Page 31 of Rock Giant

“Riiighht!Why?”

Why was this so confusing for him?“Well, you’d pissed off, so I had to write that possibility off.”She meant to sound jokey, but the crackle in her voice nixed that.

“You left me.”

“I left you my number.”She’d scrawled it on the glass along with a farewell message.Sticking around hadn’t seemed such a stellar plan in the cold of the dawn.His band had been bound to turn up, and then she’d probably wind up in handcuffs, and not the sort with fuzzy linings.Not that it’d been easy to go either.

Before Nash, she’d often dreamed about how things would have worked out if she’d stayed tucked against Rock Giant’s side, head on his shoulder.

Fantasies that had seen her through a few low points, that’s all.Reality would likely have been way crueller.

Still, “I thought… I figured you might call to check up on the kittens.”And other reasons.There was that false hope rearing its head again.

Paul mumbled something that sounded suspiciously likeif he’d had her number, he’d have totally hit her up, and that made her heart hiccup.“…but seeing as we’re both here now, fancy making up for lost time?”

Cue him cupping his hand over hers where it still rested on his chest soaking up the thunder of his heartbeat and bowing his head again.And her, despite her galloping pulse, having to remind him that she was engaged, ergo, off limits, again.

“I’m meeting him in half an hour to tie the knot.I was just looking for some things to put in a flower crown.”

Traitorously, her mind conjured an auditory hallucination of him saying, “Then that’s half an hour I have to prove how big a mistake you’re making.”What he actually said, was, “What are you using as a base?”

A base?Oh, for the crown.“Um, I haven’t got very far.”She showed him the carnation and explained about her hunt for daisies.

“Hawthorn, and maybe some rosehips,” he said, taking her by the hand and leading her across the field to its western edge where it was bordered by a hedgerow.“Maybe some harebells, too.”

“I’m not sure what they look like.”

“Bigger bluebells.”He plucked a few and handed them to her, before returning to his hunt through the hedgerow.

“Paul are you high?”she asked after observing him for a few minutes.He seemed to be alternating between states of obsessive focus and standing still staring at nothing in particularly with a dreamy expression on his face.

“Hm, maybe a little.”

“On what?”

“Life,” he jogged on a few steps seemingly in pursuit of something in the hedgerow that was making a getaway.

“Not mushrooms?”

“I do like mushrooms.”

“I know.”

“But you don’t.You’re very strange, Jodi Castle.Strange but very, very bounteous.”Usually, she’d have shrivelled inside if someone had described her in such a way, given she’d worried about her weight her whole life, but how Rock Giant said it?It was like he was bestowing her with a mark of excellence.

“Well, I’ve never tried the sort you’ve obviously been eating.”

“Can’t claim they’re tasty.Better made into a brew, but…” He shrugged, then hunted through his pockets.Having failed to find whatever it was he was searching for, he bounded back across the field a way, before bending and plucking something from the grass.“You didn’t see me do that,” he giggle-whispered into her ear when he returned.“Got someboom boomin here somewhere, to help wash them down.”

He produced a metal flask from inside his boot.

“Yeah, I’m not sure that’s gonna help,” she said as he added the mushrooms to the assortment of foliage and berries in her hands.

“Help with your anxiety.”

“I’m not anxious.”

He scoffed at that.“Course you are.That’s why you’ve been through my pockets three times already.”