She Loves Me (Harmony Pointe #3) - Melissa Foster Page 0,99
turned serious as he reeled in his line. “Feel like swimming?”
“I kind of love sitting here with you. Unless you want to swim?”
“Nope.” He rebaited his line and cast it out again. “I’m loving this, too. I hope you don’t feel like I was pressuring you just now.”
“I don’t. You know how I feel about marriage. It’s right for a lot of people, but it scares the hell out of me. I don’t want to get married and wake up one day and find that my marriage has fallen apart because I’m not good at the whole wife/mother thing. I’m happier than I’ve ever been right now, with you, Harley. Please don’t make me think about things that are hard to figure out.”
Moonlight reflected in his eyes as he leaned in for a kiss, stopping with his lips a breath away from hers, and said, “How about hard things? Is that an appropriate topic for tonight?”
“Absolutely. But you should know that I like doing this with you, too—talking, fishing, having dinner. It’s so peaceful out here, it’s impossible to be stressed about anything. Kind of like being with you.”
“You’d better be careful; that’s two pretty big reveals you’ve made tonight.”
“That’s okay. Anything said out on the water stays on the water. And I’m counting on you sticking to that because I have one more thing I want to say, but if you make a big deal out of it, I can’t guarantee how I’ll react.”
His lips tipped up with warm, loving acceptance. “I won’t say a word.”
“Okay.” She looked out at her fishing line and said, “The reason I spent so much time at the pub after you moved back to Sweetwater is because I like being with you.” She pressed her side against his and said, “I think I hid it even from myself, but ever since you moved back, at the end of a long day, you’re the person I’ve wanted to spend time with.”
He peered around her back, then glanced to his left.
“What are you looking for?”
“Making sure no one has a gun to your head.”
She pressed a kiss to his shoulder and said, “No gun, just all this weird shit going on in my head that needs to get out. Anyway,” she said loudly, letting him know they were done with that conversation, “it’s been a long time since I’ve been out on the lake fishing at night. I miss it.”
“You used to go out in your rowboat and fish, didn’t you?”
“That was a long time ago.” She reeled in her line, rebaited it, and cast it out again. She leaned over the edge of the boat and rinsed her fingers. “Can I tell you a secret?”
“You can tell me anything.”
“The boat Marshall and I started building together wasn’t destroyed in a storm. I smashed it at the Mad House.”
“I wondered about that.” He looked over and said, “I saw a piece of it in the barn when we were there with the girls. That bright blue paint gave it away.”
“Why didn’t you say anything?”
He shrugged. “I didn’t want to pry.”
“Harley, we’re in a relationship and the whole town is talking about us. I think it’s okay for you to pry.”
“Maybe there are some things I don’t need to know.”
They fished in silence for a little while, each lost in their own thoughts. But the need to clear the air about Marshall got the best of her, and she said, “Does it bother you that I went out with your brother?”
Harley’s chest expanded as he inhaled a long breath. He shook his head as he exhaled. “You were just kids.”
“I know, but so were you and Heaven. Does it bother you?”
“The fact that you went out with him doesn’t bother me, but it bothers me that he hurt you.”
“Well, that makes two of us. The only reason I kept that piece of the boat was because I had worked so hard to build it.”
“You mean you and Marshall worked hard,” he corrected her.
“No. Marshall spent most of the time checking me out, trying to look busy, or talking with his friends. I have no idea how he finished building it when I had that flu. To be honest, it kind of pissed me off that he could pull his shit together over those five days while I was sick, when for two months he’d barely lifted a finger. But I was thankful he’d finished it. I think it was the only good thing that came out