Chapter 12
CHAPTER 12
LEIF
Z ilker tree used to be one of our favorite hangouts at this time of year. A hundred-and-fifty-five feet tall, it was situated in Zilker Park, and every year, it was draped with thousands upon thousands of lights for Christmas.
As far as I was concerned, it was the most beautiful Christmas tree in the state. Tree Lighting Night was an annual tradition around here, and once the lights were turned on, they remained lit every night until Christmas.
It was a thing in these parts, an iconic holiday tradition that Laurel had loved. When we’d been in high school, she and I used to get hot cocoa and come to Zilker Park together, spending hours walking around, looking at the lights that decorated the grounds, and just talking until we had been so tired that we couldn’t keep our eyes open anymore. We’d stood underneath the tree and spun in circles, twirling until we were too dizzy to stand.
Those had been some good times, and tonight, I’d wanted to recreate that before we left to go back to our respective lives.
Despite my resources and the jet, I wasn’t looking forward to being separated from her by almost two thousand miles. It was a daunting prospect, endeavoring to keep a romance alive when we’d be so far apart, but I welcomed the challenge.
It was the only way we could be together and I was determined to make it work. Starting with giving us both another memory to cling to once I left here tomorrow.
Laurel smiled as she walked up to what we’d playfully dubbed our bench back when we’d been juniors. In the warm multicolored lights strung up in the park, her features were so soft that it looked like she was walking toward me in a dream.
Especially since she was wearing a white sweater with our high school logo emblazoned across the chest paired with faded blue jeans and sneakers. The outfit made it really hard to believe that this was real and not just another memory my mind was torturing me with while I slept.
But the heat of the cocoa against my palm kept me grounded. I rose from the concrete bench and held her drink out toward her. “Thanks for meeting me here.”
“It was a really good idea.” She took the cocoa and pressed her body against mine. “Are we kissing hello again yet, or not so much?”
I chuckled, lowering my mouth to hers and pulling her to me. “We’re kissing every chance we get.”
Groaning when her soft lips met mine, I almost lost my cocoa but I managed to hang onto my cup instead of making a complete fool of myself. With my mouth on hers and her curves against me though, it was impossible to keep my wits about me.
I finally broke the kiss to smile against her lips, my breathing a little heavier than I was proud of. “We should stop before I drag you to my car.”
She grinned. “I thought you rented a motorcycle.”
Shit . “You’re right. I did rent a motorcycle. I also didn’t ride it here. I walked. I’m sorry. I guess that kiss scrambled my brains.”
She giggled. “Welcome to my world. My brains are always just a little bit scrambled, so imagine how much worse it gets for me when I’m around you .”
I lowered my forehead to hers and inhaled. My eyes slid shut as I took a moment to appreciate what it felt like to be with her again. As cliche as it sounded, it felt like I was home. Like something inside me had clicked into place with something inside her. All that stuff I used to think was bullshit? Yeah. I felt it all.
“Why did I ever let you go?” I murmured, breathing her in and wondering if I looked like a lovestruck jerk right then. I sure as hell felt like one.
“You had your reasons,” she replied quietly. “Do you think it’s weird that we’ve just fallen back into this so easily after all this time?”
“Why would it be weird?” I countered, lifting my head to look deep into her eyes. “What you and I had was always special. Maybe if we’d realized at the time just how special, we would’ve fought harder to keep it.”
“Maybe, but how could we have known? We were teenagers. Contrary to what they believe, they don’t know everything. I know for a fact that I didn’t know very much at all.”
I chuckled. “It’s funny because it’s true, but still. I wish I’d realized that it’s not every day your soul finds another part of itself in someone else.”
“Why, Leif McIntosh, did you almost just quote Wuthering Heights to me?” She batted her lashes innocently, a wide grin appearing on her lips.
“Well, I wasn’t going to, but since I know how sexy you find that kind of thing, here I go.” I cleared my throat dramatically. “Whatever souls are made of, Laurel Guntry, yours and mine are the same.”
She pretended to swoon. “I love it when you talk Bronte to me.”
“I know.” I winked, but then I dropped the act and gave it to her straight. We needed to get all this out of the way once and for all, and since I had less than twenty-four hours left in Austin, now was the time to do it. “I’m still sorry that I pushed you away back then. I think my grief just blinded me. When it finally hit me that it was real, that it had really happened, I felt like the walls were closing in on me.”
“You lost your hero.” Laurel took my hand and led me the few steps to our bench. “Our whole lives changed that day. I lost my hero too, so I understand. It had a profound impact on both of us. Our breakup wasn’t only your fault, Leif.”
“I know, but we should’ve tried harder to face it together. We really were pretty stupid to pull away rather than to let it bring us closer together.”
“Agreed.” She let out a soft sigh, then inhaled deeply, sliding close to my side as we sat down. “Losing you was the second most painful thing that has ever happened to me. I hate that our grief cost us our relationship, but it was probably for the best. We’ve both had the time we needed to grow, and we still ended up here, together. That has to mean something, right?”
“I definitely think so,” I said, turning a little on the seat so I was facing her fully, but my leg was still pressed to hers and her hand was still in mine. I dragged my thumb absently over her finger as I looked at her. “Okay, so I’ve been thinking about this, and I know there’s a lot we already know about each other, but I think there’s also a lot we don’t know.”
“Well, it has been ten years, so that seems reasonable.” Her head tipped slightly to one side, her gaze sweeping across my face before she smiled. “Does that mean you want to know what you don’t know?”
“I want to know everything,” I said honestly. “I thought we could start small, though. Easy. With that in mind, what three things that have happened to you since high school do you think have shaped your life the most?”
Her eyes widened, but then she laughed and shook her head. “Easy, huh? Okay. I can do this. Buying my bookstore is definitely the first thing. Does redesigning the inside of it count as a second, or is it part of the first?”
“It’s part of the first,” I said after thinking it over for a beat. “The bookstore counts as one thing. Just like everything to do with the firm and what we’ve done with it counts as my first thing.”
“I’d like to hear more about your firm.” She smiled and looked down, hesitating for a second. “I always knew you were going to be great.”
“Likewise.” I squeezed her hand, inclining my head for her to continue. “What’s the second thing?”
Her eyes narrowed in thought, but then a radiant grin spread on her lips and she nodded. “Adopting Doodle.”
“That’s your Golden Retriever, right?”
She nodded. “That girl is my world. I adopted her from the most amazing rescue organization that works specifically with Goldens, and my only regret is that I could only take her . One day, I’d like to get her a friend, but my yard just isn’t big enough right now. I can manage one large dog in the store and going out with me on my own, but not two. Not alone.”
You’re not alone anymore. I didn’t bring that up, though. It was hardly like I could offer to take her dog for a walk from the other side of the country. “That’s another good one. What’s number three?”
“It’s a double-header,” she warned, stroking her thumb along the side of my hand. “The Naughty List and reaching out to you. That’s my third thing for sure.”
I grinned and set my cocoa down so I could slide my hand around the nape of her neck and pull her closer. Touching my lips to hers in a light brush of a kiss that made her sigh, I nodded. “That’s my second thing too, receiving that message from you to ask if I was going to be in Austin for Thanksgiving.”
“What’s your third?” she asked against my lips before she pulled back a little to look at me. “It’s your firm first, then my message, and then?”
“Wow,” I muttered as I tried to pinpoint the final, biggest thing that had happened to me in the last ten years. “There’s been so much that it’s actually much harder than I thought to narrow it down to just one last thing.”
She chuckled. “Tell me about it.”
“If we’re talking about events that have had the greatest impact on our lives, then I think it’d have to be the level of success Jack and I have reached. I know it’s about the firm, so it probably counts as part of my first thing, but also not.”
“Explain.”
“I’m going to sound like an asshole,” I said, needing her to know that I was aware of that. “It’s just that becoming as successful as we have has changed a lot of things for me. In many ways, my life is unrecognizable from how it used to be, and in that way, it’s had a massive impact. I co-own a private jet, for God’s sake. That’s crazy, right?”
She paused for a moment before she chuckled. “You’re not wrong. That is pretty huge. And you did sound a bit like a braggy asshole.”
I chuckled at the braggy asshole bit. “How about your writing career? Why didn’t that make the cut?”
Laurel dragged in a deep breath, bringing a hand up to brush it through her loose, dark curls before she finally just shrugged. “Oh, that? Well, I didn’t want to sound like an asshole.”
“Ouch.” I laughed. “I guess I deserved that.”
“Nah, I’m kidding.” She glanced at the street in the direction of her mother’s house and then brought her gaze back to mine. “If I’m being totally honest, becoming a writer has obviously also had a massive impact on my life. I love what I do and I make a good living from it, but I’m nowhere near as famous as my mom. Having said that, you should know that I’m not fishing for compliments. It’s just a fact. I’m getting there, but as long as I can write, I’ll be happy. I don’t need the fame.”
“But like you said, you are getting there.”
She lifted one of her shoulders in another half-shrug. “Maybe I will, but maybe I won’t. The point is that’s not why I do it. If one of my books ever makes it to the big leagues, that’d be great, but as long as some people out there want to read what I write, I’ll keep doing it even if I never become a bestselling author.”
“That’s why it didn’t make your list? You didn’t put it on there because you think it’s not a big enough deal? Just because you’re not as widely known as Deb?”
“I’m getting to live the only dream I’ve ever had,” she said. “I know that’s a big deal. Maybe just not quite as big as owning the bookstore, Doodle, or getting to have you back in my life. And for the record, just being able to say something like that makes me feel like the luckiest girl in the world. I have so many amazing things in my life that I omitted living my freaking dream .”
“I love that you’re so happy and so passionate about your career,” I murmured, tugging her closer to me and wrapping her up in my arms. “Jack and I opened our firm because of our passion for the work too. I like to think that’s also why we’ve been so successful. We’re not only good at what we do, but we love it.”
Her nose crinkled. “No one is that passionate about accounting.”
I narrowed my eyes at her playfully. “There’s no accounting for taste.”
She laughed, her head shaking before she lowered it to my shoulder. “Sheesh. I guess it’s true what they say about you numbers people having no sense of humor.”
I chuckled, laying my head on top of hers.
Cuddled up against each other, we sipped our cocoa and talked for hours before I caught a glimpse of the time on my watch and realized we’d better be getting home. “Crap. When did it get so late?”
“I don’t know, but I guess time still flies when we’re staring at the lights.” She let go of my hand to stand up and then stretched her arms above her head. “Gosh, we were sitting here for so long that I’m stiff.”
I chuckled. “Same. Can I walk you home?”
“I’d think you were a scoundrel if you didn’t,” she teased. “All the heroes in my books prove chivalry isn’t dead, but it’s up to you to convince me it’s not only true in my head.”
I grinned as I offered her my arm. “You drive a hard bargain, but I’m up for the challenge. I’ll redeem all of my kind by walking you all the way to your door. If I do it, do I get a kiss goodnight?”
“As many as you want,” she promised, winking. When I started dragging her toward the sidewalk, she laughed.
All the way to her house though, we were both quiet. Not because there was nothing left to say, but in my case, at least, it was because I couldn’t believe this was goodbye. Only for a few days, but I hated the thought of leaving her at all.
When we got to her mother’s front door, I wrapped my arms around her hips and tugged her into me, my lips descending to hers for yet another kiss that left me panting. “Good night, Laurel. I’ll see you soon.”
“Not soon enough,” she murmured against my lips, begrudgingly letting me go. She opened the door and took her step back, her eyes glued to mine as she slowly retreated. “Text me when you get home safe.”
“I will,” I promised, then watched her disappear into the house with a final wave. I felt an instant stab of longing to follow her.
Ultimately though, I had some work to do before I could spend time with her in Franklin. I was looking forward to that so damn much, but I had to get my work done first.
And my work was in Denver.
There was no getting around it. Long distance really was going to suck. Just not as much as having nothing with her at all.