Page 40 of Sometimes You Stay

“It’s just a bump.”

“My abuelita used to kiss my boo-boos.” Her voice dropped even more. “Is that what you need?”

He prayed that she couldn’t feel his abs clench at the innocent suggestion. She meant nothing by it. Just teasing him.

But his guts didn’t get the memo, and his stomach dropped in a not altogether unpleasant way.

She leaned in. His lungs collapsed.

Like the touch of butterfly wings, she pressed her lips to his cheek. She was warm and soft and so gentle that he wanted to curl up in her embrace.

It wasn’t possible, but her touch made his face hurt a little less.

“There. Did that help?”

“Never better.” Somehow that was the truth.

He dragged his hand from his side to his chest and squeezed her satiny fingers. Her eyes dropped to where their hands met. When she looked up again, her gaze didn’t reach his eyes, stopping somewhere in the vicinity of his lips. It was nearly tangible, almost as good as a real kiss.

But not quite.

“Cretia.”

“Yeah?”

He didn’t have anything else to say. He just liked the way her name tasted on his lips. And he liked the feel of her this close. And he liked the way her hair smelled like flowers. And he liked ... her. Her humor and her joy and the way she argued with him. And even when she let him win, the look in her eyes that made him think she wasn’t finished yet.

And he liked that he knew all of that in four days.

He hated that he might only get another four with her before she left.

This wasn’t forever—or even for the long term. But he would hate himself even more if he let her go without knowing more than the taste of just her name.

The pounding across the side of his head seemed to vanish as he slid his thumb around the curve of her ear. As he outlined the smooth line of her jaw with his knuckle, her body trembled against him. Good. He wasn’t the only one who felt this thing between them.

In case he hadn’t made his intentions clear, he dragged his thumb around the shape of her lips, first the roundedbottom, then the bow of the top. They were impossibly smooth and full, rosy and ripe. Her lashes fluttered closed, resting against the pink of her cheeks. This was his moment.

Leaning forward, he pulled in a quick breath and licked his lips. Only a breath between them. And then less. And somehow even less.

“Finnegan! Guess who came for a visit!”

Ten

Cretia pulled away from Finn so fast that she managed to shove him, and he groaned as the back of his head cracked against the wall. She was barely on her feet when an older couple appeared in the barn. The woman was soft but sturdy—maybe an inch or two over five feet. The man was an exact copy of Finn, plus a few gray hairs and about thirty years’ worth of wrinkles.

“Mom?” Finn groaned from his seat on the floor but didn’t make a move to get up. “What are you guys doing here?”

“Well, we had an errand over in St. Peter’s and thought we’d—What happened to your eye?” His mom looked between Finn’s rapidly swelling face and Cretia several times, her eyebrows rising with each glance.

Cretia had never prayed for an earthquake to open the ground until right then. Or maybe for the presence of those European magicians who waved a gold sheet to distract their audience while one of them disappeared. She’d wasted more than a few hours giggling over their videos, and at the moment, she’d happily pay them for a personal demonstration.To have someone distract Finn and his parents while she bolted out of the barn.

But she had no such luck.

She had to stand there under the weight of Finn’s mom’s inspection while her whole body probably turned as red as her flaming neck. And all she could think about was how close she’d come to knowing if Finn’s kiss was as sweet as the man himself.

And wouldn’t that make his mom proud?

“Just a little accident,” Finn finally said in answer to his mom’s question. He groaned as he pushed himself upright and strolled past Cretia, surreptitiously squeezing her elbow along the way.

---