girl who gets what she wants.”
“Most of the time,” I say, my chest clenching under his gaze. “I just need to be more careful with what I decide I want.”
“Yeah. Some things look all right on the outside, but there’s nothing on the inside.”
“True,” I say, unable to take my eyes away from his. “But sometimes that just means it’s there to be filled up.”
He presses off the tree, switching his gaze up the tree. “Let’s go, country girl. I’ll follow in case you fall.”
“I’m not going first. I have on a dress. I’m a lady.”
He bites back a smile. Leaning forward, his lips brushing against the shell of my ear. There’s no way to control the shiver that rips across my skin and flips on my libido in an instant.
“Have you forgotten already?” he whispers.
“Forgotten what?”
“That I’ve been inside you.”
I grip the wooden rung screwed into the tree as if I’m ready to climb. It’s really so I don’t sag against him. His words fire through my veins and singe my vessels, landing in one contorted mass at the apex of my thighs.
“And we saw what happened after that,” I volley back.
He bristles beside me. Clean, un-Walker-filled air swallows my personal space and I instantly hate it. My body begs to fall back towards him, to feel the energy that buzzes between us when he’s near, but I don’t dare.
Instead, I put one foot on the bottom rung and look at him over my shoulder. He’s watching me with intense, broody eyes, his bottom lip pinched between his teeth.
“Close your eyes, Gibson. I’d hate for you to see what you’ve been missing.”
With a light head and clattering heart, I work my way up the pseudo-ladder. I don’t look down. I show no fear. And even more importantly, I show no weakness.
THE LADDER OPENS INTO a makeshift treehouse complete with a trap door. I can stand up, only having to crouch a bit as I scurry away from the ladder so Walker can make it up too.
There are windows on two of the sides with short camouflage curtains that look like they’ve seen better days. There’s a checkerboard sitting on a mini-card table under one window with some of the pieces strewn about on the floor. A couple of pocket knives, notebooks, and a red and blue striped blanket dot a slapdash couch made out of egg cartons and cardboard.
It’s not as dusty as I imagined it would be. There are cobwebs in the corners and it could use a good cleaning, but it looks like it’s been occupied recently.
“Well, is it everything you hoped for?” Walker looks up at me from the ladder.
“It’s cleaner than I expected.”
“I think Sawyer was up here not too long ago,” he says, his palms setting on the floor. He lifts himself up into the room with me. “Peck has a brother named Vincent. Sawyer is his boy. They live an hour or so away, so we don’t see them too much. Just when Nana puts her foot down.”
Spinning in a circle, I take in the nuances of an area that’s definitely all boy. There are three folding chairs lined up neatly along one wall with a sign that reads, “Gibson Boys—Stay Out Blaire”.
“Who’s Blaire?” I ask as Walker gets to the top.
He groans as he unfolds as far as he can into the tight space. Hunkered over, he doesn’t hesitate to take a seat in one of the chairs. “Blaire’s my sister.”
“I think Nana mentioned her.” Still looking around, I take in the carvings in the wood and the candy wrappers piled into a mound on the floor. It’s the perfect little boy hangout. It brings a smile to my cheeks.
“What are you grinning about?” he asks.
“This is everything I always wanted, except maybe purple curtains and not the pocket knives,” I laugh. “It’s adorable.”
“I spent half my childhood up here, I bet. Carving twigs, eating the cake we stole from Nana’s that was supposed to wait until after dinner, making plans for world domination.” He rests his elbows on his knees. “It was an easier time of my life.”
“Would you go back?”
His head falls to the side as he ponders my question. “Probably. You?”
“No. I had a great childhood and all that, but growing pains were hard.”
“I can’t imagine anything being hard for you. You just go with the flow and fix shit. It seems like it’s ingrained in you.”
Grabbing a chair and scooting it a few feet away from him, I get situated on the cool metal seat. “Sometimes I feel like everything is hard for me,” I admit. “I know that’s not true. My life is pretty charmed. But for whatever reason, it seems like I can’t figure anything out.”
The air shifts between us and I know what he’s going to say before he says it. “Are you talking about me?”
“I wasn’t,” I say truthfully. “But it applies, I guess.”
His head drops, hanging between his two muscled biceps. My breathing shallows as I watch him absorb my admission.
“Tell me about Blaire,” I redirect, not wanting to get into another pissing match with him. “She doesn’t come around?”
“She lives in Chicago,” he says, his voice ragged like its slipping past a parched throat. “She’s an attorney. Kind of a big deal.”
“That’s awesome.”
“She thinks so,” he grins. “She’s super fucking smart and a black belt in some random martial art. We don’t get to see her much these days.”
“Do you miss her?”
“Eh,” he shrugs.
There’s a purposeful playoff to my question that leads me to believe he misses her more than he’s letting on. “What about your parents? Do you see them often?”
His hands twist in front of him. “My parents passed away a few years back.”
A lump the size of an egg lodges in my throat as I watch a swath of pain wash across his face. I try for a moment to imagine what it would feel like not to have my parents. Just the thought chips a giant hole in my heart big enough that I find myself placing a hand over the organ as if the piercing pain is real. “Oh, Walker. I’m sorry.”
“It was an accident. On a boat on the Fourth of July. Shit happens, you know?”
“I can’t imagine.”
He half-shrugs, half-nods, and seems to kind of fall away into his head for a moment. Watching him makes me wonder how lonely he is without his parents and sister.
“What do you do for fun?” I ask, hoping to see his smile again. I do.
“What kind of question is that?”
“One people ask when they’re curious. Do you hunt? Fish? Date a lot?”
“No.”
Tilting my head to the ceiling, I make a point of ensuring he hears my exasperated sigh. He makes sure I hear his chuckle in response. Lowering my face, I give him a playful look. “Don’t get too in depth there, Walker. I’d hate for you to run out of words.”
“What?” he laughs. “I don’t hunt. I do fish some, but not a lot. And I don’t date a lot.”
“You could probably find more dates if you’d stop being such an ass,” I joke.
“I don’t not date from a lack of opportunities, Slugger,” he says, lifting a brow.
“Then why don’t you?” I ask, a little relieved that he isn’t some playboy that just doesn’t want to not date me. “Why would you want to be alone all the time?”
He strokes his chin, his elbow propped up on his knee. He watches me intently, like he’s trying to weed out any unforeseen insinuations. “You know how you said sometimes you can’t figure anything out?”
“Yeah.”
“That.”
“You don’t know how to date?” I tease. “It’s really pretty simple.”
“No, smartass, I know how to date. I just . . .” He looks at me for help. When I don’t give him any, he shrugs. “I guess I find it a hassle that doesn’t usually seem worth it.”
“Strangely, I get that. Although I do go into them sometimes and know it’s a one-time thing. A guy will ask me to dinner or an event and I’ll go with him, even though there’s no hope of really seeing him after.”
“So like one-night stands?”
My cheeks warming, I shake my head. “No. I actually don’t sleep with many men.”
“I didn’t mean to insinuate that you did.”
“I know. It’s just I did with you, so of course you might think that.”
There’s something he wants to say. He opens his mouth, but the words don’t come. Scratching at the back of his neck, he seems to change his mind.
“Do you date a lot?” he asks instead.
There’s a slight change in his tone, a barely perceptible chill iced on each word that the average person listening in wouldn’t catch, but I do. To me, it’s unmistakable. And when I pair it with the intensity of his gaze, I could shudder despite the warm afternoon temperature.
“Sometimes,” I answer.
“Are you dating anyone now?”
“Not regularly.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Laughing at his reaction, the way he’s sitting upright all of a sudden, I shrug. “It means I’m not seeing anyone exclusively.”
“But you’re seeing someone?”
“I went to dinner with a guy a couple of weeks ago. It was nice, but nothing I’d like to do again. There are a couple of guys in Savannah that I see when I go home off and on, but no one I call to chat with or that sends me flowers, if that’s what you mean.”
“I don’t know what I fucking mean,” he groans. “It’s none of my business.”
“No, it’s not.”
He fiddles with his hands again, taking in a deep, lazy breath that fills his solid chest. I find myself mirroring his action, the oxygen seeping in to my lungs and helping to steady my heartbeat as we blow out the air in unison.
“I’m just gonna toss some shit out there and you can take it or leave it or make fun of me . . .” he says, refusing, still, to look my way.
“Probably the latter, but go on,” I tease. Anticipation of what he’s about to say grabs hold of my hopes and emotions and pulls them up and up until I feel like I’m actually standing on the edge of a cliff, waiting to be pushed over or pulled back into his arms.
He lifts his eyes. They’re crystal clear, the brown pools bared for me to see there’s no bullshit, no ulterior motives behind whatever it is he’s going to say.
“I don’t know what to do with you,” he says softly.
“I’ve seen you know exactly what to do with me,” I say, my words falling right where I intended.
The corner of his mouth curls into a smile, but he doesn’t let himself run with it. Instead, he cinches down, clears his throat, and continues on. “You bashed my truck with a baseball bat.”
“Oh, Lord. Are we going back to that again?”
“Who does that, Sienna?”
“Me, all right?” I laugh. “I did that. I do that.”
“Exactly. You do that. But you also bake muffins for Peck and I for breakfast,” he says, the laughter falling from his voice. “You come back to the shop to bring me dinner when you know I’m working late and you pretend to know about tools when you don’t know jack shit.”
“I know how to navigate a search engine.”
“But who takes the time to do that?” he sighs. “Who spends their evening in a dirty mechanic’s shop and lies their way into helping someone else?”
I shrug. “Someone crazy.”
“Yeah. You,” he says. “And you make friends with my Nana and put my brothers in check and you’re still sitting in a treehouse talking to me when I was pretty nasty to you.” He shakes his head like he’s been stumped. “You’re the craziest person I’ve ever met.”
He shifts in his seat, like he’s just getting comfortable with the words slipping off his tongue. “Women will pretend to be sweet. I’ve seen it a million fucking times. But when the going gets tough, they’ll back off and go somewhere easier. Every. Fucking. Time. Until now.”
Biting the inside of my lip, I try to keep my mouth shut so as not to ruin his flow. He’s softer than I’ve ever seen. More vulnerable. More real. And despite the overwhelming urge to plant my lips against his, I don’t. If I do, I’m not sure when, or if, I’d ever get him to this point again.
“You know, the day you paid for Dave and MaryAnn’s cars, I almost told you to just go.”
“I thought you were going to.”
“I remember that afternoon, after you left, Peck looking at me and asking me what I was going to do.” He forces a swallow. “We both knew he wasn’t referring to the money.”
Squirming in my seat, my chest rising and falling so fast I quickly run the odds of passing out, I try to focus on staying present and not letting my thoughts get carried away. “What was he talking about, Walker?”
“He knew I was already in over my head.”
I’m not sure if I reach for his hand or if he reaches for mine. Regardless, our hands are locked, his easily encompassing mine, somewhere in the middle of the room between us. With a gentle pull, he gets me to my feet and over to him.
My heart races as I sit on his knee and he locks his hands around my waist. It’s not the closest we’ve ever been, nor is it the most intimate. But there’s something so tender, so private, in this moment between us that I can’t recall ever feeling so close to a man in my entire life.
Tilting his head back, dragging me closer to his torso, he looks at me unguarded for the first time. “I want to apologize for ever making you upset or confused or that you felt like I counted you as a mistake.”
“For what it’s worth,” I tell him, “I knew you were wrong.”
He rolls his eyes, a sweet grin playing on his lips. I love this look on him. It’s what someone like Walker should look like—young and happy and carefree.
“I know you’re leaving . . .” He unwraps and rewraps his hands at my waist, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallows.
“I don’t have to do anything,” I say, running my finger along his bottom lip. “I kind of do things on my time, if you haven’t figured that out by now.”
He snaps my finger between his teeth before I see it coming. Yelping, I instinctively try to pull it away, but he holds firm. It’s only when I give up and stop fighting that he wraps his lips around it and lets me slide it from his mouth.
The feeling sends a shot straight to my core. It’s heightened by the look of pure, unadulterated lust coming from Walker.
“I need a minute,” he says, running a hand through my hair. “I don’t know what’s happening here. I have shit to deal with. I—”
“Stop talking,” I say, pressing a sweet, simple kiss to his lips. “You can have a minute. You can have an hour or a week or a month or a year. Hell, I might not even like you two minutes from now—Walker!”
In one quick, seamless motion, he stands, picks me up, and lays me on my back on the floor of the treehouse. Hovering over me, his forearms nestled on either side of my head, he grins down. “If you might not like me in two minutes, I better get to work winning you over now, hadn’t I?”
Caressing his face in my hands, his stubble scratching at my palms, I look in to his eyes and find what I’ve been looking for: peace.
“Better hurry,” I whisper. “You’re down to a minute and a half.”
My legs wrap around his waist as he lowers himself to me, his sweet lips finding mine. He kisses me this time not with a sense of urgency, not out of lust, but out of something else. Something that tickles the back of my brain to pay attention, but I don’t. I’m too caught up in the moment.