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Lucas turned and leaned down. His finger hooked smoothly under her chin and lifted her lips to his. And that gentle finger stayed under her jawline for a three-count before he slid his hand to the side of her neck and closed the last few inches between them.
Jenna melted into him, slipped her arms over his shoulders, and lost herself in this moment. When the kiss became rougher, Lucas eased out of it and rested his forehead against hers, his eyes tightly closed. “Go get ready. I’m going to clean up too.”
It wasn’t a rejection. She could tell because he slid his hand around hers and held her hand as he walked with her through the last layer of woods that separated the trailer park from her shop. He walked with her all the way to her front door and up on the second stair, she turned to him.
She lifted her chin higher, and her animal whispered, be brave, as she considered doing this.
“How much did you hear earlier, when Royce had the phone line still connected?”
Lucas rested his boot on the bottom stair and canted his head. “I heard the part about the dog. Kong had left the speaker function on, but I don’t think it was on purpose. It looked like Royce was headed to hang up the phone when we heard you talking. We had just come in.”
“I was embarrassed.”
“You shouldn’t be. I haven’t thought about it since, but I get it. You’re an overthinker and things cling to your head longer than makes any sense to me. That’s okay. I’m telling you, you shouldn’t be embarrassed. I actually…” He straightened and cracked his knuckles and tossed an absent smile to the woods. “I’m doing all this wrong, you know.”
“All what?”
“Being around you. I’m leaving tomorrow night, and what am I doing?” He huffed a breath and said softer, “I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing.”
“Are you tethering my animal to you?” she whispered.
The smile had fallen completely off his face, and he didn’t answer.
Be brave.
“I know you’re leaving, Lucas. Part of me is terrified, and part of me knows I’ll probably spend a few nights drinking fruity beers by myself at some hole-in-the-wall bar in town like some old country song because I’m not going to want to be hurting around anyone in this trailer park. I’ll want to be alone, and that says something about my feelings for you. I have lived my entire life regretting the things I never said, and I know that probably doesn’t make much sense to a man like you, who is so good at saying what he feels and thinks. But you should know a few things before you go.” She inhaled a lungful of air, and blew it out on a three-count. “Ready?”
He nodded once, his eyes lightened to that intense gold of his animal.
“Okay. One, I’ve been looking forward to our friend-date all day. I can’t wait to get dressed up and hang on every moment, because for the last couple of days, I’ve felt alive. I know you think I’ve got everything together, that I’m some badass woman who doesn’t need anyone or anything, but you’re wrong. I do have needs. I have wants, too. I know when you leave, even though we’ve spent just a couple short days together, you are going to leave a hole inside of me that will be my responsibility to fill. And I also know I’m not going to understand how to fill it. You said I feel deep to you. I swallowed those words and I absorbed them, and I felt…happy. I feel happy, Lucas. I feel seen and safe and like I’m worth a damn to a man, and it’s something that will be hard to say goodbye to so soon. So I have a request.”
“Anything,” he rumbled in a gravelly voice.
“Can I get your number? Can I text you? Can I call you on your birthday—which I know to be March third, because I’m the one who sits with your momma while she writes those big letters to you to stuff in your birthday cards every year? Can I send you a card too? Can I remind you that not all of Damon’s Mountains has to bring you confusing memories? And then can you, after you’re done bleeding all the bad guys…when you’re old and weary and your body hurts and you want a soft place to land…can you consider here?”
She could see the chills rippling across his forearms plain as day. “You gonna keep a nest for me, Jenna?” he asked gruffly.
She dipped her chin. “I’ll keep a soft place for you, Lucas Slater, son of Kirk, Blade of the Mountains.” Keeper of my heart. “I don’t want you to go, but I sure understand your need to. I saw it in your eyes this morning when you realized you were in the same territory with Gunner. You haven’t healed yet. You haven’t dealt with whatever storm that time created in your animal, and that’s okay. I’m complicated too. But maybe someday when you do figure out how to let the past go, you can think about me.”
Lucas ran his hand down the short stubble on his jaw and stared at 1010. “You don’t know how to put pressure on a man, do you?”
“You want me to beg you to stay? You want me to give you an ultimatum?”
“That’s what most women would do.”
“What would opening the door to a cage do for you, Lucas? What would asking you to get in that cage make you do?”
He didn’t answer, but she could see it written in his eyes.
She finished it for him. “You would run. You are not a man who would do well in a cage. When you figure out this place is freedom…” she looked around and sighed. “When you figure that part out, come back and see it for what it is.”
He took a while to respond, but that was okay. He could sit with his feelings, as he allowed her to do. “Do you still want to go out with me tonight?”
“Yes. I want every minute I can have. It’ll have to last me for a very long time, won’t it?”
“Fuck, Jenna.” He frowned and made a clicking sound behind his teeth. At the woods he yelled, “Fuck! I’m two people. You’re splitting me apart. With you, I’m Lucas Slater of the Boarlanders, but out there in the real world?” he asked, pointing down the road. “I’m someone entirely different. I shed this skin years ago, and you come along and you’re pretty, and you’re open, and I know you’re giving me a gift, Jenna. I fuckin’ know it. I know you don’t talk to other people like this. I know you are giving me trust and asking me to take care of it, and I’m not that man! I’m not!” Softer, he said, “I’m not someone you can depend on,” his eyes pleading with her to understand. “I’m not the man you want me to be.”
“I don’t expect you to be anyone. You’re fine as-is. I like being with the you that is in front of me.”
