Page 99 of Parentmoon

I’m out of breath. I’m sweating. My heart is racing. We aren’t going to have a chance to say goodbye and I’m not ready for us to part.

As we near my gate, they are calling the group before mine for boarding. Dallas catches my wrist, spins me to him and cups my face, bringing our lips together in a heated kiss. There was no time for a hello-goodbye game. The one where you kiss at every gate as if one person just arrived or another is departing. However, the hello-goodbye game has nothing on this singular kiss. More than a forever parting and better than a meet-cute, this kiss is everything in between hellos and goodbyes. The journey, not the starting block or finish line.

We kiss and kiss until boarding is called again for the group before mine.

Dallas and I pull apart.

“I don’t want you to go.” He stares directly into my eyes, cupping my face.

“I don’t want to leave.” My throat tightens, choking me on the truth. I cling to his wrists.

“Then don’t.”

Shaking my head, he releases me, and I slowly release my hold on his arms. I’m stepping back from him when his hand catches mine, tightening on my fingers like a piece of thread coming unraveled from a woven blanket.

“I love you.”

I freeze at Dallas’s words.

“From the moment Michael first started talking about you, I had to know you.”

I blink. I blink again. What?! “But you rushed off the first night we met.”

“It was too much. I told you. All the love. I couldn’t see a seat for me at the table.” Dallas swallows. “From the moment we met, when you hugged me after the kids announced their engagement, it was like something inside me stilled, stunned me even.” Dallas flattens his hand on his heart. “Or maybe it’s that you revived something in me. And it was the best feeling ever.

“Then I heard you laugh.” He shakes his head. “Nearly giddy, like a lover. You were so excited for their wedding, and every time I heard that laugh again, I wanted it to be because of me. I wanted to be that excitement in your life.”

He looks away.

Suddenly, my boarding group is called. My mind is a muddle, trying to compute the call to board a plane and calculate what this beautiful man is saying to me.

Stun him. Revive him. He’s done the same for me.

“Michael talked about you all the time,” Dallas says, turning back to me. “I fell in love with your devotion to him. Your ethics. Your drive. How much you did for him and how grateful he was for you. A real hero. You loved him wholeheartedly. I had a crush on you without knowing you. Then I met you here . . .” His Adam’s apple bobs. “I came to Belize because you were here.”

“What?” My eyes widen in disbelief.

His fingertips tighten on my fingers. “I had to know you better. I didn’t want to lose you.”

“Lose me?” My brows pinch; my voice weak, still full of wonder and questions and—

“Now boarding group nine,” the attendant announces again.

I can’t take my eyes off Dallas.

“I was waiting for Michael and Keli to marry. I didn’t want to be in the way of their celebration. I didn’t have a date for their wedding because I was coming for you. After their I dos, it was guns blazing for you.”

“I don’t want guns blazing.” The comment was ridiculous, yet I’d said it.

“Then heart open . . . and hoping. Hoping that I’d be enough.”

“This is the final boarding call for . . .” The rest drifts into the airport noise as I try to process what he’s saying.

“Dallas,” I swallow hard. The lump in my throat growing. I don’t know what to do with all this. “I . . . I have to go.”

Leaning forward, I tip up on my toes and kiss him one more time, quick and brief. When I pull back, Dallas tugs me forward, kissing me hard again.

Hello-Goodbye.