Page 33 of A Vine Mess
“I can handle rough,” I quipped.
Liam’s gaze dipped to my mouth before jerking back to my eyes. “I’m sure you can.”
Fuck. I’d really stepped in it with that comment, and now my mind wouldn’t stop conjuring images of Liam’s strong, working-man’s hands on my body. Throwing me around. Pulling my hair and leaving fingerprints on my thighs.
And he really had to stop replying so suggestively. In the same way he was a man, I was just a girl, and I could only handle so much. We’d only been together for eight hours and the constant back and forth was already giving me whiplash.
He scrubbed at the back of his neck, breaking the tense silence by saying, “Want to eat at a picnic table and watch the sunset?”
“Sure,” I said, gesturing the way out.
He left well ahead of me, and when I was alone, I rifled through one of my bags until I came away with a small brown paper envelope that held a collection of wildflower seeds. Seeds I’d been carefully collecting and mixing into packets for the past few years, waiting for the perfect opportunity to start spreading them around.
And what better time than a cross-country road trip?
I still carried the food so, seeds stowed in my back pocket, I made my way toward a table up the beach a ways while Liam dropped his things in his own yurt—right next to mine.
I refused to let that knowledge burrow in, to consider the fact that we were alone on this trip, on this beach, and tonight only a few walls and a short walk would separate us. If we wanted to, we could easily say “fuck it” and let our errant words turn from mere ideas into the real deal.
But hopping into bed with a new guy wasn’t what I’d been thinking when I vowed to be better to myself. I need to focus onmeandonly me, full stop.
Liam was doing me a solid here, letting me tag along on this trip. I could easily ignore the tension as well as admire him—the way he moved, how he filled out those jeans, his tattoos—from afar and not make it weird. I wasn’t even trying to pretend I wouldn’t ogle him. The man was fucking gorgeous, impossible to look away from.
But what I desperately needed right now was a friend. Someone who wasn’t related to me but maybe wouldn’t mind listening to me if I needed to get some things off my chest in order to heal on this journey. Someone who took me at face value, good days and bad, and didn’t try to fix me like everyone else in my life seemed to want to.
Liam was a calming presence in that he made it okay for me to feel my feelings without hiding them behind a mask.
Even if my body was having other ideas about him. And even if he’d been acting like a bit of a dick for the last twenty minutes.
With him safely out of sight, I set the food on the table, then withdrew the packet of seeds, opened it up, and casually walked along the tree line, sprinkling them as I walked until they were all gone.
I had no idea if they’d be able to take root in this particular soil, but I figured if the trees could grow, so could flowers.
A few minutes later, Liam exited his yurt and, barefoot, padded down the beach toward the table I’d selected, dropping down next to me. Wordlessly, I handed him one of the takeout containers, which I’d split half of the fish into, and equally as silently, Liam tore into the meal.
My own was half-eaten, so I mostly picked at it while we sat there, not talking, watching the sun sink below the horizon,turning everything brilliant orange before the darkness descended.
A short while later, Liam cleared our trash and bid me good night, disappearing into his yurt without a backward glance.
I couldn’t help feeling like I’d once again done something wrong, but instead of going after him and demanding an explanation for why he’d suddenly gone cold and mute around me, I tipped my head back to look at the sky.
The next morning, afterI’d tossed and turned all night, Ella and I woke, got ready, and hit the road again. By the time we pulled up to our lodgings for the night in Rochester, Minnesota—one of those inexpensive roadside motels that had certainly seen better days, probably in the seventies when it was built—I was glad I hadn’t decided to drive further. By then, the sun was already going down, and I was nursing a massive headache from clenching my jaw, trying to keep all the words I wanted to say to Ella locked safely away until the right moment.
I was acting like a giant dick to her, and I couldn’t quite figure out why.
Or maybe I knewexactlywhy, but thinking the words made me feel like an even bigger dick.
I’d expected this trip to be a turning point for us. The opportunity for me to show her I could be good for her—be goodtoher. Instead, I found myself saying stupid shit, reacting poorly when she did something that had my skin tightening like I wouldburst if I didn’t do something about it.
Like the evening before, when I’d got back into the van and heard the moan she’d released over a bite of fish.
All I could think about was how I could be the one to get her to make those sounds, and my cock had risen to the occasion.
But me thirsting after her wasn’t fair to either of us, especially not when it was obvious that she was still working through some shit. I’d been watching her so closely for so long that I could easily decipher her moods, and it was easy to see whenever the darkness passed back over her, like a cloud covering the sun.
And that’s what Ella was—the sun. She deserved to be treated that way, deserved to be reminded that she shone brighter than anything around her. That she was better than some fucking twit who didn’t know what a good thing he’d found in her.
She could do better than him. Better thanme. I wasn’t sure there was a man on Earth worthy of her.
