Page 26 of Now to Forever (Life on the Ledge Duet #2)

Seventeen

“There is a chance I handled the canoe situation poorly.”

Ford gives me a go to hell look as he fills the bird feeders with seed. “That some kind of apology?”

He tosses the empty bag into the back of his truck with more force than necessary before opening a box of birdseed bricks and cages. He unwraps them, puts the bricks into the cages and hangs them up with the other bird feeders. Weird.

“Something like that.”

He grunts. “Needs work.”

“Fine.” I clench my teeth. “I’m sorry that you found the need to put me in a situation where I needed to make you swim across the lake.”

He tosses the empty box in the truck bed, slamming the tailgate closed. “You know what your problem is, Scotty?”

“I have a feeling you’re about to tell me, Ford .”

“You let the shit in your life ruin every good thing. ”

I suck in a sharp breath. “Don’t you dare even pretend to know what I do or don’t do. You’ve been gone. You don’t get to strut back into town and start psychoanalyzing me like a shrink. You left. You. Left.”

“And you let me,” he shouts, hands in the air. “You ever think of that?” he demands, standing close to me as his chest rises and falls with his angry breaths. “I messed up, but you weren’t exactly breaking my door down finding out where I went.”

“Oh,” I huff in a near shout. “Oh. Don’t even do this. Don’t put this on me.”

He shakes his head with a disbelieving laugh. “You’re so full of shit!”

“Better than anything you could fill me with.”

He glares at me. “If you let me get in this truck without apologizing, I won’t come back. Not as a friend. Not as anything.”

“Well, leaving me in the dust is your specialty, so I’m sure you’d have no problem with that.”

“I’m sorry!” he shouts, shocking me to a mute stillness.

“I don’t have a problem saying it and I have—over and over.

I’m sorry I let your brother go in that house.

I’m sorry—” He shakes his head, swallowing as if needing to regroup.

“I’m sorry I didn’t go hunt you down in the woods to tell you when everything happened.

I’m sorry I let you carry this alone. I’m sorry I loved you and I left you and it took twenty years for me to come back here and try to make up for all this.

But I am sorry. And I’ll say it as many times as you need to hear it.

But you don’t get to do the things you do and play your fucking mind games and not apologize.

So, right now, say it or I swear to God, I’m gone. ”

Despite the desperate look in his eyes, the fact my insides feel too big for my outsides, and the way his raw honesty peels the skin right off my skeleton, I say nothing.

Resignation fills his eyes and his voice drops. “Okay then.”

He walks to the front of his truck, opens the driver’s door and—

“Wait!” I shout. He stills, looking at me but keeping a hand on the door.

My throat is so constricted it’s a physical feat to get the next words out.

“I’m sorry,” I rasp. He slams the door and turns to me, waiting.

“When you look at me that way you look at me—I don’t know what to do with it.

Making you swim was probably not the best consequence. ”

He walks to where I’m standing at the back of his truck. “What way do I look at you?”

“Like—” He steps so close to me I can feel the warmth of his breath and smell the mint. I pull my head back, trying to find more air to breathe, but stand firm. “Like you want to keep looking. Like you think I’m . . .”

“You’re what?”

I swallow. “Worth it.”

“You are.”

Instead of gouging his eyes out like I want, I stay completely calm and still, trying like hell to ignore the ridiculous dance my heart and breath and belly are doing. “Keep saying things like that and you’ll be back in the lake. ”

He drops his chin to his chest, shaking his head as he puffs out a laugh. “That was shit as far as apologies go.”

“Noted.”

“I want to keep looking at you,” he says, tucking a strand of hair behind my ear. “Like you’re worth it.”

“And if I say no?”

His tongue darts out and swipes across his bottom lip. He’s got scruff on his jaw. The dark hair on his head is slightly disheveled. “You going to?”

I bite back a smile, looking away from his face.

I should tell him I don’t care what he does with that ugly mug of his.

That he needs to leave me the hell alone and fix his kid himself.

That I can feed my own birds and demo my own house.

That I’m leaving in months, and this has nowhere to go but over.

I should say all these things, but before I can, Ford runs his knuckles along my jaw and stops them under my chin, lifting just enough my eyes are forced to meet his.

He leans in, so close I could lick him like a lollipop if I stuck my tongue out.

My body responds like a damn turncoat. All heat and trembles in places I should definitely not be heating and trembling. “Maybe.”

“Ah,” he says, voice low and a whispery breeze across my skin as his knuckles drag—slowly—down the side of my neck. “And if I said I’ve been thinking about kissing you?”

“I would say your thoughts do nothing for me.” Translation: Your thoughts are making me hot and bothered as hell in my front yard next to these stupid bird feeders .

I’m no good for anyone, but God I want Ford—desperately.

I don’t know how to let someone get close, but every single time he gets vulnerable and lays it all on the line, he excavates everything I’ve ever felt for him, and despite all the hurt and heartache, I want to be as close to him as a second layer of skin.

If he kissed me, I would melt. If he said he wanted to slam me like a hammer, I would let him. Until I splintered. Repeatedly.

Stroking my skin with his thumb, he leans in close and says, “Good thing that’s not what I’m thinking.” He drops his hand, cool as a cucumber as I choke on air. “I barely know you. I need you to ask me to ask you out on a date.”

“Ha!” I take a step away from him for more oxygen. “Is that your way of asking me out?”

A faint curve pulls at the edge of his mouth. “Not this time. I’m not doing all the chasing this go around.”

My eyebrows pinch; he laughs.

“You heard me. I want us to try, but it can’t be like it was before. You pushing me away and me ignoring it. I know you feel what I’m feeling—know you want me to keep showing up—but I need to hear it.”

“A date with the Golden Boy,” I say, pulling my shoulders back to compensate for the wanton-quality of my voice. “Would ruin my reputation.”

“Good to know, Viper.” He smirks. Like he knows what’s in my head. “I’ll wait. You just say the words.” We look at each other a beat longer, then he takes another step back, pointing his thumb over his shoulder into the house. “Show me what you and Wren did today.”

He follows me inside, not bothering to hide his amusement when he sees the marker-covered floor. “Wren and her acrostic poems. Hand me a marker.”

I do; he writes the letters S-C-O-T-T-Y down in a line. I take another one, writing F-O-R-D.

I’m still writing when he stands to leave. “I have to get home.”

I walk him out, disappointed as I lean against the door. “Thanks for the birdseed cages.”

He chuckles, crossing the porch and turning at the bottom of the steps. “They’re suet cakes. Woodpeckers like them.”

“Anything to keep your harem happy.”

He doesn’t respond, merely strolls to his truck and lifts his hand in a wave before disappearing down the road.

Inside, I scoop up his marker, stopping when I see what he’d written.

Someday I’ll tell you the

Color of your eyes is my favorite shade

Over every feather of every bird

Then you’ll know you’re worth it

Tomorrow I’ll be back and I hope

You’ll let me look at you without making me swi m

When I reread mine— Fuck Off you Royal Dick —it doesn’t seem near as funny as it did when I wrote it. Mostly because I don’t mean a single word.