Page 36 of The Grumpy Doc's Surprise Delivery

We both go into our individual rooms before emerging out onto the balcony. Then we pull our chairs together and sit and look out towards the forest.

“It’s just hills,” I say after a beat. “I’d much rather look at the ocean.”

“Yeah.” She smiles. “But look up there.” She points up into the sky, and I follow her gaze with my eyes.

There are a million points of light twinkling in the distance, and I have to give it to her. It is kind of pretty.

“So you see that bright one there? That’s Cassiopeia, do you see? It’s kind of a W shape?”

I squint, and sure enough, the image of a W does start to stand out against the dark. “Oh! Yeah, I do,” I say.

“If you follow down, that point of the W,” she continues as she points with her finger, “and go down just a little bit with a telescope, you can see one of our nearest neighbor galaxies, Andromeda.”

“How do you know all this stuff?” I ask, leaning in a little so I can better figure out what she’s pointing at.

Emma shrugs. “I think it’s interesting. I spent a semester doing astronomy in college.”

“Do you take many people stargazing?” I ask, the pitch of my voice lowering without me meaning to.

If she notices, she doesn’t react. “Not really. It’s mostly a private hobby.” She stares up at the sky. “Let me see… We’re way farther south than I’m used to. So that means…” She cranes her neck and looks all around the sky until she finds a bright point of light. “There, you see how that one’s bright and huge.”

“Yeah,” I say, barely glancing. “It’s just a star.”

“No, it’s not. That’s Jupiter.”

I crane my neck to one side and stare up at it. “Huh,” is all I have to say.

“You can tell because it doesn’t flicker like stars do. That’s because of the way it’s not strictly a point of light. I don’t remember any of the physics anymore, but I’m pretty sure that’s true.”

“I believe you,” I say quietly, my voice husky, catching in my throat.

Every time I speak to her, it’s like I learn about a new passion. She has a new interest, a new thirst for life, and something about that passion is making me hungry too.

Hungry for her.

As she’s been pointing at stars, I’ve been leaning in closer and closer, so close that our shoulders bump together. And she doesn’t move away. I can feel the rise and fall of her chest. I can almost hear her heart beating.

Here, in the stillness, the quiet, under the stars, I could get drunk on the feeling of her beside me. On the wanting.

Almost without thinking, I turn my head and lean down, and our lips touch. And for a glorious second, it’s perfect.

Then she jerks away, and reality catches up with me. I flinch away from her too, giving her space. Even if I don’t want to.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “I shouldn’t have done that. I guess I must have got my signals confused, and I understand if?—”

“Liam, shut up,” she says, cutting me off. “Shut up and do that again.”

It takes me a nanosecond to consider it, and then I lean in to kiss her again.

This time, it’s real. Her soft lips sink into mine, the taste of her apple lip gloss melting onto my tongue. Her hands come to mine and our fingers twine together and my heart rate triples. I don’t want to do a single thing to stop it.

A warm rush floods through my body, filling me with a primal want, one I haven’t felt in years. One that burns only for Emma.

I let my hands slide to her waist, feeling her body beneath that sweater. Suddenly, I’m desperate to feel more, to rip that sweater off her and kiss the skin of her shoulders. She must be feeling the heat too because her hands bunch in my shirt, almost pulling it out of my pants.

“Emma,” I whisper breathlessly into her ear, “I want you.”

“Take me inside, then,” she breathes, and I kiss her with more fire than ever. This time we sink deeper, our teeth clattering together, our tongues exploring like we’re in a whole new world. I don’t remember the last time I wanted someone this badly and it’s making me want to explode.

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