A Stone in the Sea(57)

Kallie’s little nose scrunched up at the thought. “No way!” She laughed, grinning widely. “I don’t wanna taste nothin’ with my feet.”

“But I thought you said you were a butterfly?”

Those giggles just kept flowing, and her shoulders lifted up toward her ears, her body twisting up in a little girl’s pleasure. Joy radiated from every inch of her.

A breeze rustled through the heavy canopy of trees hugging us from above, the cool evening brushing at our skin. We slowly wove through the crowds and browsed through the seemingly endless rows of vendor tents set up for the craft fair at the park in the center of town. A jazz band played at the end of the park on an elevated stage, and the smell of open barbecue pits and deep fried churros floated on the easy air.

Sebastian hooked his arm casually around my neck.

“Good idea, yeah?” he asked as he leaned down and pressed a kiss to my temple.

I beamed up at him as if I were a little girl, too. One who’d just discovered that knights in shining armor really did exist and this one had come to rescue me from my loneliness.

It had been two weeks since Sebastian had spent that first night irrevocably altering something inside me. Two weeks since he’d shattered me in the best ways possible…then walked out my door and proved he held the power to shatter my heart. But it’d been just as long since he’d turned around and come back to me.

Since he’d stayed.

In moments like these, it was easy to pretend that he always would.

We’d spent so much time together, it was becoming hard to remember what it was like before he’d been there, the man making up ideal days full of laughter and ease, perfect nights spent beneath him and above him, our bodies alive, and my heart forming a million memories to sustain me when he was gone.

Because below it all, there always remained the current of the charade we both knew we were playing, that as truthful as our touches and time were, there was a false security in them, a danger that was lurking just beneath the surface. He was still a man I knew so little about, his words always vague but the meaning so transparent. In the cover of darkness, I’d whisper questions to him, desperate to know him more. But he held back, only admitting that he needed me, needed someone who didn’t look at him through the past, but instead, lived with him here in the present.

Still, I felt closer to him than I had with anyone else in a very, very long time.

Well, in ever.

He nuzzled his nose behind my ear, and a shiver rolled down my spine, settling in my belly where this bundle of energy thrived, a constant chaos of excitement, a kind of happiness I’d never experienced—as dangerous as I knew it was.

“Tonight’s perfect,” I whispered, and he pulled me a little closer, the tension that continuously roiled between us mellowed and tempered in the relaxed mood.

“Who’s hungry?” he asked, the question directed at Kallie.

“Me! Me! Me!” She jumped on her toes beside me. “I want kettle corn!”

“After dinner,” I told her.

Baz mouthed, “You’re no fun.”

I jostled into him with my shoulder.

He laughed and promised her, “After dinner.”

Taking my hand, he led us toward the delicious smell traveling on the wind. We rounded the corner to the food vendors set up along the perimeter of the large square area of lawn in front of the stage, where we ordered plates full of deep-fried chicken and grilled corn-on-the-cob, sat on the grassy, damp ground, and ate together as if we’d done it since the beginning of time. My daughter laughed and Sebastian smiled and played and teased and my heart pressed so full.

“Be right back.” Sebastian hopped up and strode across the field. Minutes later, he returned, a huge bag stuffed full of kettle corn crooked in his elbow. “Here you go, sweetheart,” he said quietly as he passed the bag to my daughter, and this time it was Kallie’s turn to beam up at him. I was praying my daughter wasn’t falling for this man as quickly as me, because I couldn’t stand to put her heart on the line, not when it was me who had chosen to allow Sebastian into our lives, allowed this distraction to distort our reality.

“Thank you,” was uttered with a little contented squeal.

Sebastian stretched out his hand, helped me to stand, tore me up more with the lingering kiss that was far from crude and much too tender. Kallie swayed beside us. Sebastian’s hand was at my back, my daughter at my side. We headed back down another row of crafts as we made our way out, the Sunday evening growing late.

Sebastian suddenly stopped at a tent that was crammed with handmade quilted bags and blankets and stuffed animals, a patch-work style of mismatched colors and patterns. “Look at that, Kallie. It’s a butterfly.”