Page 21 of The Back Forty (Whitewood Creek Farm #5)

Dammit, what is that noise?

Ah, my alarm.

I crack one eye open and let out a soft groan. The hotel room is dim, tinged in early gray light, and for a second, I can’t figure out where the noise is at in relation to my body. I shift my arm slightly and then freeze when I realize what my fingers are touching.

Sometime in the middle of the night, while I was dead to the world and worn out from Dani’s panic attack, my body went and broke every rule I’ve built.

Now my left arm is wrapped around her in this awkward, accidental spoon—half under the covers, half over—like my subconscious decided we were something more than coworkers and friends.

Like my instincts knew what my brain keeps insisting I shouldn’t want.

And my palm? Yeah, it’s cupped around her very bare, very smooth pussy.

My fingers are curled possessively over the swell of it, pinning her against my chest in a protective hold.

All that separates us is the blanket she’s cocooned in and a thin layer of my sanity.

I can feel the warmth of her breath and if I moved my fingers just the tiniest bit, I could easily slip them inside her pussy because she's wearing nothing under this T-shirt.

Her underwear is still discarded somewhere in the hotel bathroom due to me being too terrified to put it back on and cross a line.

Yet here I am. Crossing a fucking line with my hands.

Shit.

I yank my arm back like she’s made of fire. And maybe she is, because even though the contact is broken, I can still feel the ghost of her heat on my skin. I can still feel how right it felt to hold her while we slept, even if I was completely unconscious and had no idea I was doing it.

I sit up too fast, dragging in a breath, heart pounding now for an entirely different reason.

My phone alarm is still going off, muffled somewhere beneath a pillow while Dani continues to snore peacefully.

I swing my legs over the edge of the bed and scrub a hand down my face before finally digging it out and silencing it.

“Time to get moving,” I say, voice rough. I clear my throat, louder this time since she’s still snoring. “Hey Dani, we gotta make our flight home now.”

Behind me, I hear the rustle of sheets. She rolls over slowly, bleary-eyed and soft, blinking at me like she’s still trying to remember where she is.

Her dark brown hair’s a mess; a few strands are stuck to her cheek as she rubs her eyes lazily.

She’s wearing that same oversized band tee she slept in last night, collar slipping off one shoulder now.

And even after the panic attack, even in this disoriented, morning-after haze, she still looks like the most beautiful woman I've ever seen.

It guts me how much I want to crawl back into bed, wrap her up in my arms again, breathe in that clean, soapy scent of hers, and sleep for another few hours with her pressed against me.

Maybe this time she’d curl into my chest, brush her fingers against my beard, kiss my lips and whisper that she wants more.

And maybe we could do all that. No one’s banging on the door.

No one’s clocking our every move when we're on the road. But we’ve got a flight to catch.

People are counting on us to get back to North Carolina in time to help with the Marshall booths at the state fair.

And more than that, I know that I can’t let myself cross that line with her because I’ll never be able to go back.

I’m already toeing it far too often. How we went thirteen months working together to this heated tension, I can't wrap my mind around.

“I’m gonna head back to my room to pack,” I tell her. I grab my phone and wallet off the nightstand. “Meet you in the lobby in thirty?”

She nods, her voice still thick with sleep. “Okay.”

I force myself to look away, to keep my gaze on the door and not the way that the sheets have slipped lower or how sweet and sleepy her expression is when she first wakes. Because if I let myself look at her too long, I’m not going to leave.

***

Thirty minutes later, I’m showered, dressed, and once again spiraling. I’ve replayed last night a dozen times in my head and still don’t know what to think.

Dani’s panic attack, the way she leaned into me, how natural it felt to hold her through it. I keep telling myself it was emotional fallout. We’d just closed a massive deal for the business. Emotions were running high. She needed someone and I was there. That’s it. I tell myself that repeatedly.

But then I glance up from my phone and see her walking toward me in the hotel lobby, pulling her roller bag behind her, and every rational thought I’ve been clinging to slips through my fingers.

Her dark hair’s clipped up in the back, still a little damp from the shower I'm guessing she took after I slipped out of the room. She’s wearing this soft-looking, oversized denim jacket over a pair of casual green linen pants and her face is fresh and bare, no makeup, just her.

And then she smiles at me. It’s small and shy. And suddenly I’m wondering if this consuming attraction that I feel towards her has always been there, humming underneath the surface, just waiting for the right moment to rear its head.

Have I always felt this connected to Dani and just convinced myself that I wasn’t?

“Let me take that,” I say, reaching for her bag like I always do. She lets me. Doesn’t even hesitate, and that makes me happy.

We ride in silence to the airport. It isn’t an unusual silence for an early morning flight, so I guess that's good news.

We've built this rhythm, this quiet routine when we travel together.

Dani grabs a coffee and a yogurt; I hunt down a breakfast burrito and the morning paper.

We meet back at the gate, eat, wait for boarding and talk shit about the other travelers.

It’s simple. Predictable. And I’d be lying if I said I didn’t like it more than my old routine where I was always alone.

When I get back from my food run, she’s already seated by the gate. Empty yogurt container tucked to the side, coffee cupped between her hands like it’s saving her life.

“You alright?” I ask, settling into the chair beside her.

She nods and smiles, a little stronger now. “Yeah. This coffee’s helping. Though after yesterday, it’s the only one I’m having today I swear.” She tries to joke, but there’s still something fragile behind her eyes. The panic isn’t completely gone, it’s just quieter.

I nod and unfold the newspaper, pretending to read it but I can’t focus this morning.

“I got us first class for the flight home,” I say, eyes still on the pages.

Her head snaps up. “You didn’t have to do that.”

I shrug, trying to play it cool. “Figured you probably didn’t sleep great last night. Least I could do. And... great job, by the way. I didn’t get to say that yesterday. You nailed the pitch.”

She doesn’t respond right away. Just watches me, something unreadable flickering behind her pretty, brown eyes. And I know— I know —we’re on a precipice.

She nods, then, quieter this time. “Thanks.”

Her voice is soft, like a thread being pulled too tight.

A boarding call echoes through the terminal—first class passengers invited to line up—and we both rise, grabbing our things.

I take her bag without even asking like we’re still us, but something shifted between us last night and I think she feels it too.

Once on board, I lift her suitcase into the overhead bin and stow my bag next to hers. My body moves on autopilot with these little gestures, muscle memory born of familiarity. Of the time that we’ve grown together. She murmurs a soft thanks again, and I feel it in the middle of my chest.

We settle in, side by side. She opens her tablet. I open the paper. A ritual, a routine. Snacks get ordered, drinks delivered—ginger ale for her, water for me—and the cabin quiets as the plane begins to taxi for our early morning flight.

I try to lose myself in the headlines, in the numbers, in anything but the fact that the woman beside me was wrapped up in my arms when I woke this morning and that I liked it.

That I'm her boss, she's my employee and everything about what happened last night and the fear I felt at the thought of losing her is replaying in my mind repeatedly.

Finally, I crack.

“Anything you want to talk about?” I ask, my voice low and rough, eyes still fixed on the page though I haven’t read a damn word.

She doesn’t look at me either. “Not really,” she says, fingers flicking through some social media feed, the glow of her screen lighting up her face in a wash of soft blues and whites.

I nod slowly. “Okay.”

So that’s how we’re doing this.

Back to business. Back to neutral territory. Back to pretending that last night and this morning didn’t shift something between us.

But can we really go back? After I held her through a panic attack, after she told me the smell of my skin brought her back from the edge? After I saw the soft curve of her in the water, nipples flushed from the heat, fear and vulnerability?

I tried not to look. God knows I tried. But I did. For just a moment when I knew she was okay. And now I can’t unsee her like that. I can’t unfeel the weight of her pressed against me in the dark, even if I was half-asleep and out of my damn mind.

She exhales, long and slow. “It was the coffee,” she says, almost to herself in a whisper. “I think I drank six cups yesterday. On an empty stomach. Before the pitch. I don't do that anymore for a reason.”

I nod because yeah, okay, that tracks. Must be something she used to do, and she messed up and went overboard with her caffeine consumption.

But there's something in the way she's saying it that tells me she's holding back on giving me all the details. And I won’t push.

Instead, I nudge her gently with my shoulder and point to the newspaper on my lap, folded to the crossword puzzle that we sometimes do together on morning flights.

“Up for a challenge?” I ask, mouth lifting into something like a smile.

She smiles back but it’s small and tired. “Always.”

This is what we do.

This is us.

I dig out the purple pen I keep tucked in my bag just for her—the one with the sparkly grip and chewed cap—and hand it over. She takes it, chewing the tip again as if she’s warming it up, and my eyes drop right to her lips without hesitation and the soft way that they wrap around the plastic.

In the past, I wouldn't have paid it any mind because I knew she was off limits to me. But now, I’m thinking about how those lips are a close match to her nipples, wondering if the rest of her is the same dusky pink. Wondering if I’d get to see. Taste. Touch her in a different way.

I clear my throat. “You first.”

She raises an eyebrow. “What, we’re not gonna talk contracts? Project timelines like we usually do on this flight?”

I shake my head. “Not today, Dani. We’re taking this week off. No work. Just...life.”

Her mouth opens like she wants to argue, but I cut her off with a quiet, “Not today.”

A pause. Then, she sighs and swipes the paper from my lap, dragging it onto hers. She scribbles her first answer with a determined flourish and then hands it back with a triumphant grin.

And I tell myself we can do this. Maybe we can slip back into the rhythm that’s always worked for us.

The quiet, consistent bond built on trust and timing and mutual respect.

Boss and employee. Our dynamic duo that's increased my family's fortune by tenfold in a matter of just a year of us working together.

But then I glance sideways, at her profile lit by the window, and I remember how she felt in my arms. How I laid awake last night, eyes open to the ceiling fan’s slow spin, heart racing with the thought of her unraveling just feet away from me and knowing that I’d do anything to take her place.

I remember how it felt like she was an extension of me. That I cared more about her safety than my own. It wasn’t just friendship anymore; it was deeper than that. More dangerous. Like something sacred and irreversible had shifted inside me.

I don’t know how to fix that. Don’t know how to walk backward through a door I never meant to open.

All I know is this: When she hurts, I hurt.

And I’m not sure how much longer I can pretend otherwise.