Page 74 of Missing Pieces
I burst out laughing and turn to look at Trace as he continues to speak. “I like you Harper and I think you are the best thing to happen to Easton. I’ve never seen him the way he is with you. I mean you don’t even need to be around him and he’s different. He’s finally the guy I grew up with.” He nods his head toward the bar and I see Easton with his head thrown back laughing. “He was missing that fun-loving part of himself for so long and now it’s back and I don’t want to see it go away again. Ivy wants nothing more than for you to stay here and Easton needs you to stay even if he won’t admit it. But I’m not gonna tell you what to do. You’re old enough to make your own decisions. I thought you might want a different perspective is all.”
I look over at him, tears welling up in my eyes. He puts a hand on my shoulder as he gets up to leave and I murmur a thank you.
I see Easton saunter over to me as Trace walks away. They both clap a hand on each other’s shoulder in passing. “Trace tryin’ to make the moves on my woman?”
My woman.Something about it seems to fit just right. “Uhhh…no. Then Ivy might actually murder me. Or him. Double homicide. Bloody mess.”
Easton grabs my hand and pulls me from the table. “Yeah if she murders you who is gonna clean up the mess?” I scoff at his remark only because he’s correct. Ivy loves to leave the cleaning to me. “You need to stop moping and come dance with me.”
“East, you know I don’t dance.”
“That video from Summer’s bachelorette party tells me otherwise.”
My face blanches. “What video? You said there was only the karaoke one.”
“Well maybe if you dance with me now I’ll let you see it.” He smirks at me.
“If I dance with you will you delete it?”
He spins me around as he leads me not to the dance floor but between a cluster of magnolia trees near the lake. The faint whisper of the music drifting through the flowers. “Not a chance. I enjoy watching it too much.”
I try to push him away, but he grabs me by the hips and pulls me flush against him, grabbing my arms and wrapping them around his neck before settling his own around my hips resting just above my ass. He weaves a trail of kisses up my neck to my ear, suckling on the sensitive spot right below, sending heat between my thighs. He whispers, “Did I tell you how beautiful you look tonight?”
“Not enough.” I blush into his chest. He lifts my face to meet his gaze. I search his eyes for the courage I’ve been looking for, for weeks. He places a chaste kiss against my lips and I murmur, “Sell the parts to my car.”
He pulls away from me abruptly and I’m scared I may have upset him by saying the wrong thing. For weeks I’d been trying to make this decision. What I thought was going to be the hardest decision to make, whether to stay or leave. I was being a selfish asshole. Being in White Creek has given me a new perspective on life. The constant pressures I was feeling for years disappeared within days of being here. And the love this handsomely gorgeous man standing in front of me has for me is so blindingly obvious I would be stupid to turn away from it. After this morning when he held me and let me cry knowing too well what I had gotten so drunk about stirred all those thoughts in my head. And when he told me he would love me either way, no matter if I stayed or left, I knew I was being an idiot for not telling him then I needed to stay. Not wanted to stay but needed. Because I needed him like the breath in my lungs.
“What did you say?” he asks me. I’m almost scared to look into his eyes, but I find the courage and look up into glistening emerald eyes filled with love.
“Sell the parts to my car. I don’t need them.”
He slowly smiles as a lone tear trails down his cheek. “I already sold them.”
I try to blink away my shock. I can’t believe he would do that without asking. Okay, maybe this is something I should say aloud. “Why? Why would you do that without asking?”
He sighs and pulls me closer to him. “We were at Ivy’s house one night and you were laying on the floor playing with her kids. You were laughing so much that night. And then you looked at me and I just knew at that moment that you loved me.”
“Why didn’t you say anything?”
“I wasn’t gonna flat out tell you that you were in love with me.” I roll my eyes at him as he continues. “It was as if something hit me square in the chest and unlocked the chains I kept wrapped around my heart and put all the missing pieces back together. One look from you Harper. That was all it took.”
“But that was before I even said I loved you.”
“Yeah, well I think we might have both been in love with each other before we knew it ourselves.”
I blink away the tears in my eyes and smash my mouth into his. He lifts me up into his arms and I wrap my legs around his waist. He moves us against one of the magnolia trees and presses my back into the tree as he presses himself into me. I chant I love you, I love you, I love you repeatedly as he does the same mixed with the sounds of my name as we find bliss under the stars and the blooming flowers of the magnolia tree.
* * *
“Well, I am glad that you two kept it down when y’all decided to sneak off to have sex at my wedding,” Summer snorts at us.
“I…we were just-—” I try to get out while shimmying my dress back down my legs.
“Oh save it. If I was Easton, I wouldn’t be able to keep my hands off you either.” She reaches for my head and plucks a flower out of my hair. “I’m just glad y’all didn’t do it in the house because me and Brett haven’t christened everything yet.”
Easton cracks up while muttering something about finding that hard to believe. I look at Summer and start to apologize, but she cuts me off. “Harp, it’s me who should be apologizing to you. I said some nasty shit.”
“You were speaking the truth.”