Page 36 of Where the Roses Bloom

She tasted like tea and pastries and…something wilder—like she belonged to this night and every dream I’d ever had about it.

Her hands slid into my hair, nails grazing my scalp, and I groaned low in my throat. The way she kissed me back…she already knew the shape of this, of us. It was like her body had been waiting on mine just as long as mine had been aching for hers.

“Rhett,” she whispered against my lips. “Will you take me home?”

I pulled back just enough to see her face—eyes glassy in the moonlight, lips kiss-bitten and pink, breath catching.

“You sure?” I rasped.

She nodded. “I don’t wanna wait. Not anymore.”

I kissed her again, slower this time. A promise.

Then I reached down, laced my fingers with hers, and said, “Come on, darlin’. Let me take you where you belong.”

CHAPTER 13

Willow

By the timewe made it back to the library lawn, the fireflies had taken over and someone had brought out a guitar.

I half expected everyone to have cleared out by now, but the crowd had only thinned to the lingerers—the ones who never wanted summer nights to end. Folding chairs had been pushed aside in favor of quilts and coolers, and the music had shifted to soft singalongs and lazy harmonies, voices rising with the sound of crickets.

Delilah caught sight of us first, a smirk on her face. Whit, sitting next to her, followed her gaze and grinned around the neck of his beer bottle.

“Well, well,” he drawled. “Look who wandered back.”

Rhett tugged me just a little closer as we stepped into the grass. “You always gotta narrate, Whit?”

Delilah snorted. “He can’t help it. Boy loves an audience.”

Whit tipped his bottle toward her, grinning. “Only when they’re pretty.”

Rhett shot him a look, all amusement, like he couldn’tresist. “You keep that up, someone’s gonna think you’re tryin’ to impress her.”

Whit’s grin twitched, but he covered it fast with another sip of his beer. “I ain’t tryin’. If I wanted to, she’d be impressed.”

Delilah laughed, rolling her eyes as she handed me a peach soda. “Sure, Whit. Keep tellin’ yourself that. Now come on, Willow—let’s show these boys how it’s done.”

And somehow, the night spun on.

We danced barefoot in the grass until the guitar player’s fingers gave out and the moon hung heavy and full over the trees. Rhett didn’t leave my side once. Every time I glanced his way, I caught him looking at me like I was the last soft thing in the world he’d ever get to touch. I didn’t know how to hold that kind of tenderness without crumbling.

So I leaned into it.

Let myself laugh when he twirled me, hum when he pulled me close, fold when he pressed his mouth to my hair like he couldn’t help it.

It was near midnight by the time we finally slipped away.

The others were still trading stories and swatting mosquitoes, the library lawn a haze of citronella and shared glances. But I was done pretending I didn’t want more. Done pretending the heat between us hadn’t settled low in my belly and taken root.

Rhett looked at me like a question. I answered it with a kiss to his jaw.

“Let’s go home,” I whispered.

His eyes darkened. “Yeah,” he said. “Let’s.”

It was only a short drive back to the house from Main Street, but it felt like years. My fingertips tingled wanting to touch him…to kiss him, to let him undress me, to tangle my fingers in his hair and feel him inside me. Rhett’s knuckles were white on the steering wheel, jaw tense.