“Or I could just, you know,closemy eyes. But what do I know?”
“Dawson...do you trust me?” The soft plea in his voice drew me in and he held my gaze. “I won’t make you wear it if you really don’t want to, but I’m asking you to just go with it. For me?”
I knew before he finished that I’d cave for him, like the complete love-struck idiot I was.
“Fine…fork it over,” I muttered begrudgingly, but the way his face brightened made it impossible to regret as I slid the blindfold in place. “You’re excessively high maintenance, you know that?”
“You love me anyway,” he sang. He reached over and squeezed my upper thigh, rubbing his thumb in circles that sent tingles down my leg.
He started the car and we pulled out of the parking lot, and for a little while I was able to keep a general sense of direction, but by the third turn, I was lost. Theo rustled around for a few seconds until “Dangerous Night” crackled out of the speakers.
“Thirty Seconds To Mars. Nice choice,” I said while tapping out the beat on my knees.
Theo’s quiet laugh barely reached me over the music and I wondered if I’d said anything unintentionally dumb or funny. Maybe it was how fucking ridiculous I looked in the stupid blindfold. I decided to ignore it and relax for the drive. WhenSum 41’s “With Me” and Quietdrive’s cover of “Time After Time” followed, something scratched at my memory.
“Wait…this isn’t our old date night playlist, is it?”
Silence stretched and told me I was right on the money. Theo clasped my hand and brought it to his mouth, placing a firm, warm kiss to the back of it. My eyes stung under the black silk and I clamped them shut to keep the tears at bay. Jesus, why was I getting so damn emotional?
The playlist ran through all the songs we’d added over the course of months and months of dates, songs that held special meaning for us or that were just constantly stuck in our heads at the time.
The car slowed to a stop right as the closing licks of “Don’t Fear The Reaper” faded away, and I suddenly became aware that we’d been driving for a long time.
“You know, I wouldn’t have agreed to the blindfold if I’d known I’d be wearing it for over an hour,” I grouched.
“It was only thirty-five minutes, drama queen. I need to grab something real quick. Hang tight and don’t even think about taking that thing off.”
I heard the driver’s door close behind him before I could protest. My head slumped back on the headrest, my ears straining for any sound that might tip me off to where we were or what Theo was doing. Faster than I expected, the door next to me opened and Theo guided me out of the car, instructing me to step up and sit on some kind of vinyl seat. It kind of felt like?—
“A golf cart? What the…are we atmyhouse?”
“Two minutes and you’ll see.”
The golf cart lurched forward, bumping along uneven ground while crickets chirped loudly around us. The musky scent of the Cedar Elm trees hit me the closer we got and my heart started to thump out an unsteady rhythm.
We slowed to a stop and Theo carefully pulled the blindfold off. I blinked hard to clear my vision, but I didn’t need to see it to know where he brought me. After all, it was our place, our hideaway. And the location of our very first date six years ago.
But my mouth fell open at the view that greeted me.
Lights were strung across the top of the barn like spider webs and battery-powered lanterns were placed strategically on the ground. A blanket was spread out in the center with a fancy-looking picnic basket sitting next to a small cooler.
I gawked at the space with stilted noises coming from my slack mouth as I tried to process what I was seeing. My chest ached from the overwhelming sensations running through me, and I rubbed at my sternum absently.
“How?” I gasped out. I refused to look back at Theo because I was ninety-nine percent certain I’d crack right down the middle if I did.
“Dad,” he answered simply. “A couple weeks ago, he and I had a long chat about….pretty much everything I’d kept him in the dark about. It wasn’t pretty. Lots of truth,lotsof yelling, some tears, but we ended in a good spot. I called him last week and asked for his help setting this up. He said it was his gift to us…for all we’d been through.”
My head shook frantically and I couldn’t stop it, like my brain was rejecting the enormity of what he and his dad had done.
“You didn’t have to do all this for me. This is…”
Theo came up behind me, heat emanating from him and warming me all over. His hand grazed my arm in a featherlight touch, finally sliding down to weave our fingers together.
“There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for you, Dawson. I’d give you the breath from my lungs if that’s what you needed. All of this? It’s a fraction of what I want to give you. I wanted to go back to the beginning, do it right this time. Our story started here and so should our new chapter.”
Chapter 26
Dawson
