Page 135 of Chasing Home
“I’m sorry,” I cry, slickening his throat with tears. He shooshes me, but it’s no use.
Jerking back, I meet his eyes and blink to try and clear my vision. The strong lines of his face slowly become visible, and I lift a hand to trace his jaw.
“I don’t want to find another family. You are my family. Everyone in this town is. You were right about everything. I was desperate to get to know Lee out of some fucked-up sense of blood loyalty, but that’s gone. Leaving to get to know him was not worth the risk of losing what I have here. The family I’ve found in Cherry Peak is the best one I could have ever asked for.
“I’m sorry that I made you feel unimportant to me or that I wasn’t head over heels in love with you. I was a fool, and I’m begging you to forgive me because I don’t know what I’ll do without you. You’re engrained in every molecule of my being, and I?—”
He shuts me up by lowering his head and kissing me. It’s gentle, a soft brush of our mouths, but it doesn’t matter. He steals another piece of my soul with it, anyway.
I sigh into his mouth and thread my fingers through the hair at his nape, loving how long it is now as it curls around my knuckle.
“There’s nothing to forgive,” he murmurs, gliding his nose up the length of mine. “I will never be the man who makes you choose. But I will be the one that helps you learn what it is you need or waits while you figure it out on your own. I love you, and I’m just happy you’re here. You chose me this time.”
“I’ll choose you every time,” I promise.
“I like the sound of that.”
Pulse thumping at a natural pace now, I tip my head back and push onto my toes to kiss him. His large palms frame my face as he meets my enthusiasm with a passion that makes my toes curl. I shiver, inhaling a lungful of his scent.
The addition of sawdust to his regular smell makes my brows scrunch as I look at him curiously.
“Why do you smell like sawdust?”
With a smirk, he tucks my hair behind my ears and then turns me to the right. In my rush to get to him, I completely bypassed the wooden lawn chair and long table with a giant saw built in standing beside it on the grass.
The chair is a light brown colour with a high back that grows shorter on either side as it gets further to the edge and thick armrests that round at the ends. I take a slow step toward it, my eyes focused on the words burned into the first arm before swinging my head to the second.
Once upon a time . . .
I wished upon a star . . .
“I wanted you to have something of your own for when you got back,” he says softly, stepping up behind me. “You’re renting that damn haunted house, and I was plannin’ on continuing to fix it up just like I promised I would. The owners don’t deserve all the work we’ve done to it, but I like to think it’ll be yours for however long you want it to be. So, if that means I need to work on it every damn night for the rest of my life until I believe it’s good enough for you, then that’s what I’m going to do. At least now, you can sit and watch me work on a real chair.”
Reaching down, I trail my fingers over the burned words. He joins me, his touch steady as his palm covers the back of my hand. Lips press against my cheek, holding there.
“If I could, I’d go back and change all of my wishes,” I say, my voice hardly more than a puff of air. “Maybe we’d have met earlier.”
He removes his lips and tucks a finger beneath my chin before turning it until I face him, our eyes clashing, emotions bared. “I think everything happened exactly the way it was supposed to. Couldn’t have asked for anything more than what I have right now.”
Flicking his eyes upward, he laughs in disbelief and snags my waist. I follow his stare and gasp as a star shoots across the dark sky.
“I haven’t seen one in years.”
“Take the wish, Rory.”
I stare up at the star-flecked sky and shake my head. I’ve never been as happy and content as I am in this moment. As at peace.
“Let someone else make a wish. I have everything I need right here.”
EPILOGUE
JOHNNY
There used to be nothing I looked forward to more than Saturday nights at Peakside. Being surrounded by all my friends with endless drinks and loud chatter was what I thrived on.
Things change, though. They alter, and the events and hobbies you loved most in the world take a step back to make room for something even better. For me, that’s Aurora and our nights together. Whether we’re finishing another home project in the house she refuses to give up or making love beneath the stars behind mine, I feel like the luckiest fucker in the world to be able to call this my life.
That’s not to say I don’t still love joining my friends at the bar, but now, I don’t have to show up on my own. On nights like tonight, I get to keep my arm slung over her shoulders and play with her hair in the same booth at Peakside where I saw her for the first time.