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My eyes drifted all over the clean, empty walls around us. “Talk about unexpected.”
Pulling me to his lap as he sat on the bed, he wrinkled his forehead at me. “What did you think you’d be walking into?”
Everything was perfect. Every book in alphabetical order. The fringes on the rug stick straight. “I don’t know. Booby posters and beer can pyramids, and trash piled up in the bin.”
Laughing back at me, his teeth went into his lip as he shook his head. “Yeah. No. Donna Vasser would not be at all okay with that. Believe me.”
I twisted his hair around my finger. “When do I get to meet her?” He rolled his eyes, releasing a sigh as I leaned over to make him look at me. “Or are you planning on keeping me a secret from her forever?”
I always thought my mother was the worst of the worst for leaving like she did. I couldn’t imagine anyone could be more horrible than that. So when he nodded at me, I have to admit, part of me felt like it was me he was ashamed of. “If I can help it, yeah.”
Maybe I was a little desperate to have a mother figure in my life again, but it hurt me that he thought she wouldn’t like me. Immediately, he recognized it and laid his hand on my cheek. “She’s not right upstairs, Faith. It has nothing to do with you, but that doesn’t mean she won’t make it about you.” His thumb moved over my lip. “I want to soak up as much of the good stuff as possible before I have to unleash all her mess on you.”
Barely touching his lip with mine, I closed my eyes and waited for him to take over. “You mean trap me with your voodoo love magic so I don’t run away?”
The hand on my face slid back into my hair as he nodded. “Exactly.”
Only sucking up my bottom lip a bit before he released me, he licked me off him and swatted my bottom. “Okay. Let’s do this.” Pushing me off his knee, he slid to the blue beanbag chair on the floor and reached for his controller. “These zombies aren’t just going to kill themselves.”
Another controller came across him as the opening sequence started, and we fell into a natural rhythm as we chatted, and laughed, and cursed at the screen.
We became each other’s comfort, relying on each other more every day until we could barely move without the other one doing it, too.
He was my best friend and first love, and I was Dom’s girl. No matter where we went, what happened, or how much time passed, it would always be that way — because that kind of connection to another person can never truly be broken.
9
New Years
Dominic
A patch of crazy warm weather settled over town those last few days.
Luckily for me, it coincided with my dad sending my mother and her sister on a cruise the week after Christmas.
So, while Faith’s father racked up all the overtime and holiday pay possible at the quarry, I spent every second loving on Faith the moment he left.
Laying in a tent on the back of my truck at the river the weekend we all camped out, I stared at her as she slept until the rising sun lit up the gray walls around us.
The bonfire died sometime through the night. So when she shivered, I pulled her open shirt toward me so our skin could touch again to warm her.
I thought the growing pressure deep inside my belly might ease a little when we finally slept together. But laying there with her in my arms the next morning, it was ten times bigger.
Being inside her for those few minutes I lasted only made me want her more.
I needed to be part of her. I was desperate for every thought in her head, the reason for it, and if it was about me.
Drenched in my body’s scent now, Faith was mine in every way that mattered to teenage me, and I never wanted her to wash me off. But I would’ve waited a while longer if I’d understood how much more I would ache for her and how it would push me off the deep end. I was not at all prepared for the emotional rollercoaster I’d hopped on to.
Like her being my girlfriend made her irresistible to other guys, a line of older boys was sniffing after her constantly the moment I left her side.
I’d been in three fistfights in as many months, and they wouldn’t be the last.
I lost my shit on anyone who gave her the slightest attention. Even Jason joking around with Faith like he’d done since they were toddlers made my blood boil.
But instead of sex making me more secure about my place in her life and where this thing was heading, I was only more afraid. I’d been inside the warmth of her body, and the thought of her letting anyone else ever know what that was like ate me up inside.
I spent most of the night staring at her, a million terrible scenarios polluting my thoughts until my entire body itched from how sick it made me. “Let’s get married, baby.”
