Page 63 of Off the Beaten Path

We haven’t told June about us, probably because we haven’t really talked about it ourselves, but we’ve spent most evenings together for the last week. It was mostly me coming to their place for dinner, although one night they came to watch a movie on the tiny TV in my cottage. I’m not sure whether June knows we’retogether, but she seems happy to have me around, and although I think Holden and I expected the adjustment to be hard, it’s been fairly seamless.

I don’t know how I’m supposed to feel about the ease with which I’ve integrated into their lives, but I know my heart is full to bursting and that every second with them feels like finding something I didn’t know was missing.

“Okay, fine,” June says with a roll of her eyes, wiggling until Holden lets her down. “Can we pick some flowers now?”

“Go for it, June Bug,” he says, giving her a pat on the head. She takes the basket I extend her way before scampering off to the field.

It’s busy today, dozens of people showing up for the first weekend, so we stick close but let June do her thing, stopping to smell each flower she plucks before putting it in her basket.

When I look up at Holden next to me, his eyes are focused on her, soft and tender, a little smile in the curve of his lips. He’s always attractive to me—when he’s working at the cabin, sweat glistening on the cut of his muscles, when he’s pinning me to the couch after June goes to bed, hands and lips branding my skin, when he’s trying not to find me cute, holding back a laugh until his chest rumbles—but he’s never better looking than when he’s looking at June. Everything about him softens, his hard edges dulling, the stiff set to his lips never failing to lift in that tiny smile that makes me melt. He’s hard to look at like this.

“My mom wants you to come to family dinner tonight,” Holden says, jarring me from my staring.

“What?”

That smile is back on his face, but this time, it’s knowing, teasing. “Mom wants you to come to family dinner.”

A horde of butterflies takes flight in my stomach. “But we’re not…” I trail off, not sure where I want to take this sentence.

His brow wrinkles. “We’re not what?”

My eyes flick to the wide-open blue sky above us, wishing that the words would disappear on a gust of wind like the pollen in the air. Swallowing, I try to think of how to explain myself. “We’re not together?” It comes out more like a question than a statement, and Holden’s confusion deepens in the lines of his face.

“What do you mean we’re not together?” There’s an edge to his voice that I don’t recognize. It’s not angry, more like hurt, and it wrecks me a little.

I kick my boot in the dusty earth beneath my feet, avoiding his gaze. “We’ve never talked about what we are.”

It’s true. Our relationship has always been very undefined. In the beginning, we were neighbors who annoyed each other, and then we were friends who knew everything about each other but our names. For a while after, we were a strange mix of both while we also dealt with the foreign, budding attraction between us. Then we became what we are now, something that feels deeper and more intimate than any other relationship I’ve ever been in, something words can’t adequately describe.

“Wren, look at me,” Holden says. When I do, his expression is earnest, the way he looks at June when he tells her she’s beautiful or smart, like he wants what he’s about to say to stick.

Holden holds my gaze as he says, “I thought I’d made it fairly obvious that I’m not a casual sort of man. I knew when I kissed you in my kitchen after the musical that it meant commitment.” He pauses, watching me. “At least for me it does.”

It’s warmer today, the first hints of spring making an appearance, but it’s nothing compared to the warmth spreading through me at his words, the kind that feels like it’s seeping into my bones. Altering me in a forever sort of way. It’s like how you can cut down a tree and count the rings to see how old it is. If you were to open up my soul, the time and date of this moment would be etched there.

“That’s how I feel too,” I say, holding his eyes. They’re more green right now, out here in the fields.

“Good,” he says, turning his attention back to June. “Then you’ll come to dinner.”

I have to press my lips together to hold back my smile. “Does this mean I’m your girlfriend?”

Holden grunts, just like I knew he would, and crosses his arms over his chest. I can’t help the way my eyes catch on the tattoos below his rolled-up sleeves. I’ve noticed he wears them like that a lot more since I mentioned it to him that first night at the bar.

“Girlfriend doesn’t feel like the right word.”

I look up at his face to find him looking back at me, a softness in his gaze that feels like warm honey. “What am I, then?”

“You’re mine.”

“Will you sit next to me at dinner?” June asks, tugging on my hand as we make our way up the front porch steps to Jodi’s house. I’ve been to family dinner before, butthisfeels different, and my stomach is full of butterflies. They settle a little when Holden’s palm finds the small of my back, his fingers drawing little circles there as he opens the front door, letting us in.

“Of course, June Bug,” I say, giving her hand a squeeze. I was worried about how June would react to me showing up in her life, disrupting her routines, but she’s welcomed me with open arms. My favorite part of the day has been in the evenings, when I end up at their place and she asks me to braid her hair before bed. I’ve even been trying to teach Holden, although he’s abysmal at it.

Jodi appears at the end of the hallway, a wide smile on her face. She doesn’t fail to notice my hand in June’s or Holden’s at my back, and if possible, her smile stretches further. “You’re here.”

“Same as every week, Mom,” Holden says, tone dry.

Jodi ignores him. “You look lovely, Wren.”

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