I kiss her nose. “Oh? What do you want?” Then I kiss the edge of her mouth.
She smiles and says, “A really good massage—wouldn’t happen to know anyone with magic hands, would you?”
I laugh out loud and roll her over onto her stomach on the bed, straddling her, and although I’m as hard as a rock, and her cute, round little butt is … seriously right there—Jesus Christ—I ignore the easy access as much as I can and knead my hands into her back for nearly an hour—and then I put myself inside her.
She falls asleep in my arms later, the same as the night before.
I’m going to miss this.
I’m really going to miss this.
“You sure you’re OK to hang around here by yourself?” I ask, coming into the kitchen and opening the fridge. “Braedon will understand.”
“No, you go on,” Sienna says, sitting at the bar eating a bowl of cereal. “I’m a big girl. I can stay by myself.”
I grab an orange juice from the fridge and come around the counter toward her, leaning down and pressing my lips to her forehead.
“I’ll only be gone a few hours,” I say. “Do whatever you want. Eat and drink whatever you can find. Hell, you can even trash Seth’s room for fun if you get bored—I’ll tell him I did it.”
She laughs quietly and swallows her food before speaking up.
“I’m more likely to clean his room than to trash it,” she says.
“I’m sure he’d love that,” I tell her in jest and kiss her lips. “I’ll be back soon.”
“All right,” she says and kisses me back. “I’ll be making myself at home.”
Yeah, babe, you do that … I smile thoughtfully, kiss her one more time, grab my keys from the counter, and head out the front door.
Braedon needs me to work at the shop today, and since I’ve pretty much been on vacation since Sienna came here, I didn’t want to let him down.
On the drive to Big Wave Surf Shop not far from my house, I crank up the radio and sing like a loud idiot all the way there. Damn, it’s like I’m love-struck or something. And the funny thing is I’m not ashamed of it and feel like I could sing outside of the car, in the middle of the street in front of everyone and not give a damn that I suck.
This girl has made me crazy. Good-crazy. The kind that makes you want to do dumb shit and forgive all your enemies and not flip the guy off who cut you off on the highway. I can’t stop smiling. It really feels like my face is sort of stuck like this. I try to not smile and it only makes me smile bigger. What the hell?
I have the urge to paint all of a sudden. But with brighter colors. Sunlight. Blue water instead of gray or black. A breeze instead of a storm. A drizzle instead of a downpour. Sienna is a light in the darkness that my life has been since Landon died. I hoped that one day I could see it again, the light—I guess I just never knew how bright it could be.
TWENTY-NINE
Sienna
It’s so quiet here with Luke gone, quiet in the sense that I can hear everything else: the ocean, the breeze brushing through the trees, the birds. But mostly what I hear are a hundred thoughts in my head, trying to get my attention. I hear a few of them screaming, and I know they’re there, but I’m not sure what they’re trying to tell me, and a big part of me doesn’t want to know. I settle with the thoughts that make me smile. The ones of Luke and me and the amazing two weeks we’ve spent together, and the future I hope we spend together.