Page 9 of Lakeside Lovers
I ignore her outstretched hands, wrap my arms around her shoulders, tug her into my body, and burry my face in her hair. Inhaling deeply, I breathe her in, letting her familiar scent calm me.
“Possessive much,” Leo mutters.
I lift my head to glare at the handsy bastard. “You can go now.”
He rolls his eyes and tucks his hands in his pockets. “Later, Margs,” he says as he backs away from us then turns to enter the motel lobby.
My arms tighten around her smaller frame a fraction as I press my nose into her hair again. “Don’t remember me, my ass,” I grumble.
She chuckles, her hands caged between us. “I’m sorry. I panicked. You came out of nowhere and I—I didn’t know how to react.”
“I know,” I reassure her. “I’m not mad. I get it. We were everything, then nothing. Just like that, it was over.” I swallow down all the things I need to say to her because here, in front of the motel, is not the place to have this conversation.
Taking a reluctant step back, I take her hand in mine and lead her to my car. “Let’s take another drive.”
She nods and allows me to usher her into the passenger seat, then she takes my hand this time as we drive and keeps her eyes on my profile the whole way.
When I pull up at the spot, our spot, she smiles softly and leans over to press a featherlight kiss to my cheek, then she lets herself out of the car.
My entire body hums with need, want, and desire. I can’t think straight. Squeezing my eyes shut, I take a deep breath. I need to get my shit together because we have to talk before I can even think about getting her under me again.
Reaching into the back seat, I grab the picnic blanket and finally get out. Margo’s leaning against the trunk of the huge oak we gave ourselves to each other under. Her face is turned toward the water as the sun lowers and casts her in a golden light.
Pinks, purples, blues and oranges dance across the horizon, reflecting off the lake, making for a breathtaking view. But it’s her that has my chest tightening, my heart beating faster, and my pulse pounding in my veins.
“I loved you, you know,” Margo whispers, keeping her face turned away from me. “I waited for you to reach out, a call, a text, a freaking letter delivered by owl. But it was as if you’d never existed. Like I’d made you up…” Her voice trails off and she takes a deep breath.
The tears in her eyes when she turns her head to face me, gut me. I step closer to her, needing to be near her, but she shakes her head and wraps her arms around herself. “Where did you go? And why didn’t you tell me?”
Instead of answering her straight away, I spread the blanket and drop onto it. “Sit with me,” I say, looking up at her. “And I’ll tell you everything.”
I keep my gaze locked on hers as she lowers to her knees on the far edge of the blanket, as far from me as she can get right now. She kicks off her heels and folds her hands in her lap, staring at me, waiting.
Leaning forward, I wrap my arms around my bent knees and start from the beginning.
“When I was fourteen, my dad came home one night all panicked and freaking the fuck out. He made us pack a bag of essentials and told us we could pick two special things to bring but everything else had to stay.
“Leo and I had no idea what the fuck was going on, but we knew it wasn’t good. We threw a stack of clothes in a bag, our comic book collection, and some other random crap. Dad loaded us into the car while Mom cried in the front seat, then he drove like the devil was on our heels.
“I remember looking through the back windshield a lot, thinking someone must have been following us. My dad was never impulsive, and I’d never seen him afraid. But he was that night. We never went home again,” I say, swallowing passed the lump in my throat, then taking a deep breath to steady the raging nerves that rehashing our story causes.
I glance at Margo from the corner of my eye and she’s gaping at me. Closing my eyes, I return to the past. “Turns out Dad had been working with the FBI to take down some shady people. I still don’t know the full details, it wasn’t safe. All I knew at the time was we had to keep moving to stay ahead of the people who wanted to silence him.
“By the time we moved here, we’d been in the witness protection program for three years. I was used to being constantly on the move, not getting attached to people or building friendships. But then I saw you, and I couldn’t help myself.” I swallow as the memory of the first time I saw her crashes into me.
She was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. I’d been with girls before, and yeah, they were pretty and all, but none of them made me want anything other than the distraction they provided.
Not until Margo.
Witness protection? Since he was fourteen years old…
My pulse pounds in my temples as he tells me his story, his past, his truth.
It breaks my heart.
When his dark eyes meet mine, there’s so much pain and regret there that I can’t bring myself to speak. What could I possibly say?
I crawl over to him, remove his arms from around his bent legs, and settle myself between them. Tyler sighs behind me and wraps his big arms around me, tugging me closer to his chest as he buries his nose in the back of my neck.