Page 31 of Now to Forever (Life on the Ledge Duet #2)

Twenty-One

“So this is a date with forty-two-year-old Ford Callahan?” He drops the tailgate of his truck parked in a spot surrounded by at least a hundred acres of cornfields. “Pretty sure this was how the date went where you robbed me of my virgin morals.”

Ford chuckles.

“You definitely led that heist.” Very true.

“And I’d like to think I’ve improved slightly with age.

” He pulls two blankets out of a bag and lays them across the bed of the truck.

Out of the back seat, he grabs two pillows, placing them where the bed hits the cab, and a small speaker.

The horizon line is painted with every shade of orange, yellow, and pink that only seems to exist when the sun sets.

I did not give Ford the satisfaction of gaping at him when he picked me up, but now that he’s preoccupied by turning the bed of his truck into some kind of love nest—complete with a string of lights he’s plugging into a portable battery pack—I treat myself to a good old-fashioned eye fuck .

Ford was good looking when we were young, but it’s as if he grew into himself.

He’s in jeans and a T-shirt with a shacket over it and unbuttoned.

The cuffs of his sleeves are rolled up, hitting his forearms midway.

His neck is sexy at the collar, his wrists are sexy out the sleeves.

Ford is a cop that boxes for sport and he looks it; I’d happily eat every piece of him with a fork.

However, his body could be a soft potato because tonight it’s his face that has me salivating every time I look at him.

The perpetual five-o’clock shadow is gone; he’s shaved smooth.

The scar on his jaw is more visible as are his dimples and every curve of his lips and angle of his jaw.

His eyes, of course, are his patented shade of bright blue.

“You staring at me, Scotty?” he asks, with a smug smirk as he sets a cooler on the tailgate.

“Recording content for a mental porno I’m producing, actually.”

He booms out a laugh, vibrating my chest through my sweater, and pulls out a bottle of wine, working the cork free with a corkscrew and a swift pop!

before pouring a glass and handing it to me.

He corks the bottle and grabs a bottle of Coca-Cola—made of glass—out of the cooler.

He pops the top and takes a sip. The way his lips wrap around the mouth of the bottle and the column of his throat moves with his swallow turns my mind into a playground only the most devout perverts would survive.

It may be ancient history, but I know what Ford Callahan can do with that mouth.

“So,” I say, blowing out a breath, leaning against a taillight of his truck. “What are we doing here?”

He sets his bottle down on the tailgate. “Birding. ”

I snort a laugh, untouched wine sloshing in my glass. Around the rows and rows of corn, there’s a thick line of trees . . . and not a single bird in the sky.

“They didn’t get the invite.”

Another grin and he pulls out a shotgun, laughing when my eyes widen. “They will.”

“Are we hunting? The hell kind of birding requires a gun?”

“My favorite kind. Plug your ears.” Before I can set the glass of wine down, he points the gun into the air and fires once. A loud boom! stops my heart and makes me jump, swashing wine over the rim of my glass.

I jam my palms against my ears to try to stop the ringing.

He grins. “Here it comes.”

And it does.

A chaotic chatter followed by a gentle rustle before seemingly thousands of birds lift from the trees like a mass exodus into the sky.

Together, they look like a gigantic puff of dark smoke drifting in perfect harmony up into the air.

There’s a sudden shift—an ebb and a flow of movements that has them stretch away from one another like putty before snapping back together.

They don’t stop—creating fluid and swirling shapes, a huge flock making art in the sky.

They fan out then suck back in, as if drawn together by magic or magnets.

Thousands of little pieces moving as one.

A performance for no one, yet here we are witnessing it.

It goes on for minutes—like an act in a show—and we’re silent as our eyes chase them across the sky with open-mouthed smiles on our faces .

If heaven has a sky, I bet these birds fill it.

As abruptly as it starts, the descent happens; they land in trees and vanish from sight somewhere on the horizon, murmuring chatters fading before it’s silent again. Like they were never even ever there at all.

I’m breathless and speechless and in complete awe.

Emotion—over fucking birds—clogs my throat.

“European starlings,” Ford fills in, popping the empty shell out of the chamber and tucking the gun away down the bed of the truck.

“The only bird known to do it. Murmurate it’s called—up.

” He gestures toward the back of the truck.

I don’t argue, hopping onto the tailgate and scooting toward the pillows, still dumbfounded by the show we just witnessed.

He does the same, grabbing his bottle of Coke along the way, settling next to me as we gaze at the now-empty sky.

“They’re considered invasive. Destructive little bastards.

” He grins. “But they put on a helluva show.”

“Why do they do that?”

He takes a sip of his Coke and shrugs. “I read once for protection. One bird changing direction impacts the seven around it. I liked that. Made me think maybe—I don’t know—gave me some perspective, I guess.”

“How so?”

“Hm.” The colors of sunset tint his pensive expression.

“When you go into law enforcement, you think you’re going to make all these changes—help all these people.

Least I did. Some days, at the end of the day—especially the hard ones—it doesn’t feel like you’ve done jack shit.

Like more people hate you than like you.

The people holding signs about hating cops are always louder than the ones thanking us.

Anyway, when I read that about the starlings, I thought, well, if one bird can impact seven and then those seven each impact seven and so on. Then . . .”

“That’s a lot of sevens,” I finish, something nagging at me with the words. A familiarity to them.

“It’s a lot of sevens,” he echoes.

I watch him drink. Think of him as a cop.

That’s a lot of sevens.

“What?” he asks, nudging me with his elbow.

“I never took you for a Coca-Cola guy,” I say, my wine still untouched in my hand.

“Mexican Coke,” he amends with a smirk. “Made with cane sugar.”

Over the side of the truck, I dump my wine and toss the glass into the grass. “Give me one.” His eyebrows raise in amusement. “I’m being compliant, Ford. Give me a damn Coke before I change my mind.”

He does, playing the game people play where he hands it to me just out of reach and pulls it away when I get close, making me laugh against my will.

“Tell me about being a cop. That’s not what you left here to do. Why the change?”

He doesn’t hesitate: “Zeb.”

It shouldn’t shock me; I’ve thought this was true since he explained to me how he didn’t know Zeb was going to burglarize the house and watched his best friend get arrested.

But hearing him say my brother’s name makes me see him anew.

Instead of ushering in the grief of what happened and let it hold him hostage—instead of leading a life of being alone and perpetually surrounded by death like I did—he’s changed lives.

Is changing lives. He left and became who he was supposed to be, and as much as I’ve tried to hate him for that, as much as it guts me every time I think about it, I admire it.

What I feel toward him is so opposite of hate it grips hold of me and refuses to let me look away from him.

“I was a business major, not sure if you remember that,” he continues.

“And just . . . watching how it all happened with him changed me. All of me.” He shrugs, looking away from me and up to the sky.

“Tried to help others the way I couldn’t help him.

I blamed myself for so long.” He laughs softly; his words stick into me like a sharp arrow.

“Guess it was a selfish act of redemption. Lose a friend, be a cop. That make sense?”

“It does.” I look at the darkening sky. Ford and I have spent all these years living our lives fueled by the same fire.

Both of us holding on to the past in different ways.

If he wasn’t sitting here now, I never would have believed it.

For so long, I thought he ran away from me.

Us. I’ve gotten so much of him wrong. I shouldn’t push it; I should let old wounds heal, but I can’t keep myself from asking, “Why didn’t you call me? You could have told me. Said goodbye.”

He looks at me, and even in the low light, there’s pain in his eyes. “I was ashamed.”

I almost laugh at the absurdity. Almost scream at the top of my lungs, What in the bird-balled universe were you ashamed of?

But then I remember: I know shame. I know regret.

And I know telling him all the ways it didn’t have to end the way it did ultimately won’t change what happened.

As much as I want to lecture him on why we could have dealt with the fallout—all of it—together, I say nothing.

Instead, I take my first sip of Mexican Coke, the sweet, fizzy bubbles popping on my tongue.

“Good, right?” Ford says, lightness returning to his voice.

I laugh around the opening of the bottle. “It’s not gross.” Then, “So is the date over? Birds and Coke all you got, Golden Boy?”

“Hell no.” He fumbles with his phone and starts music on low, and he pulls an assortment of cheeses, meats, crackers, and little containers of olives and fruit out of the cooler. “And my mom sent an apple pie.”

“Might be poisoned if she knew it was coming to me.”

“She’s not that bad,” he says, opening the lid of the olives and popping one in his mouth. “And she loves you.”

I give him a look, grabbing an olive of my own and biting into it.