“Yeah, he was texting me.”
She studied him and he prepared himself for her much-delayed wrath.
“I texted him about practices. You remember, he was the junior captain for hockey?”
Her head barely moved in a nod.
“Well, after I heard about how the accident happened, I checked my phone. I sent him those texts, and he’d replied back right before when the car must have crashed.”
“So you’re saying…”
“It’s my fault that you were injured. That you and Todd didn’t stay together.”
She pulled her lower lip in and teethed at it, locking her stare on him. Seconds passed in a godawful silence. Her eyeing him, not like she was angry, but… Well, for once, he couldn’t read her.
His heart thundered in his chest and his shoulders slouched. It was over. He’d told her. And now they’d have nothing.
“So…you’ve thought—for…fourteen years—that because you sent him a text that you were responsible for what he did with it. That you somehow forced Todd to answer your message while he was driving.”
“Not— No. Obviously, I couldn’t control what he did.”
She ticked up a finger, counting off. “Okay. That’s the first fact I bet you’d been evading. Two, he was on his phone sexting with some senior.”
He tore his focus from her second finger standing up. “What?”
She nodded. “The cops went through his phone record. Given the circumstances, as the one who’d caused the crash, Todd was very cooperative. He’d owned up to being on his phone, even gave them the device and let them check it in as evidence. He’d been chatting up that senior, who he’d been sleeping with the whole time he’d been ‘going out’ with me.”
Blood rushed faster and his heart beat wildly. Was it possible? He wasn’t to blame? At all? Unable to find grounding in this new turn of events, he looked everywhere but at her. The steady conviction in her tone and gaze proved him wrong. He’d been wrong. All wrong for too long.
“Maybe your texts were on there, but he hadn’t answered them in the timeframe they’d estimated for when he’d been driving. The senior—some debate team guy—cooperated too. He seemed nervous to admit to anything at first, but I bet that had more to do with being outed. I think he really felt pretty bad about it all. I remember Molly said he was in tears when they’d finished questioning him. He even brought me a bouquet and get well card, burst into tears when he apologized to me in the hospital.”
Someone else had distracted that punk.
“Which, it wasn’t exactly her fault. Only Todd was driving that car. Only he could make the decision to pick up his phone or not.”
Not me.
Years and years of guilt and shame…all for nothing.
He brought his astonished stare to her and gulped. It didn’t seem like there was enough air in the back of the SUV. He felt his fingers sliding from her grip as his hands grew even clammier. Too many world-altering emotions rushed at him.
I’m an idiot for assuming. Regret crushed him in place.
It wasn’t my fault. Relief spurned him toward giddiness.
She won’t hate me now. Hope spiked faster and faster as he watched her watching him.
“It wasn’t your fault, Aaron.”
He licked his dry lips and said, “I thought it was. All this time, I thought I’d caused the accident.”
She shook her head and tightened her hand around his.
“And if you knew it was my fault, you’d never—you’d hate me for it.”
Again, she slowly shook her head.
“But…”
“I’ve never had a reason to hate you. I’ve only done the opposite. I love you.” She smiled, more to herself than for him as she glanced to the side. “For a long time.”
“Me too.”
Still holding her hand, he rode the rush of excitement as this new truth sank in.
They loved each other. After so many years of misunderstandings, shyness, and bad timings, they fit with each other.
His misplaced guilt couldn’t stop him from going for what he wanted now. Her shyness and assuming he was taken couldn’t hold her back, either.
And as he leaned in to finally kiss his girl—really, his girl—he decided it was past time they do something about it.
Chapter Seven
Aaron closed the distance between their faces and she lunged toward him with matched fervor. The instant their lips touched, she had her proof. It was kismet. It was perfection. It was her longest dream coming true.
“Baby,” Aaron said, cradling her face with his large hand. “We’ve got so much catching up to do.”
She wasn’t a giggler by nature, but there was no stopping the bubble of mirth escaping her lips. He chased it away, though, crashing his hot mouth to hers and sealing her with another kiss—or ten—to show her that the feelings floating between them were definitely not one-sided.
And as he crawled to her, never breaking their kiss, she lowered to lie on the seats, proving that there were no friend-zoned issues to figure out.
He was hers.
Finally, he was hers and she could truly be his girl.
It was only a matter of minutes before their kisses deepened, only several laughable tangoed moves of removing clothes, and only mere moments of playing around before they gave themselves, heart, mind, and soul, to each other.
After they made love and cuddled into the blankets, Aaron started laughing. It began as a huffed chuckle but then she was bouncing from his chest thundering in full-out laughter.
Maybe it was the aftermath of so much angst and distance that he was drunk on it. On them. She smiled, twisting in his hold to look at him.
“What’s so funny?”
“Molly,” he got out between panted breaths.
“What about her?”
“I never told her,” he admitted. “She has no clue how I’ve felt about you. I never told anyone.”
Her lips curved against the skin of his shoulder. “Me neither.”
“So imagine the look on her face when we get to the cabin tomorrow.”
She envisioned it. The shock. The disbelief. The doubt that the two people closest to her had been hiding their feelings for each other for years. Molly prided herself in getting into other people’s business and loved the high of gossiping about shocking, scandalous surprises.
Now she started to laugh.
“Or…are we even going to go now?” he asked.
Nestling into his embrace, she relished the feel of his hot flesh against hers. She slid her leg up and over his hard, muscular thigh and his eyes darkened with desire again. “What do you mean?”
He eased one hand under the blanket and caressed her leg, from hip to knee, dipping his hand lower until his strokes were teasing close to her sex. “This. This is what I mean.”
Taking her by surprise, he rolled over so he covered her. After a long, hot kiss, he whispered against her lips, “We could skip the cabin altogether and spend the weekend like this.”
“In my car in the woods?” She barked a laugh.
He grinned but moved to trace openmouthed kisses along her jaw and toward her neck. “God, I’ll never get tired of your taste.”
She threaded her fingers through his hair as he lowered himself to her chest.
“We could go back to civilization and just spend time together. Before work calls.”
His words chilled her from the pull of intimacy.
Work. His wasn’t at home. Sadness tried to slip into her mood and she resolved this wasn’t the time to plot out a future.
“Because I can’t wait to go into the office and tell them I will be taking them up on that offer to work from home for the firm.”
She gripped his blond mess and tugged his face to hers. “Say what?” Her lips cracked into a wide smile and he kissed her chin.
“I’m not wasting another minute of my life now that I’ve got my girl. I’m moving back home.”
Thril
led with his decision, never having expected something so perfect as him back at home as a possibility, she squeed and shoved at him. With a grunt, he surrendered and let her straddle him. He lay back and smiled at her.
“This is the best day of my life.”
He tugged her closer to him. With his hand on the back of her head, he secured her for a wet kiss. “The best?”
She ground her hips against his. “Oh yeah.”
“You know, you weren’t even in the mood to wake up this morning.”
That hangover was a distant memory in the wake of all the changes and lessons learned during the day. She shrugged.
“And how can I ever top the best day? Huh?” He grunted as she moved against him again.
You could on our wedding day, maybe. She grinned, keeping that thought to herself. No need to rush into long-term plans just yet. She didn’t need to tell him every thought she had.
“That’s a wicked-looking smile you got there, baby. What are you thinking?”
She snaked her hands around his neck and then up to lose her fingers in his messy hair. “Only that every day with you is already the best.”
“And we’ve got all the time in the world to make up for the lost ones.” He lined her up to his cock and entered her. “And there’s no time to start like now.”
Acknowledgments
For editing, I thank C.J. Pinard at www.cjpinard.com. For the cover design, I thank Laura Hidalgo at Spellbinding Design at www.spellbindingdesing.com. For proofreading, I thank PSW.
About the Author
Amabel Daniels lives in Northwest Ohio with her patient husband, three adventurous girls, and a collection of too many cats and dogs. Although she holds a Master’s degree in Ecology, her true love is finding a good book. When she isn’t spending time outdoors, or wondering how to negotiate with her mightily independent daughters, she’s busy brewing up her next novel, usually as she lets her mind run off with the addictive words of “what if…”
For more information about Amabel’s work and to sign up for her newsletter, please stop by www.amabeldaniels.com.
Other Books by the Author
Newland Family
Better Than the Best (Free!)
Appetite of Envy
Resisting Redemption
Covert Identities
Don’t Go Back
Always Was
Indeed
Across From You
Next To Me
Flawed Plan
Olde Earth Academy
Secrecy
Discovery
Mastery
Victory
On the Way to the Cabin Page 6
