Page 79 of Some Like It Hott

For a second I think about lying about it, saying yes, but Preston and I have always been honest with each other, and I don’t want to stop now.

“I’m scared,” I confess. “That you’ll get back there, and…this whole thing will feel like something that happened to you in another life. That this—that I—won’t make any sense to you. That you’ll want someone more serious. More like you.”

He’s shaking his head. “I don’t want someone more serious,” he says. “I wantyou. But I’m scared, too. I’m scared that what happened with Kali will happen again. That I’ll go back, and after all this, after?—”

He makes a gesture that encompasses us. And the festival. And maybe all of Rush Creek.

“—I won’t be any different at all. I’ll slip back into spending all my time working, and I won’t know how to be there for you when you need me to, and?—”

I don’t know how to reassure myself, but I know how to reassure him. “That won’t happen,” I say. “I won’t let you forget how to be there for me.”

His eyes are dark and uncertain. “Promise?”

It makes me smile, and I reach for his hand. “If you promise you won’t get back there and forget all about how good this is. Or decide your ideal woman is someone who works in I-banking and wears pencil skirts.”

“Not a chance,” he says fiercely, and then we’re kissing, desperate and messy, like it’s the last time.

When he finally breaks it off, he smiles down at me. “We should get this stuff unloaded,” he says. “And then we have just enough time before the party at Hanna’s to?—”

I’m climbing up into the truck before he can finish the thought, and it makes him laugh—a rusty, beautiful, rarely used sound I can’t get enough of.

41

Preston

Iwatch Natalie across the room—laughing with Hanna, Sonya, Ivy, elbowing my brother Shane, who has doubtless said something outrageous to her, kneeling to play puppets with Eloise, who is sitting on the couch with Saucy Cat on her hand. Natalie barks and makes Mr. Dog give Saucy Cat a kiss. She laughs, and even from across the room, I can hear the musical glitter of it, feel it in my bones. She looks up and sees me watching her, and she gives me a different kind of smile. Private, secret. Something curls, warm and sweet in my bloodstream.

I can still feel some of the lazy warmth left behind by our lovemaking earlier, but it’s wrapped up with the chill of knowing it might be the last time…for a while.

The last time I left Rush Creek—at twenty-two—I basically surfed out on a wave of rage and self-righteousness. I was so sure that Kali was what I wanted, so sure that my grandfather was wrong about her and me. I was so sure I knew what I wanted: to go with my amazing artist girlfriend to New York City, marry her, and live happily ever after.

But this time, what I want feels…hazy.

Part of me is already back in New York, trying to figure out how the hell I’m going to save my deal and my promotion. How the hell I’m going to smooth over PowerFun’s big failure of disclosure. Minimize it enough that MegaStar doesn’t see it as a liability, convince the MegaStar stakeholders that one little hiccup shouldn’t tank the perfect acquisition.

Because if I fail, everything I’ve worked for all these years goes straight to hell.

But meanwhile, my amazing girlfriend is right here, with a dog puppet on her hand, throwing back her head to laugh again. And even though Natalie did everything she could to reassure me earlier, she can’t make certain fundamental truths go away.

You can’t be all things to all people. While I was busy fulfilling the will, saving the land, and burying myself as deep as humanly possible in Natalie, things fell apart in New York.

When I go back to New York…

Even with Natalie’s brave promise, I don’t know yet if I can be what Grantham-Hoyer needs from me and what I want to give her at the same time.

I drift like a ghost through the party, accepting congratulations from my brothers, Sonya, Ivy, Sonya’s friends. A few of the Rush Creek firefighters are there because apparently Sonya’s friend Reggie is now engaged to a firefighter named Ford, and his friends are becoming her friends. Weggers is there because he invited himself, and Nan is there because her grandson is one of the firefighters.

My gaze finds Natalie again. She’s taken Eloise into her lap and now has both puppets on her hands, working them in conversation I can’t hear. Her head bends toward Eloise’s soft hair, her nose almost touching it. My chest tightens so much it hurts.

“You’re really leaving, huh?”

Shane has joined me, his shoulder nudging me, his eyes following mine.

I nod, forcing myself to look away from Natalie.

“And she’s not going with you.” He nods in her direction.

“She belongs here,” I say.

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