I doubted that, but I’d keep that opinion to myself. With Brandon and I out and actually dating, I had a feeling it’d be a while until the dust settled over the newness of our relationship.
Coming from our background and now ending up where we did, it was a wonder we weren’t getting pulled away by Brandon’s mother while she tearfully lamented about how she always knew we were meant to be together.
Though, maybe that would be in due time. After all, tonight wasn’t about us.
“You okay?” I asked, smoothing a hand along the back of his head.
“Now I am.”
My chest ached with fondness for him.
A few weeks had passed since we’d made it official and since then, we’d been practically inseparable. I didn’t want to jinx anything by predicting too early on where this was headed,however, deep down in my heart, I knew that come next spring, the wedding bells would be tolling once more.
That was something to look forward to. A future I never knew would’ve been possible six months ago, but now was clear as day as the only path I ever wanted to travel. Letting him go had been the biggest mistake of my life. I had the rest of forever to make it up to him, and I one hundred and ten percent planned on doing so.
Leaning back slightly, I cupped a hand around his jaw, moving his face away from my chest so I could trail a line of kisses from his forehead, down to his mouth. Treating him tenderly, loving him in the way that he deserved to be, was all I needed.
Thisright here was what true and divine happiness really felt like.
“I love you, Brandon Carmichael.”
His eyes fluttered open, blinking a few times as tears formed at the corners of his lashes. “I do, too. I love you, Avery. I have for so long. I... I never thought...”
“Me too. I think I’ve loved you forever.”
My heart was his.
My soul was his.
His breath mingled with mine, a soft trailing of his finger working its way across my cheek to circle around my lips and trace the outer edges of them. His dark eyes were glossy from his unshed tears, casting a slight sparkle to them that drew me in. “Thank you for staying, Avery.”
I kissed him once more. “I’ll never leave you again.”
***
Marlow
“You’re actually going through with it?” My best friend’s straightforward tone, while normally charming to a fault, was beginning to grate on my ears.
Save for the fact of this being the third time he was bringing up the same subject, I was beginning to wonder how many times it would take for me to repeat myself before Silas finally gave up and accepted the fact that I was doing this.
Coming from his perspective, I supposed I could understand the bewilderment to a certain extent. After all, sitting behind a desk while staring at numbers on a screen all day, every day, wasn’t exactly screaming extreme sports enthusiast.
I was a fit man and took care of my health as much as I could given my work schedule, but even that had its drawbacks. There were only so many trails in Ellington Heights I could run before I began to go stir crazy.
Hence the need for a change.
“For the millionth time,yes. Can you get off my dick about it?”
On the other end of the phone, Silas scoffed. “You can’t expect me not to worry about you. You’re going to a fucking wilderness camp where there’s mountain lions and bears around. It would be shitty of menotto worry about you.”
While he had a point, his loud opinion about it certainly wasn’t what I wanted to hear. This year, I was on a mission to better my health—to get myself into the best shape of my life and have fun doing it. As wild of a concept as it was to do just that at a wilderness camp, I didn’t care.
Not if it kept me from keeling over like my late pops.
“Thank you for caring about me,” I said.
The zipper to my bag only barely stayed together, the opposite side of it bulging with how much stuff I’d managed to cram into the small carry-on sized case. In the welcome packetthat had been sent to me a week prior, there were hardly any specifics on what I was supposed to be bringing along with me, outside of the basic toiletries.
