Page 47 of Fast Currents
“It needs to go in the annealing oven for a while, then it’ll be done.” She grinned at me, brushing a strand of dark hair from her cheek. “You did good, Clay. If things don’t work out with the parks service, you’d make a handy apprentice.”
My laugh came out a little too tight.
“Is now a good time to tell you I’ve been anxious the whole damn time?” I tugged her forward by her belt loops, guiding her between my thighs. “I think I’d rather be yourhandsyapprentice and leave the glass to you.”
She chuckled, the sound low and long. “Robertson, you surprise me. Glass is easy. It’s people who are difficult.” She turned to one side, a delicate judder racking her body. “Peopleandwildlife? No, thank you.”
“Aw, you’d be cute in a park uniform though.”
“The only animal I plan on keeping in line isyou,” she said, poking playfully at my chest.
I captured her finger, clutching it over my heart. She’d caught her inky dark hair back in low ponytails. Heat from the studio made the tresses cling to her damp cheeks, proving she wasn’t impervious to the high temperatures, even if she was used to them.
“Marry me? Even to my own ears, the words sounded too real.
Her eyes clouded. For the first time, I realized the real danger in the game we were playing. My heart was already involved. We’d traveled so far past the marker for risk-free fun and sharing good times that I’d lost sight of the trail altogether. Wandered utterly off the path and into the wild.
I’d been telling myself that teasing her was fun. The marriage proposals were harmless. Sure, I was into her. Lucy Millen was my Lucifer, the woman who tempted me back into living. Before I came into her orbit, I’d been going through the motions, papering over my grief with a toxic positivity that had everyone fooled.
Work. Run. Lift. Eat. Wash. Rinse. Repeat.
There had been no sexy woman to tease. To challenge me. To show me what I was missing by burying myself in routine. Meeting Lucy and the Fenwicks changed all that.
She’d snagged my interest with her sharp tongue and gentle touch, a contradiction I could never quite reconcile and had no desire to. The marriage proposals started as a joke, carelessly tossed out without expectation of more than rolled eyes or snark in return. But they were a wish for someday, when I was different. Better. Someone deserving of her and the future I barely let myself imagine.
Lucy’s ability to challenge me, wake me up, and shake me out of that belief that I had to wait to become worthy had become the greatest gift I never asked for.
I nearly said it.I love you. The words burned in my throat. But coming on the heels of the marriage proposals she never tookseriously, I couldn’t offer her my ultimate truth: that I’d fallen for her. Not when she might treat it like a punchline.
Not when I’d fallen harder than I’d thought possible.
She was grouchy and smart. Sweet and playful. Brutally honest in a way that made me want to be better. She saw through the charm, to the parts of me I tried to hide, and somehow, she stayed. She was everything I needed. Everything I wasn’t sure I could have.
Somewhere, my therapist was probably laughing. My journal was her idea. At first, it felt like a meaningless exercise. I wrote in it out of obligation rather than belief. Faithfully, I’d dumped all the feelings I didn’t want to face between its pages, convinced that writing them down changed nothing. Secure in the false belief that I was past the grief. Immune to the past. That nothing was holding me back.
But I’d been chronicling each halting step with Lucy. Each failed proposal. Every tongue lashing. The moments that made me laugh when I thought I’d forgotten how.
If I flipped through the pages, would I find all the truths I hadn’t been ready to uncover? Would I see the shape of love forming in ink before I had the courage to admit it aloud?
Suddenly, I wanted to dive through its pages. Relive the journey. Each stumble. Each misstep. And figure out a new plan forward. One where I didn’t make Lucy’s eyes cloud with exasperation when all I wanted was to love her.
Chapter 20 – Lucy
Holding class at the Madrone Acres Farm was my idea, but I already regretted the field trip. Working around live animals was unpredictable. Working around Gran, doubly so.
Clay brought the tables and chairs in his truck, and with Mark Ritter’s help, we set up in the barn. The earthy smell of manure and hay provided an aromatic backdrop to go along with the rustic wood building. Thankfully, it was well-lit, large fluorescent lights hanging above the main space.
Mark had set up temporary pens for a mama pig and her piglets. The alpaca, George, munched in one corner, tied off to a stall. He eyed me balefully, and I kept my distance. Maybe alpacas didn’t have the reputation that llamas did, but they still spit. I was hoping for a drool-free farm experience. A much smaller cage held Smoky, the rabbit. A gray and white barn cat twined around my ankles, and Mark had promised to bring out his German shepherd, Butter, when the kids arrived.
Our grade school class was thrilled by the animals. They were more interested in petting and cooing over our subjects than drawing them.
Ali, a chubby little third-grader, seemed particularly smitten with the rabbit. “Can I hold her?” She turned pleading brown eyes Clay’s way, and I watched him melt into a puddle in the face of her request. He carefully extracted Smoky, the bunny, from her cage and placed her gently in Ali’s arms.
“She’s so sof.” Ali stroked the bunny, nuzzling her button nose into its fur.
Clay looked on indulgently. I shook my head, guessing what would happen next.
“I want to hold the bunny!”
