“Hell yes, woman. Shit, the thought of you with someone else… it-it makes me crazy.”
“I haven’t been out with anyone else.”
“Thank fuck for that.”
“So, what are you saying?”
“Come ’ere.” I use my hand to wave her to me. She stands up slowly and steps closer. Reaching out, I take her right hand and give it a little tug. She ends up standing between my open legs. I want to reach out with my right hand, but honestly, even lifting the thing hurts. So, I use my left hand and run it up her arm to her elbow as my eyes move up from her thighs up over her stomach and almost past her breasts. They stop there for just a second, then move on up to her beautiful face. “Baby girl. What I’m saying is—” I suck in a deep breath, because these words are important. “—you’re mine.”
Her gasp catches me off guard, but in a good way. “I’m yours?”
“And I’m yours. If you’ll have me.”
“You’re mine? If I’ll have you?”
I tug her elbow until that sweet little ass of hers is on my knee. When she’s there, I reach up and move a curl out of her eye. “Exactly. You’re mine and I’m yours. If you feel the same.”
“Since prom?” Her voice is shaky. I hope that doesn’t mean she’s going to cry. I’m not sure I can handle a crying Becklyn.
“Since prom.”
“Wh-Why didn’t you tell me?” Her eyes are turning shiny, and my fear is realized the second a sparkling drop slides down her cheek.
I reach up and wipe it away, but another one follows. “Don’t cry, sweetheart.”Please. I hate it.
“You didn’t speak to me for four months.”
She’s referring to the end of spring semester and this summer. “I had to figure things out.” I had to talk to Joe. And that didn’t happen until earlier this week. Now that it’s out there, I’m starting to worry about something. She hasn’t actually told me how she feels. Does she feel the same? I know Joe thinks she’s had a thing for me for years, but I’m not so sure. Especially now that she’s doing her damn best to stand up—to pull away from me.
I let her go.
When she’s up, she starts pacing back and forth in front of me. “So, you stayed in Chicago all summer long just because you had feelings for me?”
“Yes.”
She does her scoff with a side of snort. “You expect me to believe that you had such immense feelings for me, you stayed away.”
I push myself up to my feet. “I had some thinking to do.” I had to figure out my way around Joe. “And the work kept me in the city.”
She stops moving and turns to face me. “So, what did it? What finally made you see that you-you wanted to come back here?”
She’s not saying the obvious. That the reason I’m back is because of her. “It was the first week at the job in Chicago. I knew I had to come back, so I called one of my professors to ask about graduate research. A week later, I was accepted into the program with a research assistantship. Two weeks after that, I found this apartment.”
Becklyn is staring at me. Her hands are on her hips, and her chest moves up and down as she breathes deeply. The silence is concerning. I’ve known her long enough to see that she’s not happy. So, I do the only thing I can think of: I step close enough so I can wrap my left arm around her, pulling her in close. Our eyes meet. “Give me a shot, Foxy.” She blinks. “Please?”
Releasing air, she says, “I swear to all that’s holy, Lucky Ganetti, if you pull another runner like you did last spring, I’ll break more than one stupid rib.”
“Noted.” I chuckle and then smile so big, it hurts. Sliding my hand into her hair, I place my thumb beneath her chin to lift it enough for our lips to meet.
That’s when I kiss her. I kiss her like she’s the last person I’ll ever kiss again.
Because. She is.
When I pull back from the kiss, Becklyn’s eyes meet mine. They look as though they’re searching for something. Perhaps she’s looking for truth or sincerity or I don’t know what. Leaning in, our lips touch again, and for the first time in my life, I feel like everything is going to be okay. That’s a feeling I haven’t felt since, well, since I was five. When my mom was still around. She had a way of making everything right. Becklyn does the same thing for me.
I kiss her softly, her top lip, then her full bottom lip. Moving right, I kiss the corner of her mouth and do the same on the left. Moving up, I kiss her left cheek, then her right. I’m not sure why I’m doing it; maybe it’s because I feel like worshiping her. She’s the most important person in my life. Something I hadn’t realized until she stopped talking to me.
Actually, no, I take that back. I realized it last April. After I kissed her outside her dorm and then walked away for months. I knew then that part of me was missing.
