Chapter Thirty-Five

Jonah

“Deeper,” Evie said, a bead of sweat trickling between her shoulder blades.

“Like this?” Jonah asked.

“Deeper. Really put your back into it.”

“Christ.” Jonah wiped his brow with the cuff of his shirt. “How many of these do we have to plant?”

“The design your landscape architect came up with says that these shrubs line the length of the fence.”

He looked at her beneath the bill of his ballcap. And even in the shadow it cast she could see the intensity of those cobalt-blue eyes that never failed to get her body strumming. “You are my landscape architect.”

She lifted her chin. “And a damn fine one.”

“How many, Evelyn?”

Even when he said her full name in exasperation, she liked it. Her nipples, on the other hand, loved it. It was a thrilling little secret that belonged to the two of them. A secret that was starting to debunk their other little secret.

“Just a few more,” she said.

Jonah eyed the army of the potted shrubs that had been delivered that morning and were sitting on the bottom step of his deck. “A few?”

“Okay, eight.”

“Eight?” He rested his boot on the head of the shovel and his elbow on the top of the pole, then looked up at the sky and blew out a breath. “Maybe I should have hired someone else to do it, money be damned.”

“And miss out on the opportunity to get parched?” She walked closer, swinging her hips like she meant it. She stopped when she was but a breath away. “Not on your life.”

His gaze dropped to her lips. “And are you parched, sunshine?”

“Like I’ve spent a millennium in the Sahara.”

“We can’t have that, now, can we?” he asked as he slowly lowered his head, flipping his ballcap backward right as his mouth brushed against hers.

“It’s a problem,” she whispered against his lips.

“Oh, it’s a big problem,” he whispered back. “It’s been a problem ever since you came prancing out of your house in those wet-dream denim cutoffs and that white top that gapes every time you lean over, gifting me a view of the promised land. And I noticed you’ve been leaning over every chance you get. Is that for my benefit?”

“What do you think?” she said and ran her tongue along his lower lip.

He kissed his way up her jawline to her earlobe, where he sank his teeth in. “I think you’re playing with fire.”

Something about the word playing rubbed her the wrong way. After the other night—God, the other night!—something inside her had shifted. Opened up. Become more vulnerable.

She pulled back so she could search his eyes when she said, “What if I’m not playing?”

His expression went soft. He tossed the shovel aside so he could get his hands on her hips. They were so large that they spanned all the way around her. “Sunshine, this has never been a game to me.”

Her brain tried to figure out the significance of his words, because her heart knew what he was saying was vital to how the rest of—well, she didn’t know how long—but the two parts of her couldn’t agree on the translation. “What does that mean?”

“That I like you, Evelyn. I like you a lot,” he said sincerely.

“I think I like you, too,” she admitted shyly.

He lifted a brow. “You think or you know? Because I’ve learned from history that if two people aren’t open and honest about where they are, both parties will get hurt.” Leaning in so his forehead was against hers, he whispered quietly, “Sometimes very, very badly.”

His voice was so heartbreakingly sad Evie’s chest ached. “Your dad?”

“My dad. My mom, even though she tried her best.” He looked away, as if ashamed over what he was about to say. “Amber.” It was barely a whisper, filled with guilt and that anger he’d told her about last week at the cheer camp.

She slid her arms through his until she was embracing him, her head tilted back so she could see his expression when she asked, “You weren’t on the same page?”

“Nah. She was accepted into this trial,” he said, unbearably low. “I thought, this is it, you know? It wasn’t a cure, but it was extending lives up to five years. Five years. She could have seen Waverly go off to kindergarten, Ryan graduate high school and start college…”

“And you’d get five more years with the love of your life,” she said, and even though the words shouldn’t hurt, they slammed a door deep inside that she’d been slowly opening up.

“She went to one treatment, and it drained her. The regimen was four hours a day, three times a week, in addition to chemo. Saying it now, it sounds like an awful way to spend the rest of your life when you knew it would end anyway, but at the time I just felt like she was leaving me.”

Evie wondered if she were in the same position what she’d do. No, she thought, she wouldn’t have the luxury of opting out. In reality, Camila had but one parent and Evie would do whatever it took to be there for her daughter.

She wasn’t judging Amber. Everyone was affected by life-changing news differently and their reaction to it varied, but she felt for Amber’s family and what that kind of aftermath must have been like. Especially for a man who’d had so many people leave him behind.

Was Evie going to be one of those people when their time was up? Was he going to create a mental place setting for her in his life? Would she?

Unsure how to respond to such a vulnerable moment, she went up on her toes and gave him a gentle kiss that expressed all the sorrow and heartache she felt for him and his family. He must have understood the gesture, because his hands tightened and ran up her back to thread in her hair.

She couldn’t ever fully understand what he’d gone through, but she did understand how the loss of a parent could change a child’s outlook on the world and where they belonged in it. She saw the struggle in Camila daily.

“I thought I was parched,” Jonah said. “More like dehydrated for you.”

“I know the feeling.”

“Once wasn’t enough,” he said against the gentle slope of her neck.

“I believe it was three times.”

“Three hundred wouldn’t be enough,” he said and something inside her stilled. What they had between them was good. So good. Too good to be true.

Which meant she was going to enjoy every moment of it.

“Your car is bigger than my bed,” she said. “We could just take a little trip to the lookout over Denver.”

He pulled back with a wicked grin. “Sunshine, are you asking me to go to Make-Out Point?”

She took both of his hands and led him backward toward the driveway. “I was hoping we’d do more than make out.”