by Knight, Amie
“Wow, it’s beautiful tonight,” he said before backing away and looking at me.
“Your turn.” His blue eyes danced and shone with a love that was as big as the sky.
I blushed and warmed at those sweet, caring eyes, the fever upon me just as much as it had been when we were kids. I figured it would always be this way, my love so undeniable for Adam, my body still couldn’t help but warm at the mere sight of him.
I grinned as I leaned forward and put my right eye to the lens. What I saw made my world turn on its axis.
My breath caught.
My chest burned.
My nose stung as tears immediately flooded my eyes.
I pulled my face away from the telescope and looked at the full bright moon, which was just a regular old white moon. I pressed my eye back to the lens and just like before the moon was completely covered in words that read Will You Marry Me?
I pulled back and looked at the blank moon again before turning around to Adam. “How did you do tha—” But I didn’t get to finish my sentence because there he was, my boy with the tattoos down on one knee, looking up at me like I was his world, his head outstretched, his dark hair hanging over his eye, and in the middle of his palm was a little origami star. I hadn’t seen one of those since our trip to Preston’s.
The tears in my eyes slid down my cheeks as my trembling hand reached for the paper star. I held it tightly in my hand as I looked down at Adam looking so vulnerable and nervous I wanted to kiss him.
I pulled the front of the star and it unfolded, revealing a ring with a white gold band and a starburst of diamonds right in the middle. It was the most beautiful ring I’d ever seen, but it didn’t matter; it could have been a ring made of tin and it still would have been the most amazing, romantic moment of my life. I still would have said yes.
In the middle of the paper I read the words my ring on your finger.
A hiccup of a sob slipped free as I looked back down at Adam, his eyes questioning, his face so hopeful.
I had to put him out of his misery that very second. “Yes,” I whispered through my tears, nodding like a crazy woman. “Yes. For forever.”
Still on one knee, he reached his pinky finger out and up. “Pinky swear?”
Tears like two rivers ran down my face as I reached my pinky out, too, wrapping it around his. “Pinky swear.”
Eight Years Later
“I SEE IT, DADDY!” SHE pointed across the field. “I see it right over there.”
I smiled. “Well, then you better go get it.” And she was off, her soft, sweet smelling baby hair blowing in the wind wildly around her face as she ran.
She stopped suddenly and yelled back at me, “Hurry, Daddy, hurry!”
So I ran to catch up with her and arrived just in time to see her pick up the old discolored Coke bottle and clutch it in her chubby hands.
She turned it over and shook it impatiently, just like she’d done dozens of times.
“Remember, it won’t shake out. You’ll have to pull out the paper with your fingers, baby girl.”
She pushed one little finger inside the bottle and snagged the white notebook paper and slid it out excitedly. “Oh, I wonder what the man on the moon left me this time, Daddy.”
I couldn’t help it. I smiled like a damn fool. I loved how much she loved the stars. My momma would have been over the moon for Bia Nova. I knew I was.
I looked over across the field where Liv was laid out on her daddy’s blue blanket and watching us. I gave her a wink and her cheeks flushed as she gave me an eye roll and bit her lip. She liked to pretend she was immune to my flirtations, but we’d been married for seven years and I could still make her blush with the best of them.
“What’s it say, Daddy?” Bia jumped around me, waving her notebook paper in the air.
I grabbed the note from her and pretended to read it carefully and thoughtfully like I’d never seen the thing before in my life when in reality I’d left it in the bottle in the field only a couple of hours ago.
“Oh, this is a good one, Bia.”
Her little hands pulled at the bottom of my T-shirt. “Tell me!”
“It says, find Ursa Major in the sky and look for its opposite.” I placed my hands on her shoulders and steered her toward Ursa Major and told her to stop. “There it is, now turn all the way around.” I pointed her in the exact opposite direction. I pulled the note out again and read it to her. “See those four stars in the sky shaped like a ‘W’? That’s Cassiopeia named after the vain queen of Cassiopeia in Greek Mythology, who boasted about her unrivaled beauty, but she doesn’t have anything on you, Columbia Nova. You’re the most gorgeous girl in the universe.
“Until the next time I see you beneath the stars. Love, The Man on the Moon.”
She looked at the sky and smiled, her blue eyes full of twinkling stars. “The man on the moon thinks I’m beautiful, Daddy.”
I nodded, smiling. “He does.”
“Just like Cassiopeia!” she declared.
“More than Cassiopeia!” I corrected her.
She snatched the note from my hand and took off across the field. “I can’t wait to tell Mommy!” she shouted while she ran.
I walked after her, but by the time I got there she was already sprawled in the middle of the blanket next to Liv, holding the note over them so Liv could read it to her again.
I stared around at our field that was mostly a parking lot with a big building in the middle now. Off to the side was still enough space for us to lay out our blanket from time to time, which we did. I’d say we missed our big field, but we didn’t really. Helping the underprivileged children in the area definitely outweighed our desire to have this place to ourselves.
Besides, we rented my giant house on the island to vacationers and bought a place of our own on the mainland smack dab between the planetarium and the community center. Liv spent most of her days and evenings between the two places but mostly here at the center. I was here often enough but spent the majority of my time at the planetarium and working on a new star gazing app, although LUNA was still widely used.
A few telescopes sat at the edges of the grounds and the place had been so successful for the past eight years. Kids had come and gone, lives had been changed in the very same place Liv and I had fallen in love, and now we got to share it with our children.
I’d made sure to make this note a good one for Bia, knowing we wouldn’t be out here much soon. Liv was going to pop any second and much to my chagrin it was another girl. Liv said we would call her Jennifer for my mother.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, please stop being a wiggle worm, Columbia. You are driving me crazy,” Liv said, wiggling around on her father’s blue blanket quite a bit herself.
“Stay still, Bia. Your momma’s cranky.” I settled down on the blanket and tickled three-year-old Columbia’s side as she lay between Liv and me.
Liv shot me an angry look. “I’m not cranky.”
I smirked back over Bia’s head. “I can’t tell by the look on your face.”
She shot me a smile that could have belonged to a serial killer. She was cranky, but she had every right. The woman was eight months pregnant and lying on a blanket on the ground.
“Show me Papa José’s favorite star, Bia.” I’d do anything to distract her.
She pointed to the northern star and I beamed down at her.
“And why is that his favorite?”
She looked up at me, smiling. “Because it shines the brightest just like his love, Grandma Jenny.”
“That’s right, baby girl.”
She pointed to another part of the sky. “But that’s Aunt Mel’s favorite and that’s Uncle Seb’s favorite.” Her tiny hand flew around over her head. “And Raven said that when she went to Alaska she saw the northern lights in the sky, but they aren’t stars.”
And on and on she went. There was one thing I was learning about little girls and it was that they freaking loved to talk.
I looked ove
r at Liv while Bia went on and on and her eyes were open staring at the stars, her hands positioned behind her head as a pillow, her ankles crossed. She was still the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen and every year she just got better and better.
It became quiet and I looked down to find Bia curled up on her side sound asleep. I wasn’t surprised. The child was either going a hundred miles a minute or knocked out. She had no in between. She was the most amazing thing I’d ever made. I moved over onto my side of the blanket and crawled over her body so I could lie next to Liv.
I came up on an elbow and gazed down at her as I laid a hand to her round belly.
“Close your eyes, Nova,” I whispered to her.
She looked over at me and grinned. “Why?”
“Because you can’t dream with your eyes open.”
She reached her hand up and rubbed her thumb across the stubble on my jaw. “I don’t need to close my eyes, Adam. I’m living the dream.”
And I fell in love with her all over again.
Yes, I’d fallen in love many times in my life, but always with the same woman. Livingston Rose Montgomery.
She was right. It was a good dream. It was Novas against the world and we were growing every day.
Did you enjoy your trip to Preston’s Peach Farm? Keep reading for a sneak peek of Everly and Cole’s story in The Line.
IT WAS EIGHT P.M. WHEN I boarded the train just like I did most nights—quietly, stealthily. I was a ghost. Hardly anyone ever saw me. What I was doing was wrong. I knew it, but even the best people did bad things when faced with unspeakable obstacles. And I wasn’t the best. Not by a long shot.
A light sheen of sweat blanketed my body as equal parts adrenaline and dread filled me up. Dread and adrenaline, they were always there—heavy and cumbersome. I carried them around with me everywhere. It was a small miracle that nobody saw them. Only occasionally did they threaten to bubble to the surface of my skin, but I somehow always managed to push them back down. Down so far that only I knew they were still there—a living, breathing entity within me. I hated them, but I needed them. Dread was my tormentor. Adrenaline my savior.
When they weren’t present, guilt was. And that was the worst of all, because I felt like I’d never be rid of it. I could feel it. See it. Smell it. Taste it. Always. The guilt. It plagued me, and it was never-ending.
It sat so thick and rich in my throat that, sometimes, I felt like I might choke on it.
I swallowed it down and walked up the aisle, my head bowed to the floor. I didn’t need to look around. I knew this train like the back of my hand. I slumped my shoulders forward, curling in on myself—which made me invisible. The long strands of my brown hair fell around me, masking my blue eyes and the gaunt angles of my pale face. I pulled my old, black coat closer to my body, warding the chill off. Wiping my sweaty hands on my jeans, I finally lifted my head, darting my gaze around the familiar surroundings, checking for anything that might have been out of place.
An elderly couple was taking their seats on my left side. Too old. The mother with her two children two seats up and to the right? Too complicated. Two teenagers were chatting all the way in the back of the train car. Too young. I wasn’t a good person, but I did have some standards—a conscience. Some morals—not many, but some. Hunger and cold had stolen most of them.
The train was filling up fast. I needed to get what I’d come for and get off. I scanned the crowd some more. Watching and waiting. Patience was my friend, and she almost always paid off.
“Do you need a place to sit?”
I vaguely heard the low pulse of someone speaking through the boisterous voices of the embarking crowd. It didn’t register that anyone might have been speaking to me. People didn’t speak to a ghost.
“Miss, do you a need a seat?”
When I felt a light touch, I flinched. Touch was something I was unaccustomed to. It was one of those unattainable things. Up there with love, trust, and all the other things most people took for granted.
I found a brown-eyed, brown-haired man in a black Stetson—a beautiful cowboy. After a quick glance around, I realized everyone was getting settled. I was running out of time. Nausea rolled in my stomach. I was always trying to get off this train. I squeezed my eyes shut, willing the feeling of hopelessness away.
“You look tired,” the cowboy whispered up at me. The pity in his eyes almost undid me.
He saw me. All of me. The sunken cheeks. The cold, weary, dead look in my eyes. My dirty hair. My old clothes. And I didn’t like it.
I did the only thing I could to protect myself. I’d done it so many times that I’d lost count, but it didn’t ever make it any easier to do.
“See something you like, Cowboy?” My hip popped out, and I threw my hand on it for good measure, giving him a provocative grin.
He stared at me solemnly. That gaze. That stare. I felt naked and not in the usual way that I did when a man glanced me over. I was just a sixteen-year-old girl, but I knew the difference between a lust-filled look and an all-knowing one. And this cowboy saw right through me with just one gaze.
“I do,” he said, bringing me out of my thoughts and surprising me.
I quirked an eyebrow at him. “You do?” I asked. I had no idea what we were talking about anymore. His intense stare had completely thrown me off my game.
“I do see something I like,” he said, smiling sweetly. It wasn’t sexual. It was just kind.
I looked away in shame. It didn’t matter how sweet he was. How he saw me. I still had to do what I needed to do to survive.
Glancing back at the beautiful cowboy, I took in his gentle smile and his kind, brown eyes. He had his hand placed on the seat next to him where he wanted me to take a seat, and self-condemnation and shame swelled in my heart. But I couldn’t afford to feel guilty today. I couldn’t afford anything, really. Not even for this sweet-looking man offering me a place to rest.
I was too cold.
Too hungry.
Too tired.
I couldn’t afford to get off this line, no matter how much I wanted to.
Four Years Later
SUNSHINE AND FRESH LINENS. IT was probably my most favorite smell in the world. I breathed in deep, steeling myself for the same conversation I’d been having for a week. I was hanging clothes out to dry on the clothesline while simultaneously trying to talk Momma Lou out of sending me off for the summer. I hardly noticed the scattering of kids running around us—I was so used to them.
“I don’t want to leave, Momma Lou. I’m happy here.” I frowned, hanging a wet towel over the line and enjoying the sun shining on my face. And I was happy here. More than happy. From the outside looking in, one might think I was just content, but this life was a far cry from what my life had been before, and I was over the moon about it. I was damn near ecstatic here after the life I’d had. The past three years had been the happiest of my life.
Momma Lou stood on the other side of the clothesline and helped clip the towel to the line with clothes hangers. Her big hips were swaying back and forth to some song she was humming not so quietly. When she was done, she pulled the line down between us and leaned forward so she could look me in the eye.
“Baby girl, you think for one second that I’m not gonna miss you when you’re gone? If it was up to me, I’d keep you here with me forever, girl. It’s not up to me though.” She smiled her toothy grin that made me feel like the most loved girl in the world.
That same toothy grin had greeted me three years earlier and changed my life. And I was eternally grateful. Momma Lou had saved me that night. I’d shown up at the homeless shelter too late and it was full. So, I’d curled up into a ball under my coat and propped myself against the brick wall of the shelter, praying that they might at least send someone out with food. I was also kicking myself in the ass. I should have gotten there sooner. It was going to be a cold night. But I couldn’t seem to muster the energy to care anymore. I’d been doing this too long. This homeless thing. This star
ving thing. This barely-living-life thing. It was wearing on me.
I’d seen Momma Lou working in the kitchen at the shelter from time to time, but I hadn’t known her name. I hadn’t cared to. She was just another face in a sea of faces that all had a place to live and food in their bellies.
She’d stopped on the sidewalk on her way into the building and stared at my seventeen-year-old-self hard. Studying me. She pursed her lips, and I knew what she saw. I was so starved that I was practically skeletal. I barely had the wherewithal to try to survive anymore. I could feel myself finally giving up. I’d been knocking on death’s door. Too many years on the street had taken a terrible toll on my body. Not to mention what it had done to my soul.
And the running. You can only run so long, and I’d been doing it since the beginning. A slew of abusive foster homes always had me running back to the streets. A place where I, strangely, felt safest. The people on the streets ignored me, sure, but they didn’t beat me, try to touch me, or starve me.
“I’m Louise,” she’d stated frankly. “But everyone around here calls me Momma Lou.” Her curvy body swayed as she made her way toward the door to the shelter, and I was confused as to why she’d taken the time to tell me her name until she barked out, “Well, come on, girl. Let’s get you fed, and you can help me in the kitchen tonight.” She smiled.
