Chapter 8
Eight
William
I wait for Romeo at the trailhead to our favorite stretch of the Appalachian Trail. It’s almost five-thirty in the morning, and the wintry air is crisp and cold on my skin. Once we’re hiking, we’ll warm up quickly, but right now, the air is bone-chilling.
All I have to do to warm up is think of Carly. I woke up before my alarm this morning to find her hand wrapped around my cock. After she finished me off, she said, “I just wanted to start your day right.”
The woman is a goddess.
And this time, I’m not going to let her go without a fight.
When we were teens, we fell hard and fast, but we weren’t stupid.
We knew that teenagers shouldn’t make life-changing commitments at such a young age.
And we both had big plans for the future.
She wanted to make a career in art, and to live in a city.
Her home life wasn’t great, bouncing from foster home to foster home, and she hated having to depend on others.
So, she vowed to someday be able to take care of herself.
I had the opposite problem—too many people depended on me. I couldn’t love my siblings more, but it wasn’t easy being the oldest Jones kid after my mom’s death. Dad was wrecked, and I had to step up to help care for all of them—including Macbeth, who was just a baby at the time.
I didn’t have as clear a vision for my life as Carly did, but I knew I needed to leave Mercury Ridge for a while.
To spread my wings and go to college. Odds were, I’d end up back in town, working at the marina with my dad, and I was fine with that.
But I felt I owed it to myself to try something different first.
But there was one thing we both agreed on. We didn’t want to end up like her foster mom or my dad: old and alone. They both seemed so lonely. Dad still hadn’t gotten over Mom’s death. And Carly’s foster mom had never married at all.
So, we made a pact that when we were really old, we’d marry each other. Then we’d have someone to spend our final years with. We chose forty as the age because it seemed so far into the future. In our minds, forty meant death’s door.
I’ve never forgotten our deal. I won’t go as far as to say I’ve been waiting on Carly to come back. But I have compared every woman to her for my entire life. And after my fortieth birthday, I started to fantasize that she’d remember our pact, and show up on my doorstep.
But it was just a fantasy. I never thought she’d really come back to Mercury Ridge.
I thought she’d forgotten about me long ago. But here we are at forty, both single, and both in Mercury Ridge, at least for the time being.
And thank you, Lord, the sex is ah-mazing.
What more could a guy want?
“You look like a man lost in thought,” Romeo says, arriving at the trailhead for our morning hike.
“Or a man in love?” I ask.
Romeo sighs. “In love, eh? Is she going to stick around this time? Because I remember how devastated you were when she left.”
“I’m going to try my best to make her stay. I’m planning to give her Mom’s ring at the block party tonight.” As the eldest, I inherited Mom’s engagement ring when she died.
“I can’t pretend like you haven’t been happier this week than I’ve ever seen you,” Romeo says. “And after waiting for years for Sierra to come back to me, I know how it feels to suddenly have the woman of your dreams back in your life.”
I stare at my brother’s profile. Romeo is closest to my age, but the reason I told him about my proposal plans before anyone else is because I knew he’d get it. Like Carly, Sierra left Mercury Ridge without a backward glance—or so we’d thought.
Theo and Hamlet have both fallen head over heels for wonderful women, too, but they didn’t reunite with long-lost loves like Romeo and me.
“Will you be my best man?” I ask.
“You know you don’t even have to ask, brother.”