Page 4 of The Aster Valley Collection, Vol. 1

WINTER

I was in a dream. Yes, it was cliché, but what else explained the impossible situation of Gentry Kane looking at me with those famous honey-brown eyes?

And I was touching him. Touching him.

His hand was warm and smooth. I tried not to close my eyes and imagine all the times he’d used these fingers to stroke the strings of his guitar.

“You normally wear a ring on this hand,” I murmured without thinking. “Did you have it on when you punched the wall?” I turned his hand over and ran my fingertip down his long middle finger as his previous words finally sank in. “Wait. Wait, what?”

Gentry’s smile was devastating. It made my stomach clench with desire and panicky desperation. I’d always imagined the force of it if it’d ever been used on me, and… ugh. It was enough to make me shake with the effort to hold myself back from jumping him.

“Why were you alone?” he repeated. “Why did you leave?”

I shook my head. “Shitty boyfriend.”

After reaching for a squeezable ball, I placed it in his hand and curled his fingers around it.

His skin was impossibly warm, and now that I was sitting so close, I noticed how good he smelled, too.

Like gingerbread and fresh pine. “Nice, slow squeezes. We’re just going to warm up. Tell me if it’s uncomfortable at all.”

I had a hard time looking at him. It was a bit like staring directly into the sun.

“Did your boyfriend stand you up for the concert?” he asked after a few minutes of squeezing the ball.

I opened a new tub of therapy putty. “No. I bought the ticket before we started seeing each other. It wasn’t anything serious.” I glanced up at him and noticed his eyes focused on me. Like what I said mattered. “Anyway, he, uh… well, not him, really, but someone texted me during the concert.”

After glancing at him again to judge whether or not I was crossing a professional line, I saw his jaw tighten imperceptibly. Instead of apologizing, I simply stopped talking and focused on warming up the therapy putty.

I hadn’t noticed a lock of hair had fallen over my forehead until Gentry’s long index finger brushed it back. “And that made you leave the concert?”

Something about this man made me want to crawl into his lap and cry, and wasn’t that the silliest thought ever? I was one of those ridiculous fans who’d built a celebrity up into being something he wasn’t. In my mind, Gentry Kane was my safe space. But in reality, he was my patient.

I sat up straight and tilted my neck back and forth to try and force myself to relax.

“Let’s just say it was a photo of boyfriends behaving badly and leave it at that.

Moving on to your next exercise… what you’ve been doing so far is called a power grip.

Now I want you to do a pinching motion like this.

” I took the ball out of his hand and showed him the exercise before handing the ball back to him.

“Tell me more about how you ended up in Aster Valley,” I asked. “I would have expected a celebrity to pick someplace more well-known like Vail or Steamboat.”

His hand went through the pinching motion with only a little obvious discomfort. “Don’t want to be recognized. Did you break up with him?” he asked. “The badly behaving boyfriend?”

“Yes.” I took another sip of coffee to keep from saying more.

“And was it worth missing the second half of the GUS concert?”

The edge of his lips turned up in a teasing smirk that made my stomach twirl. “It wasn’t him. If it’d just been that jackass, I would have stayed. It was the fact my front door was hanging wide open in the photo. I have a cat and…”

“You needed to make sure it was okay,” he suggested in a gentle voice. “I get it.”

My eyes got a little braver. I checked out his dark hair, overgrown enough to be wavy at the ends. It set off his brown irises and the tiny dark mole under one of his eyes. I still couldn’t believe I was sitting here with the Gentry Kane.

“Do you have pets?” I asked, trying to be normal.

Gentry shook his head. “No, but I’ve always wanted them. It’s the same reason I don’t do relationships. I travel too much.”

I felt his eyes on me as if he was trying to tell me something, maybe warn me off from my fantasies of being swept off my feet into an unrealistic domestic ever-after with Gentry Kane.

As if. There would never be a moment in which I actually thought Gentry would want to date me.

“That must be hard. I would think travel has its ups and downs… things you love about it and things that get old really fast.”

He nodded. “We’re heading out again in early February for a two-month Australian tour. I’m exhausted just thinking about it.”

While keeping my eye on his hand’s range of motion, I pictured Gentry singing in front of an amped-up Australian crowd. “That sounds amazing. Do you at least get to travel first class and sleep on the flight over there?”

“We charter a jet, so yeah.”

My face heated with embarrassment. Of course they went on a private plane.

I couldn’t even imagine what it would be like for him trying to board a regular airplane while being recognized and mauled by enthusiastic fans.

I’d only ever flown on a plane once, but I remembered how chaotic it was at the airport.

“Yeah, sure,” I said. “Makes sense.”

I reached out and changed his grip again, this time replacing the ball with the putty and showing him a stretching motion. After a few minutes, his deep chuckle filled the kitchen. “Didn’t think I’d be playing with Silly Putty in my thirties.”

I sat back and crossed my arms in front of my chest. “I’ll have you know that’s Thera-putty. Totally different thing.” I added in a fake cough, “Exact same thing for ten times the price.”

His laugh was like a prize I wanted to keep winning. “I see. And I’m paying you for this?”

I grinned at him. “Hopefully your insurance company is covering most of it, but I do accept tips in the form of gingerbread and fancy coffee.”

Gentry’s eyes sparkled at me, and I spent a moment wondering when I’d lost my ability to breathe at higher altitudes. “It’s a deal.”

I tried to return to a modicum of professionalism, walking him through more assessments and exercises until I saw a bead of sweat trickle down his temple.

“That’s my signal to wrap it up for the day,” I said, reaching to take the putty away from him and replace it in the tub. “I’ll leave this here for our next session.”

“I’m fine. I can keep going,” he said, hitching up his shoulder to surreptitiously wipe the sweat away with his flannel shirt.

I reached out and put a hand on his forearm. It was mostly an excuse to touch him, but I also wanted him to hear me. “You can’t rush therapy, Gentry.”

“It’s Gent,” he said.

Our eyes met, and I dreamed a thousand dreams in which he scored the starring role. “Gent. I’ll see you tomorrow?”

He suddenly looked unsure, enough to remind me of how flabbergasted I’d been when he opened the door. I’d been terrified I’d just experienced some kind of psychotic break.

“Don’t go,” he breathed. “Please.”

I continued to stare at him as if maybe by thinking about it, I’d summoned the psychotic break.

“Winter… I…” He laughed and looked down at the table, shaking his head. “I can’t believe I’m going to tell you this.”

He slid his arm out of my grip and turned his palm around to clasp my hand. I stared at our fingers twisting around each other.

Gent’s voice was lower when he continued. “I came after you that night.”

Yep, it was official. Psychotic. Break.

“I called out for you, but you kept going. I… I told you to wait. In front of the entire crowd. I actually ran offstage and out into the street to find you.”

I couldn’t breathe. If I moved, everything would disappear into a puff of smoke. That had actually happened? It hadn’t been my imagination?

“Say something, beautiful.”

I felt a fat tear leap from the side of my eye and trail down my face. How embarrassing. He was talking about wanting to fuck me, not wanting to whisk me away into some kind of fairy-tale romance.

I swept it away as fast as I could as if I had a horrible itch on my face. “What? What?” And then again, because there was nothing else to say. “ What ?”

He reached up to thumb away the next tear. “Why are you crying?”

“I’m not. Don’t be ridiculous.”

He searched my eyes for the truth. God only knew what he’d find. “Winter, I’ve spent the past week imagining you naked underneath me.”

I wondered if I might slide off the chair and onto the floor. My head spun with his words. “You really called out for me? It wasn’t my imagination?”

He nodded. “It was real. I couldn’t keep my eyes off you.”

My breathing sped up. “But why me?”

“You’re sexy as fuck, but there’s something about you that just… god, I don’t know. I just felt a connection. I thought maybe you felt it, too. But then you left.”

A giddy laugh burbled up from my chest, and I clapped my hand over my mouth to keep it inside.

It came out as a snort.

Gent lifted an eyebrow.

“I’m sorry. I just. This can’t be real.” I looked around. “Are there hidden cameras here?”

He sighed and pulled his hand out of my grip before dropping his head in both hands and groaning. “Does this happen to other people? No? Just me?”

I reached out and moved his hands away so I could tip his chin up with a finger.

“Do you proposition your fans very often?” Because I was very clear that’s what this was.

Sex. Nothing more. And I was absolutely fine with that.

More than fine. The chance to get naked with this gorgeous man wasn’t something I would ever, ever pass up.

The way he looked at me… it was like someone had just shot me through with espresso and cotton candy at once. I was left energized but jumpy as hell.

“Never before. And now I’m beginning to see why. It feels like riding on a very rickety roller coaster.”

“What happened when you got outside?” The nervous giggle percolated in my gut again, but I swallowed it down.

He reached out for my hand again and pulled it close until he could cradle it in the center of his chest. “You were gone.”

Everything finally clicked into place, and my jaw dropped open.

“So you punched a wall?”

His eyes never moved from mine. “So I punched a wall.”