Page 42 of Sparks Still Fly

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blink once for yes.

maeve

I’m not grumpy with the people that make me happiest. It’s easy to smile when I’m happy.

How am I supposed to think about anything else? I mean, I know Raf has called him a grumpy asshole forever, but I thought nothing of it. Like, maybe it was a joke, because I’ve never thought of Owen as grumpy before. He’s always smiled pretty easily when I’m around. Except that first day, but I chalked that up to him just not knowing us yet. I could see how easily he smiled at his sister. I just figured he was like this with everyone. I didn’t see I’m not grumpy with the people that make me happiest coming. Not by a long shot.

Words suddenly fail me as I think of this new-to-me version of Owen. This revelation of a man who bought me my favorite snacks and tea. Who told the lovely Jo about me. Who bought honey sticks because he thought I’d like them as much as he does.

It’s hard to wrap my brain around this contradiction. This man who once made me feel so seen, so happy, so free to be myself. Until he called what we did meaningless and never reached out to me again. It’s difficult to rationalize how this is all the same person.

And yet I find the wall of ice I’d purposefully built between us melting a little more every day. He still hasn’t explained himself, but Bon wouldn’t lie. If she says there’s a real reason, I believe her. I just can’t fathom what it might be.

He seems content to let me be in my thoughts for the duration of the drive, and while I’m looking out the window most of the time, I don’t register that he’s pulled into a gravel patch and stopped the truck.

“Okay?”

Anything but that word. Anything at all.

I close my eyes and take a deep breath, scraping up my feelings, shoving them all back in that box I keep under lock and key in the darkest, deepest, furthest corner of my heart. The one I never allow myself to open. Not ever. The one that Owen seems intent on prying open every single time he speaks.

Without answering his question, I take off my seatbelt and reach for my door handle. He does the same, and while I’m busy recollecting the pieces of myself I’m not willing to share with him, he takes a bag out of the backseat.

We walk in silence, him ahead of me, through a small path.

“It’s not too far,” he says as he looks down at the heeled, backless shoes on my feet. “Is that all right?”

“Mmhmm. Fine.” I keep my eyes on the path as I answer. I can walk in pretty much anything, so a few pebbles don’t scare me.

Owen eventually stops ahead of me, and the view nearly knocks the breath out of my lungs. We’re up high, but beyond the valley in front of us, there are mountains, green and lush, and the sun is slowly making its way behind them.

Just off the path, a log has fallen in a perfect position for us to sit and take in the vista before us.

It unsettles me just how comfortable it is to simply exist next to him. How easy it’s always been, and how confusing it is that this fact has not changed all these years later.

He hands me a little plastic tube.

“Just bite off the top. I dare you to eat only one.” He smirks, and I do as he instructed, biting off the top of the honey stick. My eyes immediately widen as I taste its contents. It’s honey, only somehow better. Not sweeter, but richer, flavored with something I can’t describe. Before I have time to figure it out, I’m sucking the last of it, putting my hand out for another from Owen.

He smiles that deadly smile and gives me two more. We sit, drinking honey and watching the sun disappear. I don’t immediately feel the smile that blooms on my face as I take in the pink and purple sky, but I do feel Owen’s gaze on me.

“This is stunning, Owen. Thank you for bringing me here.” I dare a quick look at him, his green eyes shining with the golden hour.

It’s a strange feeling, being this close to him and not feeling as much of the anger that I have held onto for so many years. He must sense my unintentional vulnerability because he reaches a hand up and tucks a strand of hair behind my ear.

“You’re welcome.” I shiver at the contact and also because as the sun sets, its warmth disappears with it.

Owen reaches behind him and produces a gray hoodie. Without asking, he puts it over my head, the thing nearly swallowing me whole. It smells like him, and I force myself not to take the deep breath my lungs are begging me for. His hat falls off my head in the process, and he takes that, too, putting it back on my head backward.

His pupils dilate as his eyes rake over me, from my legs to my arms poking through the sleeves of his sweatshirt to the top of my head.

“You look good in my clothes, Maevey.”

Hello, universe? Anybody out there? Am I dead? Have I entered an alternate reality? Is Owen James currently giving me sex eyes and telling me he likes me in his clothes? Blink once for yes.

The arsehole smiles and turns back for something else behind him. He produces a blanket and places it gently on my lap, then returns back to gazing at the sunset like he didn’t just spin my entire existence upside down. Like he hasn’t been doing so for weeks now.

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