Page 39 of Hunter Moon

Slowly, Aspen nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, okay.” He sat back on his side of the car, and his lips tilted in one of his lopsided smiles—the ones he got when he was nervous. “No reason to rush this, right?”

I swallowed hard. “Right.”

“I’ll walk you to the door.”

He got out, and I had a second to adjust my pants and shift my clothes back into place. I probably still looked like we’d been kissing. Smelled like it too, with my blood pumping and the musk of arousal thick in the car before I opened the door and all that cool air came rushing in.

He gave me his hand when I got out, but he kept his distance as we walked. On the porch, he held fast to my hand, and I didn’t want to let him go yet either.

“So,” he started. There was that nervous smile again. “Would you maybe want to go apple picking sometime?”

Jesus. Just come right out with it, then.

My breath caught, my lungs clenching. “I—I don’t know about—um.”

Suddenly, his mouth fell open. He shook his head. “Shit. Damn. No. No, I mean literal apple picking. At the grove. The season’s almost over, but it might be nice. To actually pick apples.”

Okay, Aspen had been away from Grovetown for a while. There probably wasn’t anywhere else in the world that apple picking was a euphemism for sex, and nobody else he’d have spent years asking to do just that, his eyebrows wiggling as we sneaked off to escape our families’ watchful eyes.

Still, all the blood in my body had rushed into my face, and it took a second for me to pull it together. “I’m at the garage for the rest of the week.”

“This weekend?”

I looked up at him, and there was a fragile hope in his eyes that I didn’t want to snuff out.

I nodded. “Yeah. That sounds really nice. I bet the girls wouldn’t hate if we brought home a pie.”

He chuckled. “We’ll grab a few then. So... I’ll text you?”

“Do.”

Before he stepped off the porch, his warm, dry hand cupped my cheek. I turned into it, just a fraction, and he drew me forward for a quick, chaste kiss. “Good night, Brook.”

“Bye.”

He hung a few steps off the bottom stair as I opened the door, but when I did, he was quick to retreat to his car. No doubt, he wanted to miss out on another awkward encounter with the Morgan women.

But when I shut the door behind me, there was only one of those still in the living room.

Harmony had moved onto the couch, her legs pulled up. When I came in, she set her phone aside and frowned up at me.

“Have a good time?” Her voice was low and pouty, like it’d been when she was a kid and I’d had to tell her we didn’t have any ice cream. Her lips were pink like she’d been chewing them.

“I did.” I had no idea where we stood now. I was upset with her for trying to put all that on Aspen, but she was still Harmony. Even if what she’d said was hurtful and shitty, she wanted to protect me. She’d been scared and hurt by Maxim Reid too, even if it wasn’t in the same way I had been.

When she inhaled, her breath shook. I saw tears in her eyes just before she buried her mouth against her knees and the scent of warm salt flooded the room.

“I’m sorry,” she rasped. “Brook, I’m so sorry I said—”

I couldn’t stand to see her like that, curled up and crying.

Two strides, and I was across the room, dropping down beside her and pulling her into me. “I forgive you. It’s okay.”

She turned her wet cheek against my shoulder and nodded, and for a little while, she let me comb her hair back from her forehead.

“I hate him,” she whispered.

I sat back, scowling. “Aspen?”

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