The Reunion (Love Stories From a Small Town #5)

9. New Years

Apatch of crazy warm weather settled over town those last few days.

Luckily for me, it coincided with my dad sending my mother and her sister on a cruise the week after Christmas.

So, while Faith’s father racked up all the overtime and holiday pay possible at the quarry, I spent every second loving on Faith the moment he left.

Laying in a tent on the back of my truck at the river the weekend we all camped out, I stared at her as she slept until the rising sun lit up the gray walls around us.

The bonfire died sometime through the night. So when she shivered, I pulled her open shirt toward me so our skin could touch again to warm her.

I thought the growing pressure deep inside my belly might ease a little when we finally slept together. But laying there with her in my arms the next morning, it was ten times bigger.

Being inside her for those few minutes I lasted only made me want her more.

I needed to be part of her. I was desperate for every thought in her head, the reason for it, and if it was about me.

Drenched in my body’s scent now, Faith was mine in every way that mattered to teenage me, and I never wanted her to wash me off. But I would’ve waited a while longer if I’d understood how much more I would ache for her and how it would push me off the deep end. I was not at all prepared for the emotional rollercoaster I’d hopped on to.

Like her being my girlfriend made her irresistible to other guys, a line of older boys was sniffing after her constantly the moment I left her side.

I’d been in three fistfights in as many months, and they wouldn’t be the last.

I lost my shit on anyone who gave her the slightest attention. Even Jason joking around with Faith like he’d done since they were toddlers made my blood boil.

But instead of sex making me more secure about my place in her life and where this thing was heading, I was only more afraid. I’d been inside the warmth of her body, and the thought of her letting anyone else ever know what that was like ate me up inside.

I spent most of the night staring at her, a million terrible scenarios polluting my thoughts until my entire body itched from how sick it made me. “Let’s get married, baby.”

Smiling back at me as she fought not to wake up fully, she released a breathy laugh and laid her hand on my chin. Without opening her eyes, she patted her fingers against me. “You’re talking crazy. Go back to sleep.”

I folded my arm underneath me to rest my head on it and pulled her fingers to my lips. “I’m dead serious.”

Fluttering her eyes open enough to see me, she nodded. “When you finish college and have your dream job and” — I rolled my eyes and collapsed back onto the pillow as she turned into me more — “do whatever else you want to do.” Following me, she slid her arm around my waist and rested on my shoulder. “Then I’ll marry you if you still want me.”

Shaking my head at the ceiling because there were no words to explain this darkness inside me, my foot bounced the whole truck as the panic set in. “I can’t wait that long.” I’d been up for days by that point, I think. Like ants marching along my nerves, my body vibrated, and my head throbbed, snapping me out of sleep the second I got there. “How can I ever go back to not having you beside me at night? I can’t not be with you.”

When her eyes dropped between us, I shifted my chin slightly toward her. “Do you believe in reincarnation?”

She squinted at my chest as she twisted the couple of hairs I had. “I’m not sure. Why?”

The shoulder I held her up with jerked as I pieced together the logic of our relationship in a way that would make sense to someone else. “To piss off my mom, I think, my dad gets me these books on philosophy and metaphysics and all that kind of woo-woo shit.”

I rolled back toward her, dragging my fingers down her body until they came to her belly. “The gist is we’re all energy traveling through the universe like ping-pong balls. We live and die and start over again forever.” Wondering if she felt the same thing, I traced her belly button with my fingertip. “But sometimes, two energies like each other so much they decide they’re going to travel together.”

I flattened my hand against her skin, feeling the thump of her pulse under my palm. “Right here. I have this pain right here when I’m not with you, even before I met you. And the only time it leaves is when I’m kissing you, or holding you, or making love to you.” The magic of what was growing between us made me cry when I thought about it too much, and I blinked away from her like she wouldn’t hear it in my voice. “I thought it would go away once we had sex, but it’s worse. And it makes sense. Doesn’t it?”

I pulled her hand away and bunched it with mine between us. “We’re a pair. We’re not supposed to be away from each other. That’s why it hurts so much more now that I know what being one with you is like.”

The only person who could pull me back from those times I got too strung out on life, Faith gave me a quick smile and bent down to kiss my hand. “Your mind is so beautiful, Dom. Everything you feel is so big and complicated, like a book filled with words I have to sound out a few times before I get the meaning.” Faith was the most practical person on the planet. The entire world was black and white for her, and sometimes, she took what I said the wrong way. “And I’m sorry I’m hurting you because I can’t understand things like you do.”

I dove into her, pushing her to her back to hover over her. “You’re not hurting me. That’s not what I’m saying, and I’m not blaming you for anything.” Her tears slid through my fingertips as I curled and uncurled them against her cheek. “I guess I’m only trying to make you understand what all this means for me. There isn’t any other way out of this but putting a ring on your finger. That’s it.”

She smiled and clicked her tongue as her eyes fell to my open zipper. “Well, I’m glad to hear you say that after what we did last night.”

How the guys I hung out with ran through girls without a thought was a mystery to me. I only had this one to worry over, and the constant fear I might let her down or hurt her made me crazy half the time.

My fingers worked into her hair a little more, taking my eyes with them as I figured the calculations in my head. “Eight-hundred and eighty-one days.”

Faith had many gifts, but math would never be one of them. So, she didn’t at all catch what I meant, only drawing up her nose. “Until what?”

For the first time all week, I relaxed enough my eyes started weaving together, getting heavier with each blink until they closed when I laid down in the pit of her arm. “Eight-hundred and eighty-one days until graduation, and you’re mine all the time.”

The timer started for me at that moment. I had a goal and a target date to focus on, and it changed everything for me, honestly. I was laser-focused on the finish line, putting in my best every day at whatever I did.

I made a lifetime of plans for us over those eight hundred and eighty-one days — all she had to do was trust me to make sure they played out how they were supposed to. But I guess I could never make her feel safe enough to do that.