All My Heart (Count On Me Book 4)

by Melyssa Winchester

  It’s an overwhelming feeling of rightness. Even if Dillon thinks that what I’ve done is the stupidest move in the world, it doesn’t change anything for me. My life right from the second my mom walked me over to the Reagan house has been joined with Belle’s. That’s what the paperwork for the house is about. Making sure our lives are joined now the same way we were then.

  Forever.

  Get my girl here in one piece, Dill.

  Hey Grandma, stop worrying. Your girl is safe with me.

  Not if you keep texting.

  After a few seconds of silence, where I finally allow myself to believe that he’s put his focus back on the road where it belongs, another text comes through.

  Dillon had one job. Pick my girlfriend up and get her here in one piece. Texting back and forth when his focus needs to be elsewhere is starting to piss me off.

  At least it is until I see the words on my screen.

  I love you, Kay. <3

  Belle. Not Dillon. And just like that, my imagination settles and my heart rate evens out until it’s a slow steady drumming with only the slight alteration of jumping every time I think about seeing her.

  Dropping down off the back of the car and fishing my keys out of my pocket, I unlock the trunk and pull out the only other thing I’m gonna need to make this night perfect.

  The original plan was to walk the boardwalk, but somewhere along the way that changed. It expanded until the only way I could see this happening at all was to have it this way instead.

  I want to spend my anniversary here on the beach with Belle, wrapped up in her, falling asleep to the sound of waves crashing into the sand and the stars shining above us.

  I want to take her on a walk to remember.

  Gripping tightly onto the blankets I grabbed earlier and tossing them inside the bag, I slam the trunk closed the minute headlights turn onto the street and start making their way closer. Coming around to the front of the car, I wait until it pulls up beside me and comes to a complete stop, the door opening, preparing to finally give me what I’ve waited all day to have.

  Belle here with me.

  Belle

  When I exhausted every available option in terms of a ride, I finally gave in and called the only other person left.

  With as easy as it was for me to call Dillon when I wanted to go to Toronto, calling him for this felt strange. It became even stranger when I caught what sounded like excitement as he eagerly said yes.

  It all began making sense when he showed up at the house to get me after only a half hour of waiting. This wasn’t strange or weird anymore. It was planned.

  After trying for the entire drive to get him to tell me where we were going and getting nowhere, I finally gave up and resigned myself to being patient and waiting the way I’m sure Kayden wanted me to.

  Surprises really suck.

  It’s only when he pulled onto yet another street that he reached over and squeezed my shoulder, letting me know that he understood.

  “Have you figured out where I’m taking you yet?”

  “No. Should I have?”

  He smiles and where I expect him to speak he just nods. Before I can ask why I should know, the car slows to a crawl and comes to a complete stop. Looking toward him, he motions with his hand out the window and as I turn, I see why.

  Standing under a lone street light is Kayden, complete with a bag around his arm and a smile that reminds me of the one Dillon gave me a few seconds before.

  “Can you do me a favor?”

  “Sure.”

  “Can you let him know I drove like an old lady in order to get you here?”

  “Why do I need to do that?”

  “Because he said if I didn’t he’d cut my balls off and I’m pretty sure you know why I don’t want that happening.”

  With a laugh and a squeeze of my hand, I wrap my fingers around the door and push it open, making sure as I do that the seat belt has been completely pulled away from me. As I’m about to close the door once my feet have touched the ground, I hear Dillon call out again.

  “Happy Anniversary, Belle.”

  Smiling before shutting the door, I turn and come in direct contact with Kayden as he wraps his arms around, pulling me into him. His scent the first thing I’m hit with after I feel the spark that runs through me the minute we touch.

  Standing completely still until Dillon’s headlights become dots in the distance as he backs out, Kayden moves first, turning my body forward before coming to rest behind me, one arm draped completely around while the other one points out into the distance.

  “Do you see it?” He asks and following, I see clearly what he’s talking about.

  The beach. The sun lowering in the distance and the moon starting to rise, casting an orangey red hue through the lower part of the sky. The faint traces of stars already visible even though the sun hasn’t completely gone down.

  It’s beautiful.

  “I see a lot of things, Kay.”

  He laughs and brings his other hand down to rest until they’re both locked securely around me.

  “You wanna know a secret?”

  “Sure.” I whisper before pulling my eyes away from the view in front of us and letting my gaze fall on him and the way his eyes look, softened and focused solely on me.

  “All I see is you.”

  Before I can respond, his head lowers until his lips are brushing softly against mine and for the first time since I woke up today, everything feels complete.

  Whole.

  “Come on.” He says as he releases his hold around me, sliding his hand around and under until our fingers are linked together. “As much as I want to stand here and kiss you all night, there’s something else I want to do more.”

  Keeping pace with him, I take in everything going on around me as we finally leave the street and find ourselves on the long wooden boardwalk that spans out for miles in front of us.

  “Why did you want to bring me here?”

  “Do you remember when I brought you to the park for lunch? The way you reacted once you got out of the car?” I nod and he continues. “You’ve always loved being outside and I wanted to do that for you again, but someplace we’ve never been together.”

  He doesn’t realize it, but it’s more than just a spot we’ve never been together. I’ve never been here at all. With my mom keeping me close to home, we never made the trip down here and seeing it now, especially at night, I’m so glad we didn’t. I want this to be something only Kayden and I share.

  It can be the one thing that’s just ours.

  “Have you been here a lot?”

  “Not since I was a kid.”

  “I’ve never been here at all.”

  Where we’d been walking along and talking, he stops and my body pauses with him. Pulling his hand from mine, he lifts it up and wraps it around me, pulling me into him until we’re connected again. It’s only when we’re as close as we can get that he leans in and speaks again.

  “You’ve really never been here before now?”

  “Never.”

  “Then I’m really glad I did this.” He places a soft kiss to the top of my head before starting to walk again, my body gliding with his effortlessly, both of us locked in a comfortable silence as we continue moving and taking it all in.

  “You wanna hear something weird?”

  “Kay, nothing you say could ever be weird.”

  “Fine. Do you wanna hear what I just thought about?”

  “Of course.”

  “You see how the boardwalk just seems to keep going? Like from where we’re standing right now, it looks like it will never end?”

  I let my eyes roam further down the path until I see exactly what he mean. A never ending wooden walkway that even with the fading of the daylight seems to run on forever and I nod in understanding.

  “That’s how I feel about us. We started out in one place when we were kids, like we did when we started back there,” he says before using his free hand to poin
t backwards. “But we just continue moving along with no real end in sight. We go on forever.”

  “Kay…”

  I have no words for what he just said and for him to think that it’s weird is crazy. I used to think that no one understood weird like I did because of my differences, but I’m not even sure I know what weird is anymore. I do know this is definitely not it.

  What he’s said, it’s beautiful. Breathtakingly beautiful and I’m not even sure I can find the words to tell him that because looking at this boardwalk and thinking about it in terms of us, made me speechless.

  “I know. It’s cheesy right?”

  “No, it’s not. It’s not weird or cheesy or whatever word you’re gonna call it next.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes, really. What you said, it’s sweet.”

  “So that means you’re blushing right?”

  When I first got with Kayden, I was amazed at the way my body would react to him. Whenever he said anything sweet, I would blush or smile almost wistfully, his words always touching a part of my heart that I didn’t even know existed, but as time goes on, I’m no longer amazed. I’m starting to see now what was so shocking then.

  The Kayden effect.

  It’s present now just like it always is. Where I hadn’t felt the flush or the heat rise to the surface the way I have before, it does start to rise the minute he mentions me blushing. I’m reacting to him.

  “I am now.”

  “Well, let’s see if I can make it go even deeper.” He laughs before leaning even closer, running his thumb across my overheated cheek, before whispering so low that only I can hear him. “I want to walk this path with you someday. I don’t care if it veers off in another direction or ends completely. It will be okay because I’ll be with you. Where it ends will be where we begin again.”

  Tomatoes aren’t as red as I am. I can tell because where I was already reactive before, having Kayden this close, I’m on fire and he’s the only one that can put it out.

  “Did it work, Belle? Are you ten shades of crimson yet or do I need to keep going?”

  The blush goes deeper still and lowering my head slightly, not wanting him to catch just how deeply he’s affecting me, I nod my head and I feel his chest expand against my body as his laugh and contented sigh escape.

  He knows what he’s doing to me and he likes it and if the way my body is reacting is any indication, I’m liking it too. A little too much. It’s like we’re back on the sofa again, connected in the most intimate way possible, feeling so many things and dying for a place to release them all.

  Opening my mouth to say something, respond to the onslaught of emotion that his words have brought alive in me, my breath hitches, a tiny moan escaping and Kayden’s body stiffens next to mine.

  “Belle.” He says, his own breath catching before turning me around to face him. “What was that?”

  His eyes are darker now, a way I haven’t seen them in a while and besides being confused by what he’s asking me, it’s also a bit scary.

  “I—don’t know.” I stammer nervously. “Did I do something wrong?”

  “No, you didn’t.” He pauses, his hands still unmoving and I take the chance and lift my eyes until I catch sight of his. The look I had seen only a few seconds before is replaced with a softer, more understanding one now. Almost as if he’s realizing he scared me. “You made this sound, one you’ve never made before. I can’t—”

  “You can’t what?” I pick up, hating the fact that he cut off his train of thought again and desperate to get it back. I need to know what’s going through his head.

  “I don’t think I can explain what it felt like hearing you make that sound, but I’m gonna try, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  He captures my lips with his, pulling them in deeper than he ever has before and as I match his intensity with my own, it happens again, only this time it’s muffled as our every movement, breath, beat of our hearts is tangled up tightly in each other.

  It’s only when he breaks away, breathless, bringing one hand away from my face and to his lips, letting his fingers linger on the spot where they just touched mine that I get what he means. The sound I made is what he’s getting at. I reacted to him with a moan.

  “Whoa.”

  I want to ask him what he means by that. If it’s a good thing or a bad thing, but the words won’t come out. It’s like I’ve gone back in time and there’s something blocking my way, except this time, it’s my own reaction to the kiss we shared. How different it felt from the other ones and the quivering inside I’m feeling because of it.

  The look, it’s there in his eyes again, but this time, I need to know why. I’m not as scared by it as I was before, but there’s still no denying that I don’t understand it.

  “Kay, why are you looking at me like that?”

  “Huh? Like what?” He moves closer but instead of welcoming it, I take a step back and when he realizes what I’ve done, there’s no denying his own confusion.

  “Did I do something wrong? Was that the wrong noise to make? Is it too weird?”

  His expression softens, but the pounding of my heart doesn’t lessen any at the sight of it, reminding me again of how different I am.

  It had taken me going to my mom and asking her what it felt like when you like someone in order to be able to tell if what I was feeling around Kayden meant something. What I’m experiencing now, there’s no one around to ask and even if there was, I wouldn’t know where to begin.

  All of this is awkward to me. Why I’m making sounds with him, why it feels like someone’s lit a match under my feet whenever I’m within a few feet of him, it’s all new to me and I don’t have the first clue if any of it is right or if what I’m feeling is good or bad. This is not like the way it was a few weeks ago at all.

  “Baby,” he whispers before moving toward me again, this time bringing me straight into his body and wrapping his arms around me, lightly placing kiss after kiss across the top of my head the minute I’m securely in his arms. “There is nothing wrong with what you did, it was the perfect noise to make and it’s definitely not weird. I’m finding it hard to stop myself from making you do it again.”

  “It’s not bad?”

  He laughs but it’s rougher than before. Why is all of this so strange to me? Why can’t I just understand it like a normal person?

  “It’s impossible for you to be bad at anything, Belle.”

  “That’s not true.”

  He sighs at my denial and pulls himself away from me, grabbing onto my hand quickly and moving his body, forcing me to keep up with him as he’s practically drags me along down the boardwalk, his final destination unclear.

  “Kay…”

  “Give me a second, okay? I wanna explain everything to you, but not in front of a million other people.” He calls back, continuing to move, but slowing his pace so that I can walk beside him again.

  When he finally stops, we’re completely off the pathway and further down the beach that I ever expected us to go. What I also notice the minute we’re completely still is that there’s next to no one around. He’s moved us so quickly and so far that there doesn’t seem to be anyone wanting to go this far down, giving us the privacy he’s after.

  Pulling the bag from around his shoulder he tosses it to the sand and bends down until he’s pulling out the blankets and placing them down. Leaning down to help him, I seat myself the minute they’re straight and he follows me, but taking it a step further as he pulls me into the space between his legs.

  “What you’re seeing in my eyes isn’t bad, Belle. It’s different but not bad.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I know, baby but I’m going to try and explain since my attempt earlier didn’t work.”

  “Okay.”

  “Whenever I’m alone with you and we’re kissing, this happens to me. My head goes fuzzy, like I can’t think straight, my heart rate climbs, I sweat a ton and I physically react to what we’r
e doing and I want more. I know you know this because we’ve talked about it before. What just happened on the boardwalk, it’s never been like that for me. It was different. You made it different.”

  “I didn’t mean to.”

  “Take that back, please.”

  “What?”

  “Please don’t ever say that you didn’t mean to make something different, especially something like that. I want that kind of different. I want what you just gave me back there.”

  “I still don’t get it. The way you looked at me, it was heavy, Kay. Like scary heavy. You didn’t look angry but the look scared me.”

  He leans me forward, taking my hair in his hands and wrapping it around until it falls over my shoulder and before I know it, I feel his breath on the back of my neck and the heated feeling from earlier, the one that made the moan slip out of my mouth is back again, only stronger this time. When his lips make contact, I tense, but instantly release as the brush of them against my skin makes the whole area surrounding it tingle and burn.

  It feels good. So good, but before I can tell him that, it ends and he’s pulling me back against him.

  “Tell me what you felt when I did that.”

  “It felt like every nerve in my neck was on fire.”

  “Now you know what the look in my eyes was. Baby, I know this is all new to you, but what I did earlier, whispering in your ear like that, even if I wasn’t trying to, I turned you on.”

  “Like a light switch?”

  He buries his face in my hair but not before I catch his laughter. My words obviously as amusing to him as they were to me even though I couldn’t be more serious.

  “Yes, Belle. Like a light switch. Exactly like that, but the bulb in this case isn’t 100 watts, it’s more like 1000.”

  “So,” I piece together everything he’s told me. “The look in your eyes earlier, it was because I turned you on like you did with me?”

  “Yes. I’ve probably had the same look at home when we’re making out, but because we’re so focused on each other, you didn’t get to see it then.”