Lovelight Farms (Lovelight, #1)

by B.K. Borison

He had been making some stupid joke about ham sandwiches and couldn’t stop laughing long enough to get the full thing out. I still don’t know the punch line.

And when your heart has been hopelessly occupied with pining over another person for close to a decade. It’s hard to notice the charm of anyone who isn’t Luka.

Going to visit his grandma and his mom and sometimes his aunt Gianna who lives two towns over is a nice distraction from the fact that my only family decides to celebrate Thanksgiving an entire three weeks early just so they don’t have to explain my existence.

“I’m sorry, Luka.” I clasp my hands in front of me on the table, pleased when I sound only slightly sarcastic. “Did you want me to put more of an effort into asking you to be my fake boyfriend?”

Last fall, the high school population of Inglewild decided our farm was the place to be for illicit activities. I saw more pasty white skin belonging to sixteen-year-old boys than anyone ever ought to. Beckett and Luka had handled it in the way that any grown man would. They dressed up in camo, hid in the cornfield, and scared the ever-living shit out of all the kids sucking face in their cars.

Even if the entire dinner is an awkward ninety minutes of small talk, it’s a tradition in its own right.

I’ve never gotten to keep anyone.

“Oh?” He hits the turn signal even though there isn’t another soul for miles, headlights glancing across cornfields as he makes the turn down the long winding road that leads back to the farm. “Was tonight not a solid go at it?”

When he asks if I have all the necessary items to house a family of cats, I stare at him dumbly. I barely have the necessary items to house myself. I don’t even know where the closest pet store is.

“I’ve been thinking about kissing you all week,” I feel him say against my lips. That’s nice. I’ve been thinking about kissing him since I was twenty-three.

“Okay, you can have them.” I nod at the cookies in his hands. “My cookies and my smiles.”

gets a glazed look in his pretty amber eyes. “It’s never felt like this,” I whisper, feeling those sparks start up again. “It’s just—it’s never felt this good.”

“Why are we slow-dancing?” Luka rests his chin on top of my head. “This is how my parents argued,” he confesses quietly, a grin in his voice. “Or I guess, this is how they had big conversations. My dad said he liked to keep my mom close, but I really think he wanted a way to politely restrain her.”

“That night, when I broke your camera and Beckett chased me through the fields, he almost caught me. I ended up lying in a ditch for three hours covered in pine needles in an attempt to hide. I realized then it was time to take a hard look at my choices.”

Wishing I had the words to tell him how it feels like I’m breaking apart into tiny bits of stardust. I feel incandescent, iridescent, every fucking light on the Christmas tree blown out.

“Even if it goes bad.” “It’s not gonna go bad.” “Luka.” He grins at me. “It’s not gonna go bad,” he says again, voice softer. “I want it notarized.” I sniff and run a shaking hand under my nose. “We can get it notarized. Alex does that, right?”

“What do you say, La La? Want to marry me and keep ruining my best laid plans for the rest of our lives?”

I haul Stella up after me and tuck her neatly against my chest. I collar my hand around her throat and trace her fluttering pulse, a zigzag line all the way to where her heart is thumping a steady beat. I press my palm there and close my eyes. I hope she can feel it. Everything I haven’t said yet. Everything I want to.