Page 66 of The Followers

There is something terrifying about love, right? It’s like we’re afraid to admit we’re in love, even to ourselves.

@InvincibleMollySullivan

Liv didn’t want to fall asleep, didn’t want to end this moment. Snuggled up in a tent with Jeremiah curled behind her, his face buried in her hair, his breath warm on the back of her neck. Nowhere else she would rather be.

Jeremiah had pulled out all the stops this evening—starting with the location, a lonely area they had reached by driving across an unmarked desert landscape for two hours. Just when she’d started getting nauseous from the constant jouncing and bouncing in his Jeep, he had turned one last corner and said, “We’re here.”

It was a small valley about two hundred yards across, surrounded by red rock and a few scraggly trees. So quiet all she could hear was the wind whistling and the sound of her own breath. It felt like they’d ended up on some Martian landscape, except for the occasional bird soaring overhead. But as the sun drifted to the western edge of the valley, the sky above transformed into a dome of stars.

Jeremiah didn’t let her do a thing to help set up camp. He put up the tent and cooked dinner over the fire, red wine–marinated steaks and fat portobello mushrooms grilled on a grate laid over the coals. That was followed up by what he called “grown-up s’mores,” a gooey stack of delicate wafer-thin cookies and dark chocolate topped with a gourmet marshmallow from a candy shop in town. They drank craft beers from his favorite brewery, and Liv ate until she was stuffed, her belly full, and her heart happy.

After they finished the last s’more, he took her roasting stick and set it on the ground, then kissed her mouth, her neck, and her jaw until she was dizzy. Finally he stood and pulled her into the tent with him. Instead of the zipped-together sleeping bags and thin sleeping pad she had expected, he had somehow created an inviting bed, complete with the softest cotton sheets and down comforter. He’d left the rain fly off the tent. Nothing but a thin screen separated them from the outside air, the sky above, as he moved along her body with a focused attention she had never experienced before.

Afterward, he pulled her close and said, with more than a little satisfaction, “Do you still wish you’d gone to that barbecue?”

“Sort of,” she said, straight-faced. “I was going to bring those really good salt-and-vinegar kettle chips.”

“What?”

“Don’t get me wrong, this has been nice,” she emphasized the word.

He huffed, offended, and pulled back. “Nice? That’s not what you were saying a few minutes ago. I seem to remember you saying things like, Please, Jeremiah; don’t stop, Jeremiah; more, Jeremiah.”

“Don’t get cocky.” She held in a laugh. “You haven’t heard what I sound like when I’m eating salt-and-vinegar chips.”

“Now I want to.” He leaned in and bit her earlobe. “I bring you to my favorite place in the world, make you a gourmet dinner, take you to bed and use all my best moves on you, and you’re telling me all I needed to do was get you a bag of salt-and-vinegar chips?”

“Next time, do all those things and get the chips.”

“Next time, huh?” He looked down at her with those laughing eyes, his gorgeous mouth curved in a delicious smile. This was the first time they had talked about any sort of future together. His words, combined with that smile, made her body heat up again.

“There’s something I need to talk to you about,” she said.

He propped himself up on an elbow. “What?”

She didn’t want to spoil the moment, but she felt like she had to tell him. “You know how I had plans to go to a barbecue tonight, and I had to cancel with someone?”

He nodded, his expression unchanged.

“The friend I canceled on is Molly Sullivan. She’s apparently married to your friend Scott.”

“Oh.” He didn’t seem upset or flustered by what she had said to him, and the tension in her shoulders eased.

“You said you were an accountant,” she blurted out. If he had said he owned a river rafting company, she would have made the connection much earlier.

He nodded, looking unconcerned. “I said I’m a CPA, which is true. I run the finance part of the company. Is that all you needed to tell me?”

“Yeah. I thought maybe it would be weird for you, since we have... mutual friends.”

Jeremiah shrugged. “We’re not really friends. Scott’s hard-working and smart, and I respect the hell out of him, but he keeps to himself. I don’t think he has many friends.” Then he glanced at her, eyes creasing with a hint of laughter. “You know, Molly invited me to the barbecue, too—I guess we could have gone together, gotten you some potato chips.”

She smiled, relief rushing through her like a warm breeze, and raised her arm to the sky, where the Milky Way glistened bright and liquid above them. “And miss this? This is absolutely perfect.”

The laughter faded from his eyes as he studied her face. She didn’t think anyone had ever looked at her like Jeremiah did. No one else had ever seen all the way into her. She hadn’t let them.

“I never expected this,” he said quietly.

“This?”

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