Page 73 of Something Like Sunflowers

It got dim, but never gone for good.

Like any fire, it just needs to be fed.

I grab the Swiffer from the hall closet where I’ve seen Hunter tuck it away and begin tidying the floors. With the film crew coming tomorrow morning, and the pageant meeting I’m holding with my friends that same afternoon, I feel the need to make this place look like the beautiful piece of art Hunter has crafted it to be. I feel somewhat prideful of the home he’s made. And something about being in it, cleaning it like it’s mine, too.

All of this feels right.

My cleaning spree continues, as I spot a pink fleck behind the couch. I lean over to see if it’s Ellie’s missing sock, leaving my butt sticking straight in the air in my tiny dance shorts.

“Gotcha!” I say to myself, triumphantly snatching up the rogue garment. But before I can right myself, his voice stops me.

“When I prayed for Heaven on Earth, I didn’t think it would come in the form of your backside stretched across my couch.”

Heat and lust spread across my body in sharp waves as I shoot upright. His voice seems to kiss the tips of my nipples, the hardened points poking through my—I look down, taking in my appearance.

His shirt. I put it on earlier without realizing.

Okay. I one hundred percent realized and loved every damn minute of smelling like him all day.

His eyes meet mine as I turn to face him, and his lips curve just slightly.

“Is that my shirt?”

His voice is rich, a thick, heated tease. I shift on the couch, pressing my thighs together to relieve the throbbing pressure building between them.

“Yes.” I bite my bottom lip, watching his eyes narrow on my tight, hardened nipples pressing against the fabric where the words Pine Forest Rodeo are spelled out in green. He presses his lips together and shakes his head, his eyes undressing me where I kneel on the cushions. The way he watches me, like someone just popped the hood to a vintage sportscar…it’s intoxicating. It makes me feel alive.

I want him to watch more. I sit up straighter so there’s no mistaking what I’m pressing against the shirt that covered his own chest only hours earlier. The one that smells heavily of sandalwood and pleasure. The one I snagged when he wasn’t looking, so I could feel like he was on me even when he wasn’t.

He groans in approval, tilting his head and running his teeth over his bottom lip as he inspects me.

“You haven’t the faintest what this does to me, do you?” He licks his lips, stepping so close that my body yearns for him. His breath mixes with my own, hot and needy. “Seeing your naked body draped beneath my clothes?” He fists the fabric, tugging me closer so our torsos are flush, my nipples rubbing against the fabric and sending chills across my skin.

“What does it make you want to do?” I ask him breathlessly, hating how cliché I sound, but hoping to God his answer is to shove me face down against this couch and take me from behind, slap my ass again like he did before I put the brakes on the sexual side of things. And fuck it, I don’t care anymore. We did things slowly. Slow was great. We talked over our problems, and we seem to be loving life together so far, but I can’t take it anymore. I can’t stand to be in a room with him, admiring his muscles with my eyes and never tracing them with my fingers, listening to him say he loves me and not climbing in his lap to say it back.

Unashamedly and irrevocably.

And I’m tired of waiting for the other boot to drop.

Hunter cups my cheek and kisses me, but as soon as it begins, it’s over. My heart protests with each quickening beat, but he backs away, a light sparking in his eyes, like he’s remembered something very important, and a sly smile curves his lips.

“It makes me want to respect your boundaries.”

“Seriously, Hunter?”

But before he can reply, Alexa cuts through the air.

“Playing I Seriously Miss Hunter Playlist.”

Oh, my God, this is not happening.

My gaze darts to the shelf where my phone is nestled and about to expose years’ worth of secrets to Hunter, but his eyes beam.

“My God, Dev, your phone is a goldmine full of secrets, isn’t it?”

His smile grows, and all I can do is bury my heated face into my hands as Jung Kook’s “Seven” bursts through the surrounding speakers. Hunter’s eyes widen in recognition, laughter pouring out of him endlessly, as he swings his hips and gyrates to a song that promises him I’ll be fucking him not one through six…but seven days a week.

On a playlist that is about missing him.

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