Page 46 of Love Bound

I seem way too noncommittal than I feel when I shrug and say, "I don't know where to put it yet."

Still holding it in her lap, her suggestion seems at once perfect and almost clairvoyant. "There's an herb garden that comes up every year in the back between the two buildings, by that big slab I sit on. Why don’t you put it in the middle of the garden there?"

My eyes start to sting. How can she be so gentle, so right, and be sitting here, all at the same time?

I clear my throat. "Where is it?"

"Here, zip up," she says and tugs at my zipper, pulling the two halves tighter. It's an intimate move, and her touch through the fleece jacket makes me gasp a little. "Sorry. Did I hurt you?"

I shake my head.

"Let me carry it," she says. “It probably weighs thirty pounds." She lets the rest of the brown paper bag fall to the cabin floor and scoots out of the truck.

I follow her slowly, watching the wind catch on her long hair, while she hunches over, carrying my burden.

No one has ever carried my burdens—ever. I am always the protector, always the man in charge. Always the one second-guessing, looking ahead, seeing how soft the perimeter is. Which direction the threat may come from.

"It's right here," she calls out, simultaneously kicking ice and snow away from the ground.

There, twisted and pale, are the dormant remnants of sage, rosemary, caraway, tarragon, mint, thyme, oregano, and others I can't identify. Planted in a six-foot-wide circle, next to the slab of rock with the thick ribbon of rose quartz, it looks out across the grass toward the bay.

She bends over, placing the memorial on the ground. "Which way do you want it to face?"

I can hardly speak. The hot lump in my throat can't be worked out no matter how often I swallow.

“Toward the ocean, toward The Inn?" She stands there, bent over, hair streaming the words whipping from her mouth in a cold rush of wind.

I point toward the gray sea.

Out there.

Out there toward the unknown. Nic once told me that the present is all we really know, all we can only really understand: "The now is what shapes us, teaches us, and saves us."

I have never lived in the now. I have always lived in the future, anticipating danger, determining levels of threat, not really paying attention to the present. I've always been done with the present, even before it gets a chance to become the past. But here, in this moment, the present persists. It’s right there. She's right here.

Turning the stone, she shifts it until it's flat, secure, and wedged in the top of the softening mud. "Look what's here!" she cries and holds up a little piece of tumbled green sea glass. She hands it to me and says, "Look, it's shaped like a heart."

The piece of glass is less than an inch long and must have come from the curved bottom of a green beer bottle. Now it's all foamy green, and it's not a stretch to claim the shape; it’s clearly there: two narrow halves coming together in a slim heart.

"It's like a teeny gift," she says, wiping her hands on her thighs and blowing on them.

I slip the glass in my pocket. Closing the gap between us, I take her hands in mine, bringing them to my chest as I close my eyes. Cold, wet, and a little gritty, they warm instantly in mine and I try not to let her notice how my heart pounds. Rubbing her hands in mine for a moment longer, I lean down swiftly and kiss her on the cheek.

A chaste move. But I am so grateful. Claire has no way of knowing Allison was a master gardener. Herbs were her specialty.

What surprises me is the sudden flush in Claire's cheeks, how startled she looks at me as I draw back. How her lips part, slightly swollen with cold. How I so want to press her to me, hold her, feel her move against me. I start to get hard again, swiftly, my cock rubbing against my pants.

"Thank you," I say, letting go of her.

She quickly stuffs her hands in her jacket pockets as if guilty of something, glances at me, and then turns to go back to the clinic.

Chapter Thirteen

Claire

My face burns either from the kiss or the wind, and both are leaving me a little unhinged and so nervous I can’t think straight. Often, after an ice storm, there's a day of quiet and then the wind comes, straight off the sea, gusting, pounding, howling as if angry the clouds have all left. At night, the stars are so many and so brilliant, city dwellers will find fingers edging toward frostbite and, still, they won't go back inside. They can’t believe they've lived this long without seeing the naked sky.

That's how I feel.