My mouth snapped shut. As was becoming a pattern . . . he was right.
He continued, “And if you do wake up one day and don’t want to be with me, I will fight for you like I am now.” His thumb brushed against my lip, and he pulled me into his chest. “I’ll remind you every day how amazing it feels when your body touches mine. I’ll remind you of the good times, and help you forget the bad. I’ll remind you who you are when life has beaten you down and made you doubt it. I’ll bust down your door in the middle of the night and kiss you until you remember that your fears are just that, and they can’t control you. I’ll take my chances against your fickle heart if it means it’s mine.”
I was beginning to realize that it already was. I looked at the top of the hill over Cade’s shoulder. I’d always associated this place with endings, but maybe it was about beginnings, too. I took a deep breath and said, “I’m going to be a raging bitch most of the time.”
He was so much more eloquent than me, but I had a feeling that was a yes enough for him. A wide smile formed on his lips, and my heart felt like it filled my entire chest.
“I thought you were working on that.”
I smiled back and shrugged. “Horrible attention span.”
We laughed, and it released some of the pressure in my chest.
He said, “I’m not asking you not to be afraid. In fact, the day that you aren’t is when I’ll start to worry. All I’m asking is for that date you promised the day we met.”
“I can do that.”
He closed the space between us, and his lips met mine. The empty spaces in me were filled to the brim, and for the first time in a long time, the world felt right side up again.
41
Cade
After she was in my arms again, I was reluctant to let her go long enough for us to get anywhere. We grabbed blankets from the trunk of her car and cocooned ourselves away in the backseat. We kissed and touched and talked like we had all the time in the world.
I hoped that we did.
We lay wrapped up together, trying to fit both of us on a too-small backseat.
I said, “I remember this being a lot more comfortable in high school.”
She lifted her head and raised an eyebrow. “Spend a lot of time in backseats, did you, Golden Boy?”
I pressed my fingertips into her sides, and she squirmed against me, laughing.
“I thought we’d established that the past was the past?”
I let her wrestle my hands off of her, and she pressed both of them flat against my chest. “Of course it is, but just to make sure your mind is firmly in the present . . .”
She kissed me.
Each new kiss from her outdid the memory of the last. I broke my hands out of her grasp, and she pouted against my lips. Then I tangled my hands in her hair, and she stopped complaining. It was cold in the car, but there was nothing but heat between us. Unlike the last time we’d kissed, she was in no hurry now. We alternated between talking and kissing until the sun shined from the other side of the sky, at which point both of our backs were killing us.
She asked, “This is how it starts isn’t it? We’re getting old.”
“Oh yeah, you’re already past your prime. Life only goes downhill from here.”
She swatted my chest, and then pressed a kiss to the place where she hit me.
“I’m glad you fought for me,” she said.
“I’m glad you let me.”
It was around sunset when we returned to her parents’ house. I’d told her that we could get a hotel, maybe rent a car and go on to Texas, but she insisted that she could face her parents again. When we pulled into the driveway, her mother was out the door and sobbing into Max’s hair before we even closed the car doors.
“Your father tried to follow you, but he lost you in the subdivisions. We tried calling you, but you left your phone here. Don’t you ever scare us like that again.”
Max’s expression looked like she was being hugged by one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, but she was hugging her mother back.
“Your father has been torn to pieces. He’s out there looking for you now.”
“I’m okay, Mom. I just needed to deal with some things.”
Her mother pulled back and held Max’s face in her hands. She brushed her hair back tenderly from her forehead.
“I’m sorry about the things I said . . . Max.” Max did the constant swallowing thing, which I knew meant she was about to cry. “Your father and I are just scared. We lost your sister, and now everything terrifies us.” Max made a noise halfway between a sob and a laugh. “If it had been up to me, you never would have driven a car or left the house or done anything that took you out of my sight. We just want you to have the best life possible, and we tend to forget that it’s not our wants that matter. You’re an adult now, and it’s time for your father and I to stop trying to control your life.”