Page 48 of From the Ground Up

“Barrett. I love you so much. I failed, too…” she starts saying, but before she can continue, I reach over and pull her into my lap. I can’t stand another moment of not having her in my arms. I lean down and kiss her, showing her that I don’t feel like she failed me. And maybe she doesn’t feel like I failed her either, but she needs to hear my words. Deserves to hear them. I know we’d just gotten a little lost, but we are finding our way back to one another. I hold her close and begin shifting her so she is straddling me. I didn’t plan on the kiss going this way. Hell, I didn’t plan the kiss at all. I planned on us sitting around the fire, talking, hashing everything out.

But those plans changed the moment I had her in my lap.

Now the plan is for kisses. Lots and lots of kisses. Kisses of all kinds.

Butterfly kisses.

Cheek kisses.

Neck kisses.

Eyelid kisses.

Throat kisses.

Open mouth kisses.

Passionate kisses.

I feel a raindrop hit the top of my forehead. And soon another. And another. It didn’t stop us from kissing each other though. Nothing can make me tear my mouth from hers. I stand up, awkward as hell, from the Adirondack chair, with her still wrapped around me. We laugh around each other’s mouths at the klutziness of trying to stand still linked together, but we don’t part.

“Hold tight — don’t let go.”

She holds my face in her hands and looks into my eyes, through the rain that is coming down even heavier now, a steady shower of cool raindrops. Her legs are still wrapped around my waist with her ankles hooked tightly. “Never,” she says with such confidence and happiness in her voice that it makes me shudder.

We walk through the rain, back up the stone path and into the cabin. I fumble for the knob and twist. The door opens, and I kick it back closed; the fact that this is the second time we have walked into the cabin lost in each other’s kiss isn’t lost on me. And I won’t change it for the world.

We only make it to the couch before we stumble and fall, still linked together by our mouths, our hands, our legs.

I tug and pull until her clothes are a wet mess on the floor.

She stands over me on the couch, blue eyes shining, lips red and swollen from my kisses. Completely naked. Completely unashamed. She snaps her fingers once. I sit up instantly, smiling up at her.

She tugs and pulls until my clothes are in a wet pile on the floor beside hers.

I flip her over onto her stomach and continue my kisses.

Shoulder kisses.

Back-of-her-neck kisses.

Between-her-shoulder-blade kisses.

Small-of-her-back kisses.

I kiss her everywhere.

She kisses me everywhere.

We kiss and kiss and kiss. We touch. We caress. We remember. We make love on the couch. We make love in the claw foot tub. We make love in the bed and, when we are sated and have had our fill of each other, we lie wrapped in each other’s arms, bodies exhausted, hearts happy, souls complete. We listen to the rain and thunder until we fall asleep holding one another. We are finally once again… us.

Chapter Nineteen

Tess

“Iremember seeing you in the bleachers that day. For some reason, my eyes were drawn to you. I couldn’t stop glancing in your direction. Lauren whispered to me something about how hot you and Josh looked then told me you were staring at me. We giggled and were so excited and nervous. But, I didn’t know what to do. I’d never been nervous around you before so it was confusing. I kept asking Lauren if you were still looking. Man, Barrett, I desperately hoped that you were staring at me. And that it was for the same reason that I wanted to stare at you. When Coach called you guys up front, I saw your eyes flick over in my direction,” I tell him after we had both woken up from a rain-induced nap, and he gives me a huge grin, not ashamed at all that I saw him looking my way. Of course, this isn’t the first time either of us have revisited this story, but it always makes me smile remembering those first few days, weeks, months of loving each other. Finding each other, discovering each other in an entirely different way than we had before.

“Even though I’d known you for years, I fell so hard and fast for you. It’s kind of crazy since we had known each other our entire lives. It was like a switch was flipped, and I saw you in an entirely different light. I remember feeling like the luckiest girl in the entire world that your eyes only found mine. That you had picked me. We were so young. Can you imagine our kids having that kind of love already?”