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The stubble on his chin grazes my skin, sending a jolt through me that feels like touching an electric fence, except there’s no possibility of me pulling away.

Not when this kiss feels like coming home after a long day of working in the rain. Warm and right and somehow inevitable.

Suddenly, so many of the things I’ve never quite understood make sense. Those soppy country songs Lance’s wife Emma always plays in her car about hearts and forever. The way my parents used to dance in the kitchen to the crackling radio. The way old Joe Morrison’s voice still breaks when he talks about his late wife.

I now understand all those things in the context of Benji’s lips.

But when he makes a small sound in the back of his throat, hunger roars through me, my control snapping like an old fence wire under too much tension.

His mouth opens under mine, and now our kiss is wilder, like years of bickering and boundary lines and carefully maintained distance are collapsing all at once.

We’re crashing together like a downstream surge after the spring melt, powerful enough to reshape the riverbank.

His hand fists in my shirt, pulling me closer as the last light paints everything gold around us. My hands somehow get tangled in his hair, making him groan into my mouth.

When we finally pull apart, we’re both breathless and panting.

His pupils are blown out, his lips red and slightly swollen, like the first ripe strawberries in my garden.

I know I’m wearing a stupid, foolish grin. In fact, it appears I can’t stop grinning.

The only thing that makes it slightly less mortifying is the matching grin on Benji’s face.

“So, my place or yours?” Benji says the words casually, like they’re something he’s said many times before.

Or maybe they sound so familiar because they’re something we’re going to be saying to each other for years to come, at least until we finally relent and build our house on the boundary between our land.

It could be a good use of the thistle paddock, come to think of it.

“Mine’s closer,” I say.

ChapterFive

David

Bumping back up the track in my pickup truck is a completely different experience from going down.

This time, Benji’s pressed against me, his hand placed proprietarily on my knee.

Around the time we hit the gravel road, he starts to run his fingers up the inside seam of my jeans, making me grip the steering wheel hard.

“Careful, or this pickup truck is going to end up in Old Thompson’s hayfield,” I grate out.

It’s not until we pull up in my driveway that nerves arrive in my stomach like a swarm of locusts.

The evening light paints long shadows across my front yard as we climb out of the truck. Benji follows me up the path to my front door, and my hands shake so much I drop my keys. Twice. He leans down to pick them up the second time.

“Maybe I should handle the door opening around here,” he says, his hands steady as he unlocks the door.

I stumble in after him and find myself standing next to him in my hallway, the familiar smell of grass and sheep dogs and home suddenly seeming different with him here.

When I’m brave enough to glance at him, I find his eyes dark and intent on mine.

Fuck. What do I do now?

It feels like the first time Dad let me drive the tractor alone, that same mixture of fear and wanting so badly to get it right.

Benji steps forward, closing the distance between us.