Page 8 of The Policeman Bidder
I've spent two years painting him as the enemy. The rule-following, tree-cutting, dream-crushing arm of everything wrong with small-town politics. But last night? Last night he was just a man who built a memorial grove from the seeds of my heartbreak. A man who kissed me like I was something precious instead of problematic.
A man who whispered my name like a prayer when he moved inside me.
I'm pouring the second cup when I hear footsteps behind me.
"Morning," comes his voice, rough with sleep and something deeper.
I turn, and my breath catches. He's standing in my kitchen doorway wearing nothing but his jeans from yesterday, hair mussed, eyes still soft with sleep. The morning light catches the planes of his chest, the line of that tattoo I discovered curling around his ribs—some kind of compass rose I didn't get a chance to ask about.
"You're up early," he says, padding closer on bare feet.
"Couldn't sleep." I hand him the mug, our fingers brushing in a way that sends heat shooting straight through me. "I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop."
His brow furrows. "What shoe?"
"The one where you remember I'm the crazy tree lady who publicly called you a fascist."
A slow smile spreads across his face. "You mean the shoe where I remember you're the most passionate, beautiful womanI've ever met? The one who fights for what she believes in even when it costs her?"
I blink at him. "That's not how most people see it."
"I'm not most people." He sets his mug down and cups my face in his hands, thumbs brushing across my cheekbones. "And for the record? You were right about that tree. It should have been protected. The fact that it wasn't doesn't make your fight wrong—it makes the system wrong."
Something inside my chest loosens, like a knot I've been carrying finally coming undone. “You don’t make the laws. I get that.”
He sighs. “Sometimes I wish I did.”
"So, what happens now?" I ask, because I need to know where we stand. Need to know if this is just one perfect night or the beginning of something real.
"Now," he says, leaning down to brush his lips against mine, "I make you breakfast. Then I go home, shower, and come back to take you to dinner somewhere that isn't the diner where half the town will stare at us."
"And after dinner?"
His grin turns wicked. "After dinner, I plan to spend a very long time showing you exactly how right you were to let me stay."
Before I can respond, he's kissing me again, coffee forgotten, his hands sliding down to grip my hips and lift me onto the counter. The cool granite against my bare thighs makes me gasp into his mouth, and he takes advantage, deepening the kiss until my head goes dizzy.
"Breakfast," I manage against his lips. "You said breakfast."
"In a minute," he murmurs, trailing kisses down my throat. "I'm having an appetizer first."
Seven
Weston
Onemonthlater,I'mstanding at the edge of Junie's latest Roots & Wings event, watching her explain something about mycorrhizal networks to a group of wide-eyed eight-year-olds.
"The trees talk to each other through their roots," she's saying, crouched down to their level, animated in that way that makes my chest tight with something I'm still learning to name. "They share food, they warn each other about danger. They take care of each other."
One kid raises his hand. "Like families?"
"Exactly like families," she says, and her smile could power the entire town.
That's when she notices me leaning against the picnic table, and her cheeks flush pink in a way that makes me want to kiss her senseless right here in front of God and twenty elementary school students.
"Deputy Carter!" The same kid who asked about tree families waves at me. "Are you here to arrest Miss Junie again?"
The question hits like ice water, but before I can figure out how to answer, Junie laughs.
