Bear takes me, as promised, to this amazing farm-to-table restaurant in Bend, called Luminous. We’re seated at a table for two next to a window that looks out at the mountains. The table is covered with a white linen tablecloth, and two real candles flicker as the server places big thick-paper menus in front of us, which he assures us are updated daily with new items.
Bear’s assistant has set up shop a little distance away, surprisingly inconspicuous, but we’re mic’d and I can tell that Cypress is capturing our every move on camera.
“What looks good to you?” Bear asks me.
“It all looks amazing,” I say. “I’m leaning towards the halibut and the smoked salmon appetizer, the one with creme fraiche on cornmeal—how do you say this? Rillettes? Yum.”
“Would you want to split that?”
No! I think. I want it all! “Sure,” I say.
Easton wouldn’t have asked me that. He knows I don’t like to share my food.
Which is a completely ridiculous thought. Easton and I wouldn’t be at Luminous, eating forty-five-dollar entrees.
But if we were, he would know better than to ask me to share.
Damn it, I wish I hadn’t thought about Easton. Because now another thought is trying to slip in the door.
Or not a thought exactly.
A full-on sense memory.
The feel of Easton’s body before I even touched it, when I stood up closer to him than I meant to, still thinking that we were just practicing. There were a couple of inches between us, but those inches didn’t exist in that moment, because I could feel the heat of his skin, the deliciousness of chemical energy jumping the gap between us, tugging us together. It was a shock… and also not, because it felt so familiar that it was more like a homecoming.
And then his mouth—
“We’ll split the smoked salmon appetizer,” Bear is saying to the server, who has materialized during my mental absence.
Shit. I’m not supposed to be thinking about Easton and our practice kiss right now.
I’m not supposed to think about that kiss at all, because it wasn’t a real kiss. It was just a…
Just a…
His mouth.
It’s not news that Easton Wilder has a beautiful mouth, slightly too wide, with surprisingly full lips for a man. I have occasionally admired it, the way I can admire art in a museum or a car I’ll never have the money to buy.
But now I’ve kissed that mouth, and I can attest: He knows how to use it.
Commanding.
Fierce.
Hungry.
That tongue, too. So skilled, the way it teased my lower lip and stroked my tongue, setting me on fire so I found myself kissing back in ways I hadn’t even thought about before—avidly, hungrily, messily, but also sweetly, like I just wanted to show him something that I hadn’t been able to find any words for before.
He was showing me something, too, and I wanted to know more about it, I wanted to sink into the couch and pull him down on top of me so he could show me everything he meant, everything he was trying to say.
Except of course, he absolutely wasn’t. That part was just my fantasy.
He made that absolutely clear when he said, “I can’t do this.”
“Hanna?” Bear says, and I get the feeling it’s not the first time he’s said it. “Did you want to order your entree?”
“Shit, sorry—I don’t know where my head was—yes, I’ll have the halibut,” I tell the server, and he smiles and writes it down, so it can’t have been too too long that I was sitting there like a fool, dreaming about a mouth that was just mine for practice.
The date plays out more or less the way Easton and I predicted. Although I don’t lick wine off the rim of my glass, and there’s not much flirting. I’m just not in the mood for it, and Bear’s a good conversationalist, but everything he says is so earnest. He lectures me on the importance of farm-to-table cuisine—which, don’t get me wrong, I totally agree with, where it’s possible. And he asks a lot of questions about my childhood and doesn’t seem to get the message that I hate talking about myself. I keep changing the subject back to him—and every time I do, he seems perfectly happy to launch into another lecture—on spring greens or late summer nuts or trapping rabbits. I successfully deflect and deflect and deflect from my own story and try to look rapt and fascinated while he’s educating me.
Then he talks for a loooong time about this foraging-and-cooking competition he’s going to enter next fall and how he’s pretty sure he’s a shoe-in. He seems to want reassurance, so I tell him of course he’s going to do great, and he laps that up while Cypress gets in close on the shot.
It’s fine, don’t get me wrong, it’s just—
I guess I find myself wishing for him to take things a little less seriously, to take me a little less seriously, and above all, to take himself a little less seriously.
He could learn a lesson or two from—
No.
Stop.
Bear picks up the check—he insists, and Cypress zooms in again to capture our slight tussle on camera, which… well, whatever, it’s fine. Bear’s rich and famous and I’m Hanna, and it doesn’t make sense for me to fight him on this. Besides, I’m the one who thought it might not be so bad to be treated, just for a little while, like a princess.
Spoiler: It’s not so bad.
He doesn’t make a move in the Luminous parking lot, but on the drive back to my granddad’s place, I start to get massively nervous, because I’m pretty sure he’s going to do exactly what Easton and I predicted and go in for a kiss when I get out of the car. And I can’t figure out how I feel about that anymore.
Which sucks, because before the kissing practice, everything seemed so simple.
I want to rewind to before Easton touched his mouth to mine.
Except I don’t. Not really.
I want to rewind and then relive it a few more thousand times.
Which worries me even more.
Bear pulls his truck up in front of my granddad’s house. He gets out, and I wait for him to do exactly what Easton mapped out, to come gallantly around to open my door.
He’s taking a long time, so long that I get impatient, and then I realize what’s happening:
He’s giving Cypress enough time to set up a shot on us.
Right. OK. That’s OK. This was always part of the plan. I practiced so I wouldn’t look like a frog.
Practicing makes me think about Easton again, which is…
Not what I should be thinking about as Bear (finally) comes around and opens my door.
He steps back as I slide down, taking my hand. And then he very gently tugs me toward him. “Hanna,” he murmurs, leaning close. “I had a really good time tonight.”
“Me too.” I mean, it’s not far from the truth. The food was out of this world. I don’t get many chances to eat food like that. And I still find Bear incredibly physically attractive and compelling, and I’m looking forward to this kiss.
Bear locks his eyes on mine.
His eyes are very blue, but they don’t...
They don’t make me…
They don’t make me feel like a molten pool of me.
Hanna! I chide myself.
This man wants me. He thinks I’m beautiful. He’s here, with me, and this night is not going to end with him saying, I can’t do this.
Right. I look up at his handsome face.
It’s sort of looming. Like we’re in super slow-mo. And his breath as it brushes across my skin is… winey. And smells like the steak he ate.
I mean, not awful or anything.
And then Bear leans in and kisses me and it’s…
It’s okay.