Match Cut: A Standalone Small Town Romance (Foxe Hill Book 1) Page 12

  They trail up my sides, twisting into the shirt, tugging it higher until the cool breeze from the ceiling fan brushes over my skin. His lowers his chin to kiss the tops of my eyes, the bridge of my nose, and the edge of my lips. My legs throb, desperate for attention, but I quickly shake my head.

  “Focus, Keaton.”

  “Yes,” he says, clearing his throat and dropping his hands from my waist. “Okay, so…you don’t have anything ready yet.”

  “No, but I uploaded stuff to my cloud account this afternoon.” I shrug. “I can pretend to edit that.”

  “Perfect!”

  I raise a quick finger, lolling my head side to side. “But, do you have any editing programs I can pretend-edit with?”

  “Right.” He pauses. “Uh, no.”

  We both scramble to the computer chair—me claiming it before he can and elbowing him out of the way—and I quickly download a trial of the program I’m accustomed to. I frantically click through browsers to navigate to my cloud account. I start to download footage, dragging it into the program and arranging it like a good fake project ought to be.

  It’s easy to get lost in attempting to create the best rough cut I can manage with the limited clips available. For a minute or two, I forget where I am. I can’t hear anything outside of the birds chirping and the running water of the fountain video from earlier in the week—that is, until Keaton lets out a small chuckle, causing me to pause.

  “What?” I ask.

  “Nothing. You look sexy when you edit.”

  “Go away.” I laugh. “You’re supposed to be forgetting I exist, remember?”

  “Impossible.” His voice is low and tantalizing, enough to send shivers down my spine, giving my toes a reason to curl.

  Keaton’s thumb strokes my shoulder then he plants a soft kiss where the ghostly prints were left before.

  Outside, there’s the sound of a car door closing, and Keaton scrambles back into the hall, letting out an exhalation.

  “Turn off the lights when you leave,” I call. “It’ll be more believable, trust me.”

  He nods, flips the light switch, and then shuts the door.

  I’m alone with just the light of the computer and the distant sounds of my brother entering the house, the clinking of the beer bottles, and the unmistakable sound of his question: “Dude, is that my dad’s van outside? Is Violet here?”

  I shove the headphones on my head. Were our stupid little lie a reality, it might be believable how lost in my work I could get with how noise-canceling these headphones are. He might definitely forget I’m here. The continuing conversations are more reminiscent of Charlie Brown’s schoolteacher, and my ears throb with the thump of each heartbeat. I stare at the screen in front of me, clicking through clips, making no actual difference in the arrangement but trying to look as busy as possible.

  Light suddenly floods into the room from the hallway and I whip my head around. Asher is holding a beer, eyebrow lifted curiously, and he looks at me sitting in an office in the dark, knees pulled to my chest and a crazed expression on my face that hopefully resembles exhaustion from work and not deer-in-the-headlights fear.

  “The office door!” I say, tossing my hand up. “I’m color-correcting! I need darkness!”

  “What,” Asher says, deadpan.

  “Geez, you wouldn’t understand.” I fake a groan.

  It’s hard to tell what Keaton is thinking from his blank expression. When the man has to poker-face, the man can poker-face. He doesn’t look like he has any emotions, least of all guilty ones.

  “Sorry—I forgot you were here,” Keaton says from behind Asher. The words, though I know they’re a lie, came so fast and seem so genuine that they sting a little.

  “Rude,” I say.

  Asher nods slowly, and even more slowly, a smile spreads on his face as if he finally understands everything. Yes, something is going on. Yes, we’re caught red-handed. Yes, this was a really awful lie—but then he laughs. The man laughs.

  “God, it is so nice to see you so wrapped up in a project again, Vi.” His hands drop to his sides, beer sloshing a little in the neck. I almost expect him to start a slow clap.

  “Yeah, uh, I get wrapped up in all this,” I say, waving to the computer. I’m hoping I don’t break, but, like, what is even happening. Asher walks up behind me, looking over my shoulder at the footage.

  “Woah, is that the fountain off Pear?” he says.

  “Yes.”

  “That looks sick.” His voice rolls out the last word like a surfer admiring an impressively large wave passing by.

  “It’s a fountain, Asher,” I say.

  “Yeah, well, it looks cool.” He straightens up, bringing the beer to his lips. “Nice camera angle and stuff.”

  “Alright, I’m gonna head out,” I say, giving a laugh and saving a copy of my supposed edit to my cloud account.

  “No, no, stay and keep working!” Asher says. “Don’t let me upset your productivity.”

  I look at Keaton, hesitant, but he shrugs. “Yes, don’t leave. I’ll go get you a beer.” It’s all said with the enthusiasm of a dead goat.

  “Thanks,” I say. “That would be great.”

  It would not be great. None of this is great. This is the opposite of how I imagined tonight would be going. Plus, these sweatpants, which are obviously not made for women to begin with, are now chafing in areas they shouldn’t since I’m not wearing underwear, and I just want to die.

  Asher leaves, and Keaton follows behind him.

  The only other time they talk to me is when Asher drops off a beer, telling me to “Keep up the good work!”

  I don’t have enough clips to edit, so instead I spend hours browsing the internet.

  Did you know cats can jump over seven tiers of cups?

  I didn’t either, but now I do.

  I finally pretend to wrap up around midnight, taking the headphones with me because I could seriously use a pair of these. Keaton ignores me from a distance even when I tell him I’m borrowing them, and Asher walks me to my car, telling me how proud he is that I’m achieving my dreams.

  Oh yes, I’m so proud of myself.

  Fourteen

  Keaton

  I have felt like a piece of human garbage since Wednesday night. After being a bit more absent than usual at the shop, I scheduled myself for all day Thursday and spent every bit of downtime texting Violet, who only answered with very short messages.

  Asher is my best friend. Violet is…well, she’s Violet. She’s bright. She’s quippy. She’s all types of weather, but only the best kinds. She’s sunshine after a long day at work. She’s rain when all you want to do is sit inside and read or watch movies. And I royally screwed her over.

  Keaton: I’m sorry you were in that room all night. Do you want me to beg on hands and knees? I can do that.

  Violet: Do that for two hours and we’ll be about square.

  The bell above the shop door rings, and I place my phone down, tending to the small, welcome rush.

  That night, I swing by her house, parking at the end of her long gravel driveway and walking through the pines and weeds to the side where her room has always been. I’ve never stood outside her window before, have never had the need to, but now seems like a good time to start.

  I pick up a rock and toss it at her window. Then another…and another, pebbles hitting the glass so often I wonder if eventually Mrs. Ellis will come out and demand to know what the racket is. The light inside finally shifts, and I see a finger and eyes poke through the blinds. In seconds, the pane is open.

  “What are you doing?” Violet hisses down at me, looking side to side as if hoping I didn’t bring a boombox.

  “Stealing you.”

  She exhales. “Well, I’m actually getting work done here.”

  “I have one more landmark I forgot to show you,” I call back in the lowest tone I can to be heard without yelling. “So, technically this is work.”

  Violet squints her eyes at me, inha
ling sharply before saying, “Give me five minutes.”

  We drive down the road with my Jeep doors off, wind flying in through the sides, sending the small face-framing sections of Violet’s hair shifting all over the place. She stares out the window, adjusting her position every few minutes, bringing her knees to her chest, curling her feet underneath her, stretching her legs out to the floorboard…

  “Where are we going?” she finally asks.

  “Just wait,” I say.

  Her head falls back against the seat. “It’s dark and we’re in the middle of nowhere.”

  “Trust is key, Vi.”

  The grass starts to get higher on either side of us and two lanes narrow to one. I take a right where a white fence starts and the road turns to dirt. I slow my driving as we rumble down the road. There are fields for a few acres before they run into a crowd of trees, but ahead of us is only more pathways.

  “You’re about to kill me, aren’t you?” she asks, peering out in the dark.

  “Possibly,” I joke. She scoffs.

  Without the additional floodlights on my car, we would be completely blind to the area around us. We get in so deep that we’re in the midst of spots the wildlife call home. Deer peek out from behind branches and rabbits cross the path.

  We wind up a small hill until the trees clear once more and we find an open area, surrounded by the white fence on two sides. The third side displays the edge of a cliffside overlooking the remainder of the fields and a clear view of the moon overhead. Occasional twinkles of lights pop up—the fireflies coming out to play—and the only sounds are the crickets and the gritty dirt beneath our shoes as we walk to the edge of the hill.

  She sits on the ground cross-legged, still in her blue house shoes, and I lean against the hood of the car, elbows resting behind me.

  “I’m sorry for Wednesday,” I say.

  She sighs, leaning back into my knees. “You couldn’t have known.”

  “I didn’t need to ignore you. That was too much of an overcompensation.”

  She laughs. “Yeah, that was pretty shitty.”

  “It was pretty shitty.”

  We let the silence stretch for a minute or so. It’s not uncomfortable, simply relaxing. It’s a feeling of ease that comes with distance from civilization.

  “Tell me something,” she says, breaking me from my thoughts.

  I open my mouth to answer and come up blank, leading to a sudden burst of laughter. “Wow, that question is startling.”

  “Told you.” When I don’t answer, she lightly elbows me in the shin. “You’re not getting out of it, though. I’ve had to endure it.”

  “Okay, okay,” I say, humming my way through items in my head.

  I couldn’t imagine a day when she would come back to Foxe Hill. It feels surreal hanging out with her, touching her, and sharing not just our hopes for the future but personal experiences. She achieved everything I knew she would, and she’s still shooting for the stars. I want to soak up her presence for as long as I can until she’s gone again.

  “I’m waiting,” she singsongs.

  “I like that you’re making a movie about Foxe Hill,” I say. “I like how you view the world as if everything has a story just waiting to be told.”

  “Everything does have a story waiting to be told.”

  “And what’s Foxe Hill’s?” I ask.

  She hesitates, pursing her lips then relaxing them and shuffling her feet back and forth beneath her. “Foxe Hill is…home. Like, the quintessential meaning of it. Maybe I’m biased since I grew up here, but it’s the place where you can rediscover yourself. I mean, the door behind the theater is still unlocked, as if it’s welcoming me back.”

  “I just forgot to fix it.”

  “Let me hold on to this fantasy.”

  I chuckle. “Okay, okay.”

  “I don’t know…I feel like any second I’ll run into an old teacher or stop at a four-way and see some old study buddy in the car across from me…or my crush still at the movie theater.”

  “I sure did.”

  She pauses, turning to look up at me, big doe eyes reflecting the moonlight. “Oh yeah?”

  My stomach drops, but I smile; it’s reflexive and spreading by the second. “I’ve been thinking about you ever since I heard you were coming back. For ten years, really. Hope that’s not weird.”

  She nods and focuses back on the vast land before us. My heart races at her silence. I wonder if I said something wrong, if maybe it sounded creepy coming from her older brother’s friend. Or is she still upset and that was bad timing?

  “Can I be honest with you?” she asks.

  “Absolutely,” I say.

  “I always wondered where kids went to have sex in town.”

  I almost choke on my own breath, gripping the car’s fender and letting out a nervous laugh.

  “Did you now?”

  “Like, you can’t do it in your house,” she continues. “The parents are there. So, where did people go? Here?”

  “No, not here,” I say. “I can guarantee it.”

  She turns to me. “You’re telling me you didn’t come here with Liza or Brittney?”

  “Who?”

  “Come on. You flirted with them every time they came in the theater. You gave them free popcorn.”

  I laugh because I haven’t thought of them in years. They moved right after graduation, going to colleges in other states and moving across the country for some reason or another—I don’t even know. The only person I’ve thought about is Violet.

  “Nobody knows about this place,” I say. “My grandpa found it. It’s abandoned, I think. Maybe an old farm or something. I’ve been coming here since high school, but I never brought a girl, I promise. Never told a soul…until now.”

  “Why now?”

  “What do I need it for anymore? It’s special, sure, but it’ll be more special if you can include it in your movie.”

  She laughs. “You’re a sap.”

  “No, I’m a tour guide to beat all tour guides.”

  Violet rises off the ground, dusting off her pants and twisting on her heel to come face to face with me, tracing a finger across my chest, splaying her hands out over my heart and shoulder.

  “You’re not wrong there.”

  My head clouds when our lips meet again. It feels familiar now, but still new. I’m still learning how she reacts; I’m unable to predict how she’ll kiss me, where her hands will tread, and where she wants mine to journey. As I grow harder, blood pumping down south, I know I want to find out.

  Fifteen

  Violet

  I don’t know when it started to get serious, but I know how it will end.

  Keaton’s touch grows more and more needy with every sharp inhalation of my breath. His lips press against me, parting enough for our tongues to touch gently, and then they’re hot and wanting. I reach his jawline, tracing along the edges where it meets his neck. I want to feel all of him, every way he connects and every hard muscle underneath.

  His hands grip my waist, pulling me closer into him. They curl down to my hips as he tilts his head to devour me more, feverish. My fingers run through his hair, gripping the locks and letting our lips press harder, our tongues play wilder. Each movement comes with another exploration, another hand finding its way to a new spot and another groan from my mouth, unable to contain the nerves that need release.

  When he starts at the hem of my shirt, my breathing grows faster. His palms run up my stomach, and my shirt rises with it. His thumb explores the scant area where my bra meets the underside of my breast, each stroke lifting it higher. It crests my hardened bud and he circles close to it before finally giving me relief by rubbing over it. The moan leaves my mouth against my will, and my only thought is how long I’ve waited for his warmth on me.

  He pulls my shirt the rest of the way over my head, bending down to take my nipple in his mouth, running a tongue over me. The feeling is like lightning, shooting across my chest and down betwe
en my thighs, which ache for attention. His hand finds my other nipple, pinching it between his fingers, making my back arch and my knees grow weak.

  He releases me, and the cool night air leaves the abandoned spot sensitive and needy. Hands wrap around my back, gripping my ass and picking me up to place me on top of the hood of his Jeep. I tug his jacket off, rip the shirt over his head, and run my hands over his shoulders, biceps, and forearms, hard and rolling in waves beneath my palms.

  He lays a hand on my chest, leaning me back to lie on the hood, torso exposed and arms spread to either side, feeling his soft touch as he kisses between my breasts, down to my stomach, and on each hip bone. Every kiss adds to the bundle of nerves, and as he dips lower, I feel the need pulsing between my legs.

  I reach out for him, fumbling to find his belt. I unhook it from its holdings, hearing the clink of metal against metal and the zip followed by his falling jeans to the ground. My palm presses against his underwear, stroking the underside of him. He’s large—larger than I expected—and with every stroke up and down his length, he lets out a low growl that spurs me to reach for his waistband and lower his boxer briefs down beneath him.

  My thumb rubs against the head as he unbuttons my pants now, shimmying them down past my hips and knees to fall past my feet, house shoes abandoned on the ground. I lie there against the car in nothing but the fabric of my lacy panties with Keaton in front of me, torso muscled and hard cock illuminated in the moonlight. My stomach drops and a passing wind causes a shiver to run over me.

  Keaton strokes a hand over my knee, up my leg, and to the edge of my underwear, tugging at the sides and sliding one finger through, parting me and pressing in. I’m already wet for him, slick and ready. He curls up to the knuckle, stroking the soft spot inside, the nerves darting out to my toes, my fingertips, my body shaking from the insertion of another finger and the outdoor air rushing by. It startles the trees, but the heart beating in my ears is the only sound I can register.