Page 57 of Sterling Stone

She huffs as I release her, then reaches for the side of my pants, gripping the strip that runs down my outer thigh.

“I was jealous,” Taxi quietly owns. “Earlier. Seeing you with Emerson. I didn’t like it, which wasn’t fair to you.”

I fight a smile, warning myself not to read more into her admission of jealousy.

“I’m right here,” I remind her, stroking a finger around her face.

“Don’t leave,” she whispers, looking up at me with eyes I can’t quite make out but know even in the dark because those eyes appear behind my lids when I close my own. They’ve haunted me and teased me and played out in fantasies I don’t dare admit.

And something deep inside me opens even wider, drinking in the drops this woman gives me.

“Just give me a minute,” I respond.

Trudy has a recliner in her living room along with the couch, but I’m not interested in rearranging her furniture. Instead, I opt for bringing a kitchen chair to the side of the couch, staring at Taxi as she lies on her back, face aimed at the ceiling.

I can’t imagine she can fall asleep any easier with me watching her, but after she’s asked me to stay, I won’t leave her side.

Eventually, she drapes her arm over the top of her head, causing the long sleeve of her aunt’s robe to expose her forearm.

She sighs heavily before saying, “I’ve been so unfair to you.” Her voice remains quiet, puzzled and apologetic.

My brows lift as I lean forward in the chair, resting my elbows on my thighs. “How?”

“Last summer.”

“Taxi,” I groan. “We don’t need to go back there.” We don’t need to rehash the kiss that meant nothing to her and everything to me, or the day she spent at my home, where she rejected me.

“I was wrong.”

Her statement puts a hold on any argument I was about to offer.

Her head shifts so suddenly on the pillow that I sit back in the hard chair. She rolls to her side, tucking her hands underneath her cheek. With the light streaming from the kitchen into the hallway, a sliver of illumination enters the room, and I catch her eyes focusing on me again.

She swallows thickly. “What do you know about me?”

“Other than you’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever met?” The intention was to keep my answer light, almost teasing, but it comes out sharp and direct, and I bite back the additional comments fighting to be added to that assessment. Ones that recall a kiss in a hotel hallway. The feel of her hips in my hands and the taste of her tongue. The way her breath hitched, and her body arched toward mine.

Her smile is weak. “I mean, about my history. My backstory.”

“Your history doesn’t change who you are,” I admit. Oftentimes, we are who we are because of our backstory. How we resist it, persevere through it, survive it. “But if you’d like to tell me, I’m willing to listen.”

Because sometimes, even when the backstory doesn’t matter in the present, it needs to be told. Or it feels like it should be shared.

Maybe talking about herself and her aunt will ease her mind. Bring up good memories and settle her into her sleep.

Or, maybe, Taxi is finally opening up to me.

22

[Taxi]

Ididn’t know where to start. Didn’t know what he already knew or didn’t know about me. As neither of us recognized the other as adults, I didn’t know what he’d remember from my childhood. My brief time here in Sterling Falls.

Judd was often at Trudy’s home, which made our friendship easily bloom, but I didn’t have much interaction with the eldest Sylver or his brother Clay, who was second in line. Both boys were teenagers, and just ahead of Judd and me in age when I moved here.

I also didn’t have much interest in boys back then. My world was my sisters and our younger cousin of sorts, Rowan. Our time together included running around the yard, making up games, and using our imaginations, which sometimes resulted in innocent trouble, like painting the side of Aunt Trudy’s shed purple and green.

Trudy and Carlton’s home was full of fresh food, clean spaces, and land to roam free.