Page 16 of The Vineyard Crush

As my eyes adjusted to the dusky light fading across the landscape, I could just make out the unmistakable silhouette of his body, legs stretched out as he reclined against the sloping shingles. He seemed utterly at peace, face tipped up towards the first blinking stars emerging in the inky evening sky.

Despite the distance separating us, the tension was palpable, flooding my senses in a visceral way. My heart picked up a staccato, tripping cadence against my ribcage as I drank in the rare, unguarded sight of Ridge.

Before I could think better of it, I vaulted over the split-rail fence dividing our lands from the McCords.

I landed on the soft, loamy soil with a muted thud, the rich earth drinking the impact silently. Keeping low in an exaggerated crouch, I skulked closer along the side of the house, straining for a better glimpse of whoever or whatever was perched so nonchalantly overhead.

That’s when the shadow shifted, reclining back fully to stretch out with hands pillowed beneath their head. Even through the gathering gloom, I could make out broad shoulders, a chiseled jawline, and weathered forearms, I took my time to check him out my heart raising it’s beat with every step I take closer to him.

Emboldened by that dogged yearning to extend my momentary refuge, I couldn’t quite resist calling out in a weird, strangled half-whisper. “Hey, Ridge.”

The words scratched their way out with a raspy exhale, as if they’d been ripped straight from the arid depths of my anxious lungs. I immediately tensed, cursing my inability to just slink away silently after satisfying my curiosity like any sane person. Now I’d gone and announced my trespassing presence.

Ridge’s head whipped around in the direction of the noise, eyes narrowing as he searched through the shadows gathering around the hulking house until locating me - a small, fidgeting wraith lurking uninvited on the borders of his private kingdom.

His gaze swept over me in one piercing assessment as the lingering streaks of alpenglow gilded his chiseled features. I didn’t need to see the minute tightening of his jaw to recognize the wariness, the fleeting territorial bristle at finding an intruder before he realized it was just his unassuming neighbor-girl.

“Emma.” The single syllable of my name carried a rasping lilt of wry acknowledgment as some of the tension instantly bled from his shoulders. “What are you doing here?”

His tone wasn’t aggressive, per se. More one of mild, world-weary bemusement at having his isolation so thoroughly punctured. As if simply by existing in his general vicinity, I was disturbing some fragile equilibrium.

Abruptly, I was hyper-aware of what a disheveled, wretched vision I must present - barefoot and wild-haired, with my cheeks still splotchy from crying earlier. In contrast, Ridge cut a figure of utterly unruffled, nonchalant repose. Even upending the usual terra-firma order by claiming the rooftop as his temporary throne, he managed to emanate bone-deep assurance and ease that was utterly foreign to me.

Case in point: I immediately launched into a garbled overexplanation about how I’d been walking - not wandering aimlessly or trespassing, absolutely not - and spotted him, and figured I should say hi…or something.

The torrent of words gushed from me like an overzealous geyser before tapering off under Ridge’s steady, scrutinizing gaze. My cheeks blazed as I ineffectually shuffled from one foot to the other, abruptly conscious of every awkward twist and stumbling stammer in my sad conversational performance.

When the petrified silence stretched to a point that bordered on excruciating, I ploughed recklessly onward. “Mind if I join you?”

The plaintive request emerged in a teenaged squeak, barely audible over the rising symphony of crickets. God, I must look like the world’s most pathetic, touch-starved creep - moping about his property unannounced before practically begging for his attention, no matter how insignificant.

To Ridge’s credit, he didn’t immediately rebuff me or order me off his land, as would’ve been well within his right. Instead, he simply regarded me steadily, seeming to consider beneath lowered lashes before giving a measured nod.

“Suit yourself, Wilting Flower,” was his muted response, the endearment or insult - I couldn’t decipher which - uttered beneath his breath.

Not waiting for a more explicit invitation to trespass further, I clambered through the nearest window and pulled myself up onto the sloping rooftop. Picking my way carefully to where Ridge reclined, I settled myself down beside him, knees clutched to my chest in a loose mimicry of his affecting indolence.

If the close proximity flustered him, Ridge gave no outward sign. His face was once again an inscrutable mask of detached calm as he resumed taking in the evening’s heavenly floor-show silently.

Potent streaks of mauve and tangerine still stained the western horizon, slowly deepening towards inky indigo and smudges of dusky lilac in the middle distance. In the opposite swath of sky, the first pinprick stars were just hazily winking to life as dusk made its inevitable march towards true night.

It was utterly transfixing, the kind of resplendent natural spectacle I could never hope to capture with pencil or brush, no matter how fervently I tried. Shedding its fiery brilliance from the day shift, the sunset was making way for its celestial counterpart to take the stage, both displays equally breathtaking in their artistry.

In the cocoon of that singular, suspended moment, I felt something inside me unclench, a space opening up where all the choking vines of doubt and self-recrimination had been growing unchecked. Just two weary, dissimilar souls finding peace in the simple rhythms of the earth and sky’s eternal choreography.

My bones practically vibrated with a foreign, indescribable feeling. Was this what true tranquility felt like? I’d spent so long trapped in the labyrinth of my own anxious thought streams, I’d forgotten how to simply exist outside the noise of my own ceaseless inner monologue.

“Why were you crying, Emma?”

The words were spoken without accusation or mockery, colored by a nuanced inflection I couldn’t quite decode - open curiosity tinged with something else, an undercurrent of tender concern that made my pulse stutter. And underneath it all, the unmistakable implication that he’d caught the emotional dishevelment written across my features despite the deepening shadows.

I blinked owlishly at his silhouette, robbed of breath and cogent reply as Ridge finally shifted his full attention my way. The guardian mask had slipped, revealing depths I’d never thought to encounter in his unfathomable forest-green stare.

With his piercing focus now trained squarely on me, I found myself abruptly, viscerally aware of every synapse firing, every minuscule twitch and fidget as nerves danced wildly beneath my heated skin. All the easy tranquility I’d been basking in mere moments before evaporated like ashen smoke scattered to the night winds.

Where did I even start? The harsh indictment from my own mother that I was nothing more than an overgrown child, paralyzed by my own flightiness and flaws? The bone-deep melancholy that maybe she was right - that I was fundamentally stunted, incapable of blooming into the grounded, responsible adult I so desperately longed to become?

My throat worked uselessly as I struggled to articulate any of that into words that wouldn’t immediately condemn me as utterly pathetic in Ridge’s assessing eyes. When my mouth did finally unstick, a sputtered rush of plaintive truth came tumbling out.

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