1
You Again
OLIVIA
A very unladylike grunt grated out of me.
Every muscle engaged as I dragged a ridiculous pink suitcase off the baggage belt of the tiny airport. The curl of my toes kept me braced. My glutes were hard enough to bounce a quarter off of. Shoulders bunched, abs tight, fingers burning.
It was more than I’d worked out in a year.
In a brief and awkward moment, I second-guessed everything I’d packed to come home to California. At the time, I’d been absolutely certain that every article of clothing was necessary. But when I stumbled backward from the force of freeing my luggage, I questioned the inclusion of the rain boots. And the overalls. And all that plaid.
It’d been ten years since I’d moved away from my grandfather’s farm and two years since I’d been home. My New York wardrobe wouldn’t do—I had to look the part. And “the part” demanded plaid.
The worst part of growing up on a dairy farm was being lactose intolerant.
Growing up, butter and cream, ice cream and cheese, and tanks brimming with milk had been inescapable. As a sweet, innocent child with no clue of the tragic fate my digestive system had in store, I didn’t have to escape it. I remembered sneaking hunks of cheese from the creamery and eating until I was sick in the hayloft. Or sitting across from my grandfather, warm brownies and teeming glasses of fresh milk before us, the sounds of crickets floating in on the breeze through the open windows of the farmhouse.
These days, it was almond milk and soy cheese, margarine and sorbet. I’d abandoned cream for my coffee, opting to drink it black, which made me feel like a true badass—no easy feat at five feet and change, with hair the color of a penny and enough freckles to find constellations in the array. I was about as badass as a paper towel or a guinea pig or a carrot. Or a guinea pig on a paper towel eating a carrot.
When my suitcase wheels were on the slick tiled floor of baggage claim in the eensy airport, I brushed my hair back from my clammy forehead, scanning the belt for my other suitcase.
It was equally as ridiculous a shade of pink as the one I’d propped myself on to catch my breath—a bubblegum hue fit better for a little girl than a grown woman. A New Yorker, no less. But I couldn’t seem to curb my inclination to the color. That sweet, creamy shade of pink that instantly brought cheer—you couldn’t tow a suitcase that vivid and hopeful without maintaining the distinct impression that everything would be all right regardless of where you were going.
Even a funeral.
The second hulking pink plastic suitcase rounded the corner of the belt like a shiny-shelled gumball. At the sight of it, I stood and stepped up to the whirring metal track. Remembering my bag behind me, I cast a suspicious glance to the people nearby, noting their distance and attentiveness. But no one paid me or my bag any mind. They probably figured the suitcase was filled with glitter glue and stuffed unicorns.
Not that pink rain boots were much better.
I braced myself as the bag came closer, developing a strategy to attempt to master the physics of it all, hoping I had enough berth to drag the brick factory off the belt. With a fortifying breath and my lips screwed in determination, I reached for the handle and yanked with all my strength, which got me as far as upending the thing.
A pair of very large, square hands slid into my periphery.
“Here, let me help you with—”
“I’ve got it,” I huffed, shifting to put my back to him.
With another heave, I pulled, leaning back in the hopes that my weight would help me, but gravity had other plans. The suitcase thumped back onto the belt, drawing everyone’s attention in the vicinity. People shifted out of the way as I walked alongside it, shackled by way of the handle in my fist.
Mr. Square Hands chuckled and stepped around me, reaching for the bag again. “Seriously, you’re gonna hurt yourself. Let me—”
“I said, I’ve got it,” I shot, ready to stomp his foot or kick him in the shin if he didn’t back off.
But then I lifted my gaze.
When Kit, the farm’s cook, told me someone would be here to pick me up, I’d expected her, not the hulking expanse of Jake Milovic.
His hands weren’t the only square—or large—thing about him. My thirsty eyes drank in the sight of him, cataloging every detail, noting what had and hadn’t changed in the years since I’d seen my grandfather’s right-hand man. He was a beast of a man, so tall, I only came to the divot in his broad chest. Square pecs, wide and solid as granite under his heather-gray T-shirt, which was almost too small. Small enough that it bordered on pornographic.
It was obscene, really.
His shoulders were square too, sturdy and straight and proud, and between them stood the column of his neck, corded with more muscles. Muscles on top of muscles, a display of brawn few humans were equipped with, though not enough to feel unnatural or gratuitous. My gaze hung on his jaw, which I instantly decided was my most favorite square—sculpted and strong, masculine and shadowed with dark stubble. That jaw framed a ghost of a smile on wide lips.
I’d kissed those lips once upon a time. But the boy who’d owned those lips was gone, replaced by a man who looked like he belonged on an ancient battlefield, wielding a mace and dressed in furs. Even the word man seemed too bland, too thin to describe him. He was a bear, grizzly and wild, loping through a forest alone.
His eyes sparked with amusement, crisp and flecked with greens and golds and honey browns, like the first turn of the leaves in autumn on the last moments of green grass.
“Jake?” I said stupidly, not realizing I’d stopped until my suitcase dragged me off-balance.
He moved more gracefully than a man of his size should have been capable, somehow catching me with one arm and lifting my suitcase with the other. I found myself tucked into his chest and inhaled greedily, my lids fluttering and senses full. He smelled of pine and hay, of old wood and loamy earth. He smelled like he was made of the woods and the soil and the salty sea air.
He smelled like home.
His hand was so big, it spanned the small of my back, which held me to him while he turned us like we were dancing. For a moment when he released me, I stood mutely, blinking at him.
One of his brows rose with the corner of his lips, just a flicker, just a glimpse. “You okay?”
“Oh, I’m tougher than I look,” I blustered, smiling. “Are you okay? You didn’t pull anything, did you?”
“I think I’m all right,” he said, hefting my suitcase with one hand. His bicep turned into a mountain range, with veins snaking like rivers down his forearms and hands. “That one yours too?” He nodded to the suitcase’s twin.
“How’d you guess?”
Jake gave me a sidelong glance, that corner of his mouth still just a little higher than the other. “I figured you’d outgrown the whole pink thing.”
I shrugged to cover my wounded ego. “It’s my signature color.”
“I can see that,” he said, snagging the other suitcase by the handle without breaking stride.
“That has wheels, you know.”
He held one out for inspection. “Sure does,” he noted and kept walking toward the exit.
We walked through the sliding doors toward the parking garage of the Humboldt airport, which was smack dab in the middle of Nowhere, California. The crisp spring air drifted over us, carrying his scent in the draft.