“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.