Chapter 7
Quinn
T he truck's engine rumbles beneath us as I guide her down the familiar gravel road that winds through the hills outside town.
These back roads haven't changed much since we were seventeen—still the same potholes that make Cecily grab the door handle, still the same curve where you can see the entire countryside spread out below like an aerial map.
My hands grip the steering wheel a little tighter than necessary, hyperaware of every small movement she makes in the passenger seat.
She's always been the queen of gasping while I'm driving, and working her foot against the floor like she's pressing on her own brake. Instead, this time, she gives me a smile.
The late afternoon sun filters through the windshield, casting golden light across her face.
She's got her window rolled down, one arm hanging out, hair whipping in the breeze.
Seventeen years old or early thirties, she still does the same thing on these drives.
Still makes my chest tight with wanting her.
"Remember when we used to drive out here every Friday night?" she asks, not looking at me but staring out at the rolling hills dotted with tobacco barns and grazing cattle.
"Yeah." My voice comes out rougher than I intended. Those memories are what got me through a couple bad deployments. "Your curfew was midnight. We'd park up at Miller's Ridge and talk until the last possible second."
"Talk." She laughs, and the sound is both sweet and full of mirth. "Is that what we called it?"
I can't help but grin, gazing over at her. My eyebrows lift up. "Among other things."
The memory hits me hard—her pressed against the bench seat of this same truck, my hands tangled in her hair, both of us breathing hard and whispering promises we thought we'd keep forever. We were so damn sure back then. So certain that what we had was unbreakable.
"We were idiots," she says quietly, like she's reading my thoughts.
"Were we though?" I ask, taking the turn that leads up toward the ridge. "Or were we just young and completely sure we had life figured out?"
She turns to look at me then, really look at me, and I feel it in my gut. That same pull I've always had toward her, like gravity. "Both, maybe."
The radio switches to something by Brooks and Dunn, one of those songs about red dirt roads and first loves, and Cecily reaches over to turn it up again. This time when her hand brushes mine, it's not an accident. She lets her fingers linger for just a second longer than necessary.
"This song was playing the night you asked me to marry you," she reminisces.
"I remember." How could I forget? We were up here then too, seventeen years old and drunk on the idea that we could take on the world together.
I'd saved up for three months to buy her that ring—nothing fancy, just a simple solitaire from the jewelry store in town, but it might as well have been the diamond from the Titanic the way her face lit up.
To be clear, it was the smallest one they had.
"We thought we had it all figured out," she continues, her voice soft over the music. "Graduate, get married, maybe go to UK together. Have babies by the time we were twenty-five."
"Simple plan."
"Stupid plan," she corrects, but there's no real heat in it. "We didn't account for anything going wrong. Didn't think about how dreams change, or how people change. About how one mixed message could change it all."
I pull into the same clearing where we used to park. In front of us, the familiar oak tree where I carved our initials junior year. They're still there, faded but visible. QC + CH inside a lopsided heart. Christ, we were young, so fuckin' young.
"Some things don't change," I say, cutting the engine and nodding toward the tree.
She follows my gaze and her breath catches. "I'm surprised you didn't come up here and take them off after what happened."
"Never had a reason to get rid of them. When I'd come home from deployment, which I purposely kept quiet from you, I'd come up here and look at them. I'd drink a few beers and wonder what the fuck went wrong."
The silence stretches between us, filled with the sound of crickets and the distant lowing of cattle.
Miranda Lambert comes on the radio now, singing about small towns and memories that won't let go.
Goddamn, these songs are hitting hard tonight.
Cecily reaches over and turns the volume down, not off, just low enough that we can talk without shouting over it.
"Quinn," she starts, then stops, like she's not sure what she wants to say.
"Yeah?"
"Do you ever wonder what would've happened if you hadn't enlisted? If we'd stuck to the plan?"
The question hits me like a punch to the gut.
It's one I've asked myself a thousand times, lying awake in my bunk overseas or staring at the ceiling of my apartment after we split up.
"Every damn day, but then again, I didn't feel like I had a choice.
How were we supposed to live? But I regret the way it ended every damn day. "
"Really?"
I turn in my seat to face her fully. "You think I don't? You think I don't wonder if I made the biggest mistake of my life walking away from you? Lettin' you walk away from me?"
Her eyes are wide, vulnerable in a way I haven't seen since we were kids. "You said you had to do it. That it was the only way we'd have a future."
"I believed that then." My hand moves almost without my permission, reaching out to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear. "Maybe I was wrong."
She leans into my touch, just slightly, and it's like a dam breaking inside me. "We were so sure we'd love each other forever."
"I never stopped," I admit, the words tumbling out before I can stop them. It makes things so much more difficult. "Even when I hated you for leavin', even when I was so angry I couldn't see straight, I never stopped loving you, Cec. You probably don't know it, but you were my beneficiary."
Her breath hitches, tears come to her eyes, and before I know what's happening, she's moving across the bench seat toward me. Not all the way, but close enough that I can smell that coconut scent that's driven me crazy since we were fifteen.
"This is dangerous," she whispers.
"Probably."
"We're not the same people we were back then," she reminds me.
"No," I agree, my thumb tracing the line of her jaw. "But this"—I gesture between us, at the invisible thread that's always connected us—"this feels exactly the same."
She closes her eyes, leaning into my touch. "What are we doing, Quinn?"
"I don't know." It's the truth. I have no idea what we're doing or where this is headed, but I know I can't stop. "All I know is that kiss before... it felt like coming home."
When she opens her eyes, they're dark with want and something else—fear, maybe. "We can't just pick up where we left off. Too much has happened."
"I'm not asking to." I slide my hand around to cup the back of her neck, the way I did when I last kissed her, the way I used to when we were kids. "I'm just asking for right now."
The radio plays softly in the background, some slow song about second chances and roads not taken. Cecily looks at me for a long moment, like she's trying to read my mind, trying to figure out if I'm going to break her heart again.
"Just right now," she repeats.
"Just right now."
She moves the rest of the way across the seat then, until she's pressed against my side. I can feel the heat of her body through her thin T-shirt, can hear the slight hitch in her breathing that means she wants this as much as I do.
"We used to make out in this truck for hours," she says, her voice barely above a whisper, her legs coming over my hips and straddling my body.
"Still could," I reply, and then her mouth is on mine.
It's different from before. Less desperate, more exploratory, like we're trying to remember each other.
Her lips are soft and familiar, and when I deepen the kiss, she makes that little sound in the back of her throat that used to drive me absolutely wild.
Still does, apparently, if the way my cock is reacting is any indication.
My hands find her waist, pulling her closer, and she comes willingly, spreading her legs wider like we're seventeen again and have all the time in the world. Her fingers tangle in my hair, nails scraping against my scalp in a way that makes me groan against her mouth.
"God, I missed this," she breathes against my lips.
"Which part?" I ask, trailing kisses along her jaw toward the spot just below her ear that always made her shiver.
"All of it." Her voice is shaky now, and I can feel her pulse racing under my lips. "The way you touch me, the way you smell, the way you make me feel like I'm the only person in the world."
I pull back to look at her, this woman who's been the center of my universe since I was fifteen years old.
Every night when I would say my prayers in that godforsaken hellhole, I'd pray that she wasn't hurting nearly as much as I was.
Her hair is mussed from my hands, her lips swollen from my kisses, and she's looking at me like I hung the moon.
"You are," I tell her, meaning it. "You always have been."
She kisses me again, harder this time, with more urgency. Her hands slip under my T-shirt, fingernails dragging across my chest, and I have to bite back a curse. We're not kids anymore, but sitting in this truck with her hands on me, it feels like we could be.
"We should probably head back," she says, even as she's pressing closer to me.
"Probably." But I don't make any move to start the truck. Instead, I slide my hands up her back, feeling the warmth of her skin through the thin cotton of her shirt.
"You think people will wonder where we were going? We did drive down Main Street to head out here."
"Let them wonder."
She laughs, and the sound vibrates against my chest where she's pressed against me. "You're terrible."
"You love it."
"I do," she admits, and the honesty in her voice makes my chest tight. "That's the problem."
I tilt her chin up so she has to look at me. "It doesn't have to be a problem."
"Doesn't it?" Her eyes are serious now, searching mine. "We're not those kids anymore, Quinn. We can't just drive around in your truck and pretend the last fifteen years didn't happen."
"I'm not asking you to pretend anything." I brush my thumb across her bottom lip, swollen from my kisses. "I'm just asking you to be here with me. Right now. In this moment."
She studies my face for a long time, like she's memorizing it. "What happens tomorrow?"
"I don't know."
"What happens when we have to face the real world again?"
"I don't know that either."
She nods slowly, like that's the answer she expected. "At least you're honest."
The sun is setting now, painting the sky in shades of orange and pink. In the distance, I can hear the sound of a train whistle, the same sound we used to listen to when we were young and full of dreams we thought we'd never lose.
"We should go," she says again, but she doesn't move.
"Yeah." I don't move either.
We sit there in the gathering dusk, wrapped around each other in the cab of my old truck, listening to country music and pretending that this moment could last forever. Just like we used to do when we were seventeen and stupid enough to believe in forever.
But we're not seventeen anymore, and forever is a promise neither of us is ready to make again. All we have is right now, and maybe that's enough.
For now.