Love Me Gently (Deer Creek #1)

Two

Trina

Then

* * *

The hotel glittered with chandeliers. Streamers and balloons hung on every available surface, and my wide eyes, filled with excitement, took it all in.

Next to me, Cole Paxton stood tall and broad-shouldered with his hand at my lower back. I’d almost melted like the wicked witch after being doused with water when I saw him earlier, when he came to pick me up with a corsage that matched the color of my dress and shakily slid it onto my wrist.

Since then, we’d gone to dinner with my best friends, Heather and Ashley, and their two dates, Cole’s best friends. The six of us were always together, walking a fine line between rebelling, being typical high school teenagers, and following the rules. Considering who my father was, with a large target on my back expecting I was perfectly behaved at all times, I was the one usually on the side of following the rules.

Not tonight, though. I leaned into Cole’s hand at my back and briefly thought of the rule we were about to break.

For the daughter of Deer Creek’s, small town Baptist minister, what I was planning to do later was a big one.

“This is awesome!”

Heather shouted. She had Ashley’s hand in hers on one side of her and Paul’s in her other. The rowdiest leader of our group, like usual, she was in the front, dragging us all behind her.

My stomach rolled with nerves while my veins bubbled with excitement.

This was it.

Senior prom.

The night us girls had dreamed of for four long years. Me, longer, ever since I saw my oldest sister dressed in her sequined gown six years ago. Kari had looked like a princess, and while junior year prom had been fun… this was so much better.

“Drink first or dancing?”

I asked, grinning up at Cole.

My boyfriend since we were thirteen, he was the only boy I’d ever kissed. The only boy I could ever think of doing anything with. Yes, tonight was going to be so much fun.

“You’re in charge, doll. Lead the way.”

I took his hand and led him straight onto the dance floor, laughing at his nickname for me. Created in middle school when the winter chill had frozen my cheeks pink and chapped my lips, he’d shoved his shoulder against mine and bopped me on the nose. “You look like a little doll.”

I’d hated it then.

Much like everything else about Cole, I’d grown to love it.

We danced. We slow danced and held hands and kissed when the chaperones weren’t looking. We took breaks for drinks, and then Ashley and Heather and I spent the rest of the night on the dance floor while the guys sat off to the side.

Near the end of the night, I dragged Cole onto the dance floor. He’d been chewing his lip, the only tell he ever had that he was nervous, and it was a rare sight. But I knew what he was waiting for.

He was leaving this up to me.

Ashley and Heather’s parents thought they were staying the night at my house, mine thought I was at Heather’s. All of us had gotten hotel rooms upstairs.

Cole slipped his hand against my lower back and held me as close as he was allowed to, and I couldn’t wait any longer.

I had to lift onto the tips of my toes, even in the heels I wore, and whispered in his ear, “I’m ready.”

His throat dipped as he swallowed, and I lowered back to my feet.

“You sure?”

His dark eyes turned stormy and his fingers pressed into my lower back. “I told you I’d wait.”

He’d wait for me forever. I already knew that. Cole was that good of a guy and while my sister was following my parents’, and the church’s rules, I had different dreams.

None of them included leaving Cole in a few weeks and both of us being virgins.

I was off to the city.

He was going to college and then becoming a police officer.

I wanted to walk runways in Milan and Paris.

Our dreams were taking us to different places, and we’d soon be over, but my first time needed to be special.

No one would make it more perfect than Cole.

“I’m sure,”

I finally said. “I’m ready.”