Chapter 50
50
DAX
Her blue eyes held hope and shyness, and I longed for the first and hated the second.
She smiled. Like a beauty pageant queen. Practically glowed. Those three words did that.
I did that.
“I think I love you, too,” she admitted.
I opened my mouth to talk but she gave me a peck on the lips to shut me up. She smelled like alcohol and tasted like citrus. “I don’t know what love is either,” she admitted. “I didn’t know there could be a person for me. A person who would have my back instead of stabbing me in it.”
“That’s a low bar for love, sweetheart,” I said. I didn’t want to be the guy who didn’t stab her in the back.
“I’m a little eccentric,” she admitted .
I laughed at how she described herself and perhaps for the first time, the sound was deep and real. Something shook loose and this… this… THIS was what I’d been looking for coming to Coal Springs.
A break.
A quiet place–that wasn’t all that quiet–where I could be me.
The person who wasn’t saving me from the town’s overeager women, but from myself.
I just didn’t know it was in a person, not a place.
Fiona was my home.
She loved me. I had her in my arms. It was enough.