Page 56 of Free to Dream
“A chance for what?” But I know. His dark eyes meet mine, not saying the words. Instead, his head lowers and our lips brush together with an unspoken promise made between us. To give this a chance. Breaking away, our eyes are locked on each other, our breathing ragged. The basest parts of each of us is out there on the table and neither of us are running.
I want this. I want the dreams I wished on the furthest stars, the fantasies I’ve only been able to imagine by reading what came from someone else’s imagination. I want to spend the time getting to know this man, to lie in his arms. I eventually want to run my hands all over his body and taste him. His face reflects the same. And before I know it, the word I never expected to hear comes out of my mouth.
“Stay.”
His face shows his hunger and his pain. I can see inside of him now. It’s like I’m connected to him in a way I’m not even to my family. It’s his greatest wish, his biggest fear. He wants nothing more, but doesn’t want to move too fast. Fortunately, neither do I, so I quickly put him at ease. Who would have thought I would be the one putting him at ease?
“Not for that, Caleb.” I roll my eyes at him. “I just don’t want to let you go right now and it’s getting too cold to stay out here. Stay and hold me tonight…maybe?” I take a deep breath, letting him in a little bit more. “Maybe if you’re here, the dreams won’t come tonight.”
The tender smile that crosses his face before he pushes off of me is worth every butterfly dancing in my stomach. Pulling me up, he wraps me in his arms, rocking me back and forth slowly.
“Let put the food away and find out.”
17
Cassidy
“So, who was the little trollop with a Porsche parked outside her door all Saturday night and didn’t get into the office until late Sunday?” Phil singsongs as he comes into the farm, swinging two bottles of wine on Wednesday. Jason comes in behind him and gives me a look of pity. Having just heard something similar from Corinna and Ali, I merely shake my head as I continue to chop lettuce for the salad.
There are times like these when the tradition of family dinner is a trial as well as a blessing.
It’s not like they didn’t try to subtly grill me when I showed up at the office at ten versus my typical seven the next morning. It’s not like I missed a client. It’s not like they didn’t have a permanent smirk on their faces all day as I walked around with coffee, trying to generate some energy from a night of little sleep. It’s not like their faces weren’t over my shoulder when I read the card that merely said “Caleb” when the vase filled with a single perfect amaryllis arrived on Monday, or the basket of key lime cookies from Stew Leonard’s on Tuesday. No, they were savoring this family dinner for all it was worth.
Based on the way they were already behaving, burgers were not the only thing about to be grilled.
Sighing, I move the second head of lettuce into the big serving bowl. Grabbing the chef’s knife and bell peppers, I slice the tops off and begin slicing out the core of seeds while listening to my siblings make subtle taunting comments back and forth over me. Don’t they realize by now that I’ll talk only when I’m ready to? Chopping faster than I was before, I make quick work of the rest of the salad fixings. A shadow crosses in front of me and I quickly glance up, chef’s knife appearing as if I’m ready to do battle. Jason just shakes his head and hands me a glass of wine, a smile on his handsome face. Not for the first time, I think to myself that Phil should spend more time on his knees thanking God for Jason. Raising the glass in a toast to Jason, I lean on my elbows before taking a long sip.
I wonder how much longer they’ll give me before my privacy is stormed like the beaches of Normandy.
I don’t have to wait long.
We’re around the informal dining room table having just passed the salad around when Phil starts. “Well?” he demands, king to peasant.
Just to be a pain in his ass, I delay the inevitable. Seeing three identical faces on my younger sisters and sympathy on Em and Jason’s, I deadpan, “A well is a hole dug in the ground in order to remove water, or maybe oil…”
Em spits her wine across the table into Phil’s face before laughing hysterically.
Phil looks at her distastefully before reaching in his lap for a napkin to mop up the mess. The rest of the table breaks into gales of laughter. Phil says with utter disgust, “Seriously, you know she has no mouth control.”
Swirling my wine around my glass, I glance at Em, whose eyes are sparkling with mirth before saying to Phil, “Is that why you like sitting across from her? You like having wet things randomly hitting you in the face? I didn’t know you and Jason upped your kink level, Whirlpool.” The table erupts again. Dinner has now officially gone into the toilet.
Phil levels his gaze on me, knowing exactly what I’m doing—defer, evade, deflect. I’ve been doing a fine job of it since Monday. I really don’t see a reason why it can’t continue. But no, big brother, king of all he surveys, wants to know details. Details I still haven’t fully processed myself yet.
Completely zoning out my family, I replay some of the things Caleb and I exposed about ourselves this weekend in my mind. Nothing. No sense of panic. I feel nothing but the essence of Caleb’s strong arms wrapped around me when we woke up Sunday morning. We’ve seen or talked to each other every night since. One night, we had take-out dinner from Genoa in Ridgefield after he got done late at the office. Another was when we were at the caterer’s tasting for the rehearsal dinner and yakked it up with Ryan and Jared. Last night, we were on the phone for hours.
Though we haven’t spent the night together since, we’ve talked enough I feel the emotional bonds that grabbed me over the weekend perpetually wrapped around me.
The pull of something neither of us expected and both want.
Suddenly, the silence around the dinner table permeates through my haze. Shit. I lost the most important thing in a critical meeting. Control.
Phil is triumphant knowing I left myself open for a barrage of questions from my family. Corinna, Holly, and Ali all lean forward like a pack of lions, ready swoop in to take down their prey. Em opens her mouth, then shuts it, shrugs, and waits. I look down the table at Jason. He’s the only one who appears pained by what I’m about to endure. He may be curious, but he’s witnessed the date interrogation before. It’s no picnic. Unlike me, Phil feels there are no boundaries to what he can and can’t ask his sisters about their dates. From dinner, to whether there was desert after dinner, and did it have curvature to the left or to the right, Phil wants the details.
It’s a damn shame he can’t ask this level of detail about things like business. We might have taken over a small country with his inquisition skills by now.
“It’s none of your damn business, Phillip,” I snap, on the offensive. Will that buy me more time? Doubtful. There’s a collective sputter of laughter around the table at the futile effort. My sisters have tried this and failed at his invasive tactics.
“Nothing is ever really my business, Cassidy. It’s never stopped me from protecting those I love before,” he fires back quickly, way more experienced at this game in our present roles than I. Oh, good play, Phil. The big brother card, trying to use my emotions to get me to spill my guts.
