if there was nowhere for him to go. And I hadn't anticipated the blistering firebolt of need lancing through me when we'd kissed.
In this thicket of unexpected, the biggest one I hadn't seen coming was my insistence he play fair if he was certain he wanted to play with me. I'd never set boundaries like that before or held firm to them when going with the flow was always the most serviceable, obvious solution.
Perhaps growing and healing was nothing more than making one right choice after another, even when those choices felt like the opposite of everything I'd always done.
Also, allowing my casually controlling boss-roommate-snuggle-buddy to pin me to a tree and kiss me like our lives depended on it was a completely right choice.
"Your mother is going to be wondering where we are," I managed between kisses.
"We could leave now. Just sneak out the side and go. They won't even notice. Magnolia is the main attraction this month."
"Mmm-mmm," I murmured, the only disagreement I could manage with his tongue in my mouth. "I think they'd notice."
"If anyone's waiting for us, my mother would ring the—" Right on cue, the clang of a bell broke the woodsy silence. "Fuck."
I wrapped my arms around Ash's shoulders when he dropped his head to my chest. "That sounds like a chuck wagon bell."
"It is," he said to my breast. "When we were kids, my mother never wanted to holler out the door for us to come in. Then she found the bell."
When Ash kept his head down and my legs locked around his waist, making no movement whatsoever, I asked, "How about it? Ready to go back in there?"
After an exaggerated sigh, he eased me down to my feet, wincing as he shook out his injured arm. "It's nothing," he said before I could ask. "It's fine."
While I smoothed my skirt and tucked my shirt back in, I glanced around the sheltered space. Gesturing toward the far end of this alcove, I asked, "Is that what I think it is?"
Ash turned, looking in the direction I pointed. Then he belted out a deep laugh. "If you're thinking it's my mother's secret herb garden, it is."
That nice lady with the reupholstered dining room chair cushions was growing a field of marijuana. Who would've guessed? "Are you serious?"
"I told you, my parents are hippies at heart."
"And that's why your mother has a bumper crop of weed hiding behind her blackberry bushes?" I asked.
He shook his head like dealing with his mother's antics was a real hardship. I knew it wasn't and I enjoyed his impatience for that reason. "It's on the edge of the property and insulated from view well enough to prevent notice. If anyone asks, she pretends she has no idea what it is. She told one of her neighbors it's an invasive but protected species so they shouldn't treat it with any chemicals."
"This isn't the last thing I would've guessed about your mother but it's not in the top quartile," I said.
"She used to tell us she used the leaves for brewing salves and tinctures." He dragged a finger down my arm, raising goose bumps as he went. "It made sense since she was always drying her own herbs and canning vegetables and god knows what else."
"Salves and tinctures," I repeated to myself. "And to think, you gave me shit about working at a spirituality shop."
"What can I say? You're rather overwhelming. I handled that by being a dick." He shoved his hands in his pockets. "I feel like you know this about me."
I wasn't certain when I'd become overwhelming or what it was about me that overwhelmed but I'd heard this enough along the way to know it was a core piece of my me-ishness. You're a lot. It was the kind of comment that slapped on both sides while leaving the crumbs of a compliment in my lap.
Perhaps those words wouldn't have landed with such force if I hadn't spent so much time crimping myself into a shape that others could accept and embrace. But that was the gravity of it all and it hurt now because I'd realized it should've hurt before.
"You know this, right?" Ash prodded. "You know I have occasion to be a dick and you know how to put me back in my place for it." He waited a beat. "Right?"
I touched my fingertips to my lips, tracing the freshly swollen lines as I replayed his words in my mind. "I'm not overwhelming. You were overwhelmed.