Page 31 of Heavy Hitter

Lacey rolls her eyes, dropping the last carrot back into the bag. “Charming.”

“Well, I’m just saying,” he continues, doubling down and not sure why. “You want to clean up after ’em?” He can feel that he’s leaning into something here, cosplaying some dopier, more rural version of his own personality. He thinks it’s possible he’s trying to protect himself, though he’s not entirely sure what from.

Lacey notices it, too: “This is very Zac Brown Band of you,” she says as they head back toward the door. “This whole setup you’ve got here.”

Jimmy looks at her sideways, smirking a little. “Is that an insult?”

“Maybe a little,” she concedes with a smile. “But also, it’s an incredibly beautiful farm.”

“Thanks.”

“Are you going to live out here full time?” she asks. “After...?”

“After I retire?” Jimmy considers that for a moment. He could go anywhere, theoretically, move to Europe or spend a year traveling through Southeast Asia, but he’s never really been the kind of guy to do that. It’ll be strange, not to have anything keeping him in town. “I guess I haven’t really thought about it. Why, is that what you’d do?”

“I don’t know,” Lacey says thoughtfully. “I’m never going to retire, though, so it’s kind of a moot point.”

“Fair enough.”

“I mean it,” she says.

“I do not doubt you for a single second.”

Lacey nods and looks away from him, at the light seeping in through the barn door. Jimmy can feel it again, that heavy awkwardness, the feeling of having made an avoidable and costly mistake. He wonders if her plane is still waiting for her over at BWI, fueled up and ready. They could call it, he reasons. They could part respectfully, as pals.

“Do your hands hurt?” Lacey asks, out of nowhere.

Jimmy blinks at her, surprised. Yeah, sweet cheeks, he thinks reflexively. All the fucking time. “A little,” he admits. “Why?”

“You keep—” She mimes what he was just doing without even realizing it, shaking her own hands out like she just touched something scalding. “You were doing it in New York, too.”

“Oh,” Jimmy says, tucking them into his pockets, deeply self-conscious all of a sudden. He guesses he does it so often he doesn’t always notice anymore. “Yeah. I mean. They’re fucked, pretty much. Nerve damage, couple old breaks. It’s not a big deal.”

Lacey looks at him for another moment, then pulls his hands out of his pockets again and laces their fingers together, squeezing gently. “Look,” she says, “maybe we ought to just—”

That’s when Jimmy kisses her.

Lacey gasps and kisses him back right away, popping up on her tiptoes and vining her arms around his neck, pressing her whole front against him. “Oh, thank fuck,” she mutters, and Jimmy laughs out loud, the sound of it echoing off the high wooden beams and mixing with the dust motes, disappearing between the shadows and the shafts of sunlight seeping in.

“Thank fuck,” he agrees, dizzy with her smell and her smile and how familiar her kiss feels, like somehow they’ve done this way more than just the one other time. Jimmy smooths his palms over the soft, bare skin of her waist. He reaches down to squeeze her ass, then walks her backward until her spine bumps up against one of the tall wooden posts holding the barn up, wanting every inch of his body to be touching every inch of hers. “Hello.”

“Hi,” Lacey agrees, dropping her head back to give him access as his mouth wanders down the pale, delicate column of her throat. “Were you worried that night in New York was a total fluke and we actually had, like, zero chemistry in person?”

Jimmy drops his forehead against her shoulder, sucking gently at the crook of her neck. “The thought had occurred to me, yes.”

“Not true, though.” Lacey arches, grinding her hips against him.

“Nope.” He lifts his face again, really looks at her. “Not true.”

He kisses her for a long time, dragging her arms up over her head and holding them there for safekeeping, sliding his denim-covered knee between her thighs. They’re alone here, Jimmy reminds himself even as she’s gasping her quiet encouragement, even as his own heart slams wildly away with adrenaline and need. Alone-ish, anyway. They can take their time.

But fuck, he doesn’t want to wait anymore.

He opens his mouth to tell her so, then loses the words altogether as she pulls one hand free and runs her palm over the bulge in his jeans, her short nails scraping against his zipper. Jimmy growls, he can’t help it, pressing himself roughly into her touch. “Lacey.” Just for a second he lets himself imagine it, turning her around and peeling her clothes off right here in the humid darkness, burying himself deep inside her from behind; still, he’s only going to get to do this for the first time one time, and he’s damn well going to do it right. “Sweetheart. You gotta let me get you on a bed.”

Lacey pulls back and nods at him dazedly, her cheeks flushed pink and her chest rising and falling inside her top. She takes his hand and lets him lead her wordlessly out of the barn and back through the early-autumn garden, past the pool and in through the side door of the house. Upstairs they’re quiet for a moment in the dim light streaming in through the bedroom windows, watching each other; finally Lacey reaches up and plucks his ballcap off by the brim, setting it down carefully on the dresser beside his wallet and his keys. “No hats in the house,” she explains calmly, then puts both hands on his face and kisses him one more time.

Chapter Thirteen

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