Chapter 42
Forty-Two
Scarlett
18 Years Old
“You can’t move in with him. You barely know him!” Uncle Marty sighed. The ongoing fight with Scarlett’s uncle was underway yet again when she had brought home boxes to start packing for Maryland. For what felt like the hundredth time, she was staring across the table at her mom, aunt, and uncle, fighting for what she wanted.
“I can, and I’m going to.” Scarlett folded her arms over her chest in defiance. “I’m an adult, and I can make my own decisions. And I do know him. I’m with him every single day. I’m over at his house so much that Walker has put my schedule up on the big family whiteboard calendar. You all said you liked Colin, so I don’t see what the problem is.”
“Liking him is way different than thinking you should bank your entire life on him!” Marty exclaimed, throwing up aggravated hands. “Nora, talk to your daughter.”
“She doesn’t think the same thing as you. She knows I can make my own choices,” Scarlett stated definitively. The flat line of her mom’s mouth turned downward, and Scarlett raised her eyebrows. “Mom?”
“I don’t think it’s a good idea, honey. You know we love Colin and Colin’s family loves you, but this is… can’t you just do long distance?” Nora asked, pleading.
“No,” Scarlett snapped. “We don’t want to be away from each other for that long.”
“So you’re going to move clear across the country to be with a guy you just started dating not that long ago?” Aunt Eden pried.
It wasn’t as if Scarlett didn’t know that on paper it sounded like an insane plan, but she didn’t care. Her heart wanted to go. She could figure out the logistics of a job and the rest once she made it to the East Coast. Colin would start school, and she would have plenty of time to find out what she wanted to do. “You guys act like I haven’t thought this through at all.”
Marty scoffed. “You haven’t.”
“Marty.” Nora sighed and touched her brother’s arm. “Let me.”
“Let you what?” Scarlett demanded. “You’re not going to convince me of anything. I want to go with Colin. It’d be the same thing as me moving away for college. What’s the difference?”
“The difference is you’re moving for a boy!” Marty shouted. “Are you just hoping he’ll decide for you what to do with your life?”
“Marty!” Eden chastised. “Let Nora talk to her daughter. You are not helping.”
“Letti, listen to me.” Nora leaned over the table and grabbed her hand. Scarlett reluctantly let her. “I know you’re in love, and I know you want to be with Colin, but you are so young. You have your whole life ahead of you, and I’m worried if you focus so much on what Colin wants and what he’s doing, then you’ll lose yourself along the way.”
Scarlett snatched her hand back angrily. “We aren’t you and Dad. Colin won’t leave me.”
Nora sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose. “I know that, honey. But if he won’t leave in Maryland, then he won’t leave you if you aren’t there, either.”
“Why are none of you considering what I want? You’re acting like he’s forcing me to go when I want to go!” Scarlett shouted. This was not how she wanted to spend the morning of her graduation. She could feel her eyes prick with tears, and she worried it might ruin the makeup she had spent forever on to look good in all the photos they were bound to take today. “I have a plan,” she croaked. “I love him.”
“Loving someone is not a plan,” Eden said softly. “We all want you to be happy and in love. Of course we do. We just think that you need to think about what you want outside of Colin.”
A tear rolled down Scarlett’s face, and she shook her head. “I want to paint. I can paint anywhere. I can paint in Maryland.”
“Sure you can, but you’re not going to Maryland to paint,” Nora said. “You’re going because you’re following someone else’s dream. You won’t have the same support as you do here, because if you’re in Maryland, you’ll be Colin’s support, not your own.”
“Colin can be my support. You just want me to work for the foundation, and now you’re disappointed that I’m not doing that. Is that it?” It was the one thing about moving to Maryland Scarlett didn’t like. She loved doing things for the foundation, loved elevating her brother’s legacy, but in the end, she would only be gone for four years, and everyone was acting like it was the end of the world.
“No.” Nora shook her head. “If you didn’t want to do anything for the foundation ever again, that would be okay with me. It’s not your cross to bear. I’m disappointed that you’re getting your self worth from a boy and you’re planning the rest of your life off his career and his needs. What about yours?”
“But I don’t know what I want to do with my life, so why can’t I figure it out in Maryland?” This conversation felt like a perpetual circle or a revolving door that she couldn’t escape from. No one was listening to her. She could figure out who she was in Maryland. Everything that she could do here, she could do with Colin at her side. She might not have her family to rely on, but Colin would be enough.
“A lot can happen in a relationship over four years…” Nora trailed off.
Scarlett nodded her head slowly, understanding seeping into her resolve. She knew exactly why everyone hated this idea. They didn’t believe she could do it. “You don’t think Colin and I will stay together.”
“It’s not that.” Eden sighed. “We just know how hard relationships are. Even Marty and I have our moments. I couldn’t imagine having those moments at eighteen.”
“You have a kid.” Scarlett rolled her eyes. “We aren’t having kids, and we’re careful.”
“I really don’t need to know anything about that,” Marty grumbled.
“You will have to heavily rely on each other to get through a bunch of hard stuff,” Nora said. “He’s still grieving. You’ll both be new in town. Your schedules are going to be chaotic with him at school and you finding a job. All of that is going to be very hard, Letti. I don’t want you to just make a decision based on love alone.”
“We’ve been relying on each other for months, Mom. I know he’s grieving. I can help with that. He can help with my dreams, too. He makes me feel special and like I can do something important with my life, too.”
“You don’t need a man to make you feel special. You are special,” Nora said sternly. “I love that he makes you feel like that, but you don’t need him to do what you want to do, Letti.”
“Yes, I do!” Scarlett pushed her chair out from the table furiously. “You may not need Dad, but I don’t want to just survive on my own. I want love, and I have it, so I’m going.”
Storming away from the table, she pulled out her phone and called Colin. When he picked up immediately, she breathed a sigh of relief, stomping out the front door and slamming it shut behind her. “Can you pick me up early?’
“We’re going to be late for line-up.” Scarlett sucked in a breath of too-thin air and groaned as she felt the head of Colin’s condom-wrapped cock knock against her.
“We’ll make it. But we have to be quick,” he panted, hands lifting her hips up. “Breathe, Red.” She did, and he shoved her back down, his cock spearing her in one thrust. Knowing that they didn’t have much time to get her prepped, Colin had swiped a travel packet of lube over and inside her. They both closed their eyes and groaned at the connection, pressing their foreheads together.
They would have been over an hour early to line up for graduation if Scarlett hadn’t started impulsively rubbing Colin through his slacks on the drive over. She knew exactly what he had meant when he said he was insatiable, because she felt it, too. The dire need to have him inside her any chance she could felt like a monster she constantly needed to feed. So when they started making out heavily at red lights and feeling each other up beyond the scope of safety during a drive, they took a detour up to the lookout, parked in the makeshift gravel parking area, and were quick to scramble into the backseat. It wasn’t the first time they had fucked in Colin’s car. They had skipped a few classes to do the exact same thing, and Scarlett had spent a few evenings with Colin’s cock down her throat in the front seat and one with Colin’s head between her legs as the sun went down on the lookout rock. Sunsets were especially beautiful when her vision was fuzzy from orgasm. Anywhere and anytime they could, they were getting each other off, because they were good at it now. Their charts were starting to look like nothing but five stars and the smiley faces Colin kept drawing on hers. Instead of venturing into more experimentation, they did what they knew worked.
“Colin,” Scarlett whimpered.
“Is that a good or bad ‘Colin’?” he asked, lifting his ass off the seat to meet every drop of her hips with a slap.
“Good. So good.”
“Oh, fuck, Red. Just like that.” He pulled the bodice of her graduation dress down so her breasts spilled out, bobbing with her as she bounced in his lap.
“I’m gonna come so quick if you keep this up,” Scarlett praised. His fingers massaged her clit with the perfect amount of pressure, as always.
“You’re certainly keeping me up,” Colin quipped, his voice breathy.
Scarlett threw her head back with a laugh as she started to jerk with her orgasm. “Come with me.”
He did until they were folded in around each other and trying to catch their breath. They only took one moment to themselves with a quick kiss before they hopped out of the backseat, Colin disposing of the used condom in the mini trash can he had dangling from his headrest and offering Scarlett baby wipes as they righted their clothes.
“Shit, where’s my cap?” Colin dipped his head, looking around the back of the car.
“Got it!” Scarlett chirped, finding where it had fallen on the floorboard and tossing it to him.
“Thank you.” Colin slapped the square hat on his head, adjusted his valedictorian tassel, and swung the driver’s side door open as Scarlett clambered into the passenger seat, giggling. He smiled when she got fully situated and scanned her over, fixing the sleeve of her gown by pulling it back up her shoulder.
“Are you nervous about your ‘I’m a four-point-oh genius’ speech?”
“I’m feeling very relaxed, thanks to you.” Colin ducked down to give her a chaste kiss on the lips. “I love you.”
Scarlet sighed happily as he started the engine. Her mood had drastically changed for the better after the discussion with her mom. This was how she was supposed to feel, and she refused to listen to anyone but Colin any longer. “I love you, too.”