Neither of my parents realizing this guy is so close to stealing me away from them forever. From this business. This life I never wanted. This future they’ve painted for me.
How much would they like him then, if they knew I wanted to run away with him and never look back?
The next instant, our lips are together again. To my bed we stumble—my bed, upon which I have dreamed this circumstance countless times, hugging my phone to my chest with my earbuds stuffed in, Chase Holt’s voice lulling me to another world, rain on the window, dreaming of lips—and now it’s happening in the flesh.
I wish I could capture this feeling in my chest right now and never let it out—my prisoner of pleasure, happily dancing around inside me, treasured and radiating in me forever.
He makes everything seem so easy.
So possible.
“You were scared to share all of this with me,” he says after we’ve both calmed down, now lying side by side, gazing into each other’s eyes. He keeps stroking my hair. “I don’t know what you were afraid of. Your mom is sweet.”
“That’s how shegetsyou,” I tease, then wonder if I’m joking or not. “I mean, my parents aren’t evil. They just … have expectations for me.” I frown. “Maybe you can relate, with all of your Chase Holt obligations.”
“Of course I relate,” he says softly, fingers playing over my ears, barely tickling the hairs there. “A lot of people depend onme to … well … be me.” He gives a tragic, lopsided smile. “But I can tell you, none of that crosses my mind when I’m here with you. I don’t have to be anything but the guy in your room right now strokin’ your hair and feelin’ dizzy with happiness.”
I can’t help but smile. “Dizzy with happiness? That’s what you feel right now?”
“More than you know,” he murmurs so softly, I barely hear it.
One of my hands is on his side, gently running up and down over the smooth, soft texture of his shirt. “Me too,” I say back.
It’s crazy how, just by lying next to each other on a bed, we help each other feel more like ourselves and less like the people everyone in our lives wants us to be.
Help me out of your quicksand, and I’ll help you out of mine.
Seems our little deal is still intact.
Believe it or not, we don’t spend the rest of the day making out on my bed. Not because we don’t want to, hell no, but because there’s a sudden freedom in the air neither of us can deny.
There’s so much more I want to show him suddenly.
Austin, curious and bright as ever, drinks up every bit of it.
The gardens outside, for example. The afternoon turns out to be way hotter and sunnier than what was forecasted, so we stick mostly to the shade. Thankfully, there’s plenty of it around here, from the covered pathways around the edges of the house to the veiled groves. He takes off his boots at one point and walks in the grass barefoot. I decide to do the same because why not?
He’s awed by the mixed-up rainbow of roses that run along the low brick wall extending out from the main house, saying it’s like something out of a fairytale instead of something I’ve walked past a thousand times without appreciating it. He stops to touch everything. The thorns on the roses. A decorative stonefeature at the end of the fence. A statue of an angel in the back courtyard.
We sit on the edge of a fountain. He runs his hand across the water. “You ever come here to make a wish at night?” We listen to the water bubbling in its center. “Ever had one come true?”
I avoid saying some obvious thing sitting at the very top of my heart right now, that this moment, this day, this whole time with him has been the stuff of so many of my dreams.
So instead I just say, “The poor fountain has no coins sitting at the bottom. Why should I expect to have any wishes come true if I don’t toss a single coin in?”
He shrugs. “Not all wishes cost money.”
I eye him with a smirk. “So we’re supposed to just … expect happiness for free?”
He looks at me sincerely. “All happiness is free.”
My smirk drops away.
I think Austin is making me see my own life for the first time.
The privilege. And the emptiness. And the joys right in front of my face that have nothing to do with my parents’ wealth or my own confined placement in the world. Things I could simply reach out and just … have.If I let myself.
I’d kiss him right here and now if I wasn’t certain my mother was lurking at one of the twenty windows facing this fountain and wondering about us.