Confessions from the Quilting Circle by Maisey Yates (ebook reader color screen txt) 📕

A storm that had been brewing for sixteen years.

“Ben,” she whispered.

There was nothing to say now. Nothing at all.

“I want you,” he said, his words filled with gravel. She pushed her hands beneath his shirt, grateful that he had already drawn the blinds on the windows. His skin was hot, his muscles more densely packed than they’d been when they were younger. And those tattoos. She peeled his shirt up over his head, her heart stuttering as she looked at his body.

“I want you,” she said. And then they were kissing, and he peeled her shirt up over her head, casting it onto the washed-out gray and white floor.

He walked her back, behind the counter, and through a door that led to a tiny room with a very small bed inside.

“A holdover from the end of my marriage. Things were not going well.”

“Oh.”

“Convenient.”

It was all a little bit much. It tangled the past and the present, and she didn’t know what the hell it said about the future. But that all melted away as easily and quickly as their clothes did. His touch was like magic, perfect in every way. The first time they’d been together, she’d been young. She had no experience at all. And more than that, she hadn’t known what it would be like to live in a world where she knew what it was to be with him, and not have him. She knew now.

She’d lived in it for years.

And she wanted to take the risk. Knowing what she did, she wanted to take that risk. And somehow that made everything more intense. More powerful. His lips, his tongue, his hands. All of it traced dark magic over her skin, made her feel like she was burning.

Made her feel alive.

As if that wild thing that had roamed around inside her chest all of her life, when she was a young girl, that thing that made her spontaneous and willful and irrepressible, was now crackling over every inch of her body. Only he could ever do that. Take that feeling and make it focused. Take it and make it matter.

Take it and make her...

Feel more like her than she ever had before.

Not before. Not after. Both things.

Together.

And when he surged inside of her, she gasped. Because it was good. And it was perfect. He was Ben.

And she was Lark.

And maybe in the end, they were the ones that were inevitable.

Maybe they had been meant to be all along.

It didn’t matter that the bed was small, it didn’t matter that it was a glorified cot. It was perfect for them. Because the moment was right. Perfect in every way. As tangled and messy and difficult as it was. It was still perfect.

And when it was over, he held her, tracing shapes over her hip, and she looked at the ink on his forearms.

“What do they mean?”

“I got them after the divorce.”

A smile curved her lips. “I wondered about that. I didn’t think that Keira would be into tattoos.”

“Not especially.”

“I like them.”

There was a pause. “Somehow, I figured you would.”

“Really? Like... In the last couple weeks?”

“No. When I got them.” He shifted, and that was when she saw it. The bird resting in the mountains on his upper biceps.

“Ben...”

“It’s a lark.”

“I know,” she whispered. “I don’t... Why?”

“Because you’re part of me, Lark. You always have been. And I wondered, for a long time, if it was just me... Romanticizing something that I couldn’t have. You know, married men like to do that, I think. Pretend that there’s some great, unobtainable love out there that’s keeping you from fully being present in your marriage, or whatever. I don’t know. I just always thought about you. Even after I wasn’t with her anymore.”

“What about the other ones?”

He turned his arm over, and there was a rose, embedded in a thorny vine. “Taylor’s middle name is Rose. The thorns are pretty self-explanatory. The mountains are Oregon. The bear is Bear Creek.”

“Nothing for Keira?”

He shook his head. “No.”

“Are you that mad at her?”

He shook his head. “No. Not for myself. But the part of her that I carry, is Taylor. That’s the piece I don’t regret. The piece I know means something. And beyond that...”

She touched the bird on his shoulder. Where she wasn’t sharing space with Keira. At all.

“Is this really something that we get to try?”

“Yes. I think we need to. I really do.”

“Me too.”

“You know I was in love with you, right?”

“Yeah,” he said, the words sounding heavy. “I think I was in love with you too. I just didn’t know what love meant yet.”

“What about now?”

“I know what it means now.”

So did she. And for the first time in a while, she felt a very real bubble of hope blooming inside of her chest. Maybe she had come back not to put the past away, but to find a way to redeem it.

26

Today, we crossed into Oregon. Today, I feel new. I started off to Oregon to find a new life, but I did not expect to find so much more. Of all the things, it is hope that surprises me most. For it was always there, or I would never have started on this journey. If not for hope, I would never have made it this far.

Anabeth Snow’s diary, 1864

Avery

All the kids were sitting outside eating ice cream and in general creating a scene. They’d gone into Medford to meet the kids’ school friends and to give Hannah privacy for her date with Josh. Avery had always liked him, and she hoped—she really hoped—that her sister made it work with him this time.

The teenage boys were being crazy, and the teenage girls were pretending to be above it while staring and giggling.

Avery watched the scene from her car, smiling slightly. She remembered this. When watching a boy that you liked felt dangerous and fun in a totally different way than that thing between men and women had turned into for her.

When the world was full of possibilities,