Fuck.
I roll out of her bed and stomp—or stomp as much as I can with this damn cane—back to the spare room I’ve been using. Sitting on the edge of my bed, the damn thing goes flying toward the dresser, knocking into it and rolling under the bed. Perfect.Just perfect.
That damn drunk driver ruined more than just my leg. I can’t exercise, much less run. I can’t be at home with all my meal prep stuff. Sloane’s tub isn’t big enough for me—I used to take a bath once a week. These scars were supposed to be gone. I shouldn’t be living here. I shouldn’t be obsessing over the girl I watched grow up. I shouldn’t want to know what the skin along her inner thigh feels like against my cheek. I shouldn’t have kissed her last night, and I sure as hell shouldn’t have spilled my guts to her. She clearly doesn’t think of me like that anymore. She’s shut that part of our past off with a lock and key.
“Fuck!” I say out loud. I need a run. I need something to get all this extra energy and frustration out, but I can’t. I’m stuck in this stupid body that can’t do anything right!
I mean, really, let’s say she did want me back. That, like I can’t stop thinking about her, she can’t stop thinking about me? What then? It’s not like I can throw her over my shoulder and ravage her like I’ve thought about more than once over the last seven years. I can’t even bend my left knee properly. No woman wants a man who can barely walk.
I need to get out of here. I need to get away from Sloane and her stupid, stupid peach smell. Deciding to go for a walk to try to escape Sloane, I get down on the floor, groaning at the pull in my leg and at tightnessin the left side of my body. I sweep my hand back and forth under the bed, unable to reach my damn cane. Finally, my hand hits something. It’s not the cylindrical shaft of my cane, but something with a long, flat surface.What the hell. Grabbing at the object, I see it’s a box. Why does she have an old shoe box under her guest bed?
Curious, I pull it all the way out from under the bed and open the lid. Just when I thought she couldn’t surprise me more, my jaw actually drops in shock. It’s a box of all the notes I’ve given her over the years.She kept them?
Stunned, I pull myself back up on the edge of my bed and place the now-closed box on my lap. She kept all of them. What does that mean? Why did she leave the bed last night? I told her I kept writing her notes, why would that upset her if she kept allthe notes I wrote her before that kiss?
I settle deeper onto her bed, leaning up against the headboard, and I dump the contents on the bed between my legs.
The first one I grab just says:
Placing it back in the box, I grab another one.
Placing that one back in the box as well, I grab another one.
And another:
Each and every note I pick up brings up an old memory. Sometimes it’s an inside joke, or a smallencouragement, and some are just doodles . . . and she kept them all. Discovering that she kept all these little notes that were ours and ours alone makes the anger and frustration I felt when I woke up slowly leave my body. She does care.
“Where did you find that?” I hear from the doorway. Looking up from the pile of notes, I see my Rosie leaning against the frame with her arms crossed over her chest. For once, I can’t make out the look on her face.
“Under the bed,” I answer matter-of-factly, making the corner of her lips twitch. “You kept all of these?”
She pushes off the doorframe to come sit at the foot of the bed. “Of course I did,” she answers simply, grabbing a note of her own. “I actually read over these often. At one point, I’d read one a day, or the entire box after a particularly hard moment.”
Her cheeks are red, letting me know she’s telling me the truth, but that doesn’t stop me from asking, “Really?”
She just nods her head without looking at me. I wish she would lay those green gems on me, but instead, she drops her note in the box and grabs another one.
“How about we put these all back in the box and you get the green duffel bag in the back of my closet,” I tell her, scooping all the notes back into her box.
Giving me a curious look, she doesn’t question me as she gets up and gets the bag out of my closet. I give her the box to put on the dresser before opening the bag she hands me. Inside is the secret I let her in on last night as I held her against me for the first time. Pulling out a jumbo freezer bag, I hand her one of the stacks of notes I wrote her over the past seven years.
“What’s this?” she asks, opening the Ziploc bag.
“You know what it is,” I tell her as I carefully watch her pull out a green sticky note followed by an old receipt with words scribbled on the back, a ripped white piece of printer paper, a yellow sticky note, and so on. Each with the most mundane thought.Since it’s raining today, wear a coat;andthere’s a new coffee shop that opened on my block—you’d love the crazy muffins the owner loves to bake; toI miss you;andHow can I fix this?
And everything in between.
“You actually kept writing me notes?” she asks, shock taking over her face.
“Did you think I was lying last night?” I ask, actually hurt that she would think I could lie to her. I think she’s the only person I haven’t lied to my entire life. She’s always meant too much to me to lie to her.
“Of course not. I’m just surprised you brought these with you,” she says, finally connecting her eyes with mine. She doesn’t say a word, doesn’t blink, barely breathes as she peers into my soul.
She must like what she sees because I catch a glimpse of a small smile pulling at her lips right before her entire face lights up with a smile. She quietly drops the bag to the floor, making her way over to straddle my lap. My hands land right where her hips meet her thighs, with hers on my shoulders. We stay silent for a moment, our breaths quickening but neither of us moving.
Then, all bets are off. I don’t know who moves first, but next thing I know my hand is knotted in her hair, tilting her head to the perfect angle, the other squeezing her hipso hard she’ll probably have bruises. But I can’t seem to make myself care. I can’t say she’s too worried about it either if the way one hand is fisting my T-shirt and the other the hair at the nape of my neck is any indication. She doesn’t want to let me go either. My body relaxes at the realization, letting my hands wander.
My hand leaves her hip, slowly tracing up to her chest where I feel her heart beating as erratically as mine. Her kisses slow at my movement until her forehead is resting against mine.
