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“You feel so damn good,” I told her.
“You do, too.”
“I figured you’d be sore from earlier.”
“I am. But there’s only one way to work it out.”
Most folks, if not all of them, would’ve viewed Riley and I having sex in this cemetery as being sickly morbid and disrespectful to the deceased. She and I never had, though. Something about being here made our intimacy feel incredibly elevated. I believed it was due to the hallowed ground we were on, our ancestors’ love and protection, the moon’s energy, and the magic of Riley.
I heard the rumbling of a Union Pacific train coming down the tracks on the other side of the fence, but Riley and I were too close to coming to stop fucking and hide behind the magnolia tree. When the train had almost reached us, we began losing control together—Riley closing her eyes while I kept mine open to watch her. Seconds later, the engineer blew his horn at us after getting an eyeful, but it didn’t matter. Like me, I knew Riley wouldn’t have changed a thing about this moment.
With her body and mine spent once again, we held each other as the rest of the train continued racing by us. Then it was gone, and the night was quiet once more.
“I love you,” I whispered in Riley’s ear.
She raised her head off my shoulder and stared at me.
“Don’t let my telling you that again scare you away,” I continued. “How I feel about you doesn’t obligate you to feel the same way about me. Yes, you care about me, but you fell out of love with me sometime last year. I just wish you’d tell me when it happened.”
Riley’s eyes filled with tears.
“Talk to me, mia bella,” I said, tightening my arms around her.
“I…”
“You what?”
She looked up at the sky, took a deep breath, and focused back on me. “I never fell out of love with you, Rhys.”
It was my turn to stare. Finally, I was able to speak. “How could you walk away still loving me?”
“It took everything inside me to do it. I had to see what was beyond here and truly believed you wouldn’t go with me if I asked. I wanted you to so badly, though.”
I shook my head in disbelief, yet I believed every word Riley had just spoken.
“Something that you aren’t aware of is on the day I left Cypress Hills to move to Fort Worth, I pulled over to the side of the road after crossing over the bayou,” she went on to tell me.
“I know you did. I was parked down by the bayou with a half-empty bottle of whiskey in my hand, waiting to see you leave. Rachel told Jackson the day you planned to get out of town, and he told me.”
Riley’s jaw dropped after hearing my revelation.
“Why did you pull over?” I asked.
“Because I wanted to turn around.”
“And do what?”
“Find you and tell you I wasn’t leaving because I couldn’t live without you.”
“God, Riley, why didn’t you?”
“I thought it was too late for us, just like I thought it was too late with my parents. They’d paid for my car, college education, the first three months’ rent on my duplex, new furniture, decorations, linens, dishes, pots, pans—everything. Then I met Chad and tried to forget you. But I couldn’t. Your face was before me in everything I did and still do. You were in my dreams, too, and still are. If you only knew how much I regret ending us.”
“Then let’s start over. I want you and only you for the rest of my life.”
“Why would you, after I hurt you so badly?”
“Because I love you, and I need you. I also understand you. As much as it devastated me to lose you, I knew you needed to spread your wings and fly away from here. I used to think often you would one day.”
