Harold moaned and picked himself off the floor while gripping his bloody nose. “What the fuck?”
With a glare, I stomped off to the kitchen to soak a towel and wrap it around my hand. Then I walked back to the door and gripped the knob with my good hand, wanting nothing more than to rip the door off the hinges and leave my asshole father in the cold. “Don’t ever talk about Camila like that again. I don’t care that your threats are empty. You know nothing about her. She’s not her father, just like I’m not you.” With that, I slammed the door behind me and took off.
If Harold knew about Camila this entire time, why didn’t he say anything to me? Why didn’t he try to stop us from seeing each other sooner?
I wasn’t going to get any answers that night. Instead, I jumped in the tractor and drove it down the field toward the entrance to the bridge.
With a hop onto the soft soil, I dusted the tractor’s dirt from my jeans and started walking. A minute later, I spotted Camila sitting on the rail of the bridge, her head ducked. She wore white jeans and a long burnt-orange sweater. Her hair was swept up into a ponytail, and her lips shone with a thick layer of gloss. God, she was beautiful.
“You’re early.”
She looked up sharply, like she hadn’t heard me coming. The moment she saw me, she visibly relaxed. “I am.” Her eyes darted to my wrapped hand next then widened in shock. “What happened to you?”
“Just a little accident on the farm. Nothing an aspirin won’t fix.”
When her smile didn’t reach her eyes, I quickened my steps until my arms were wrapped around her. I pressed my lips to hers, wanting to make whatever sadness she was feeling go away. She returned my kiss hungrily, tugging me closer by the collar and delving her tongue into my mouth until we were both breathless. When we parted, her head fell onto my shoulder, and she took a deep, slow breath.
“Is everything okay?” I whispered, afraid of the answer.
She groaned and pulled away to look at me. “No, and I don’t know how to fix it.”
Camila thought she could hold the entire world on her shoulders. I’d never seen her look so defeated.
“And what is it you want to fix?”
Emotion welled in her eyes, and her chin quivered. Something had broken through that tough shell of hers, and it damn near shattered me too.
“I tried to talk to my papa about the stupid feud. I just wanted him to see it my way and to realize this will be my problem to deal with one day, not his.” She looked at me with wide eyes, like she was pleading for me not to be upset. “And I love being with you, Ridge, but all this sneaking around is getting to me. I thought that if I talked to my papa, then maybe—”
“That maybe things could be different?”
She cast her eyes down and nodded. My heart was starting to pound violently. I didn’t know where the conversation was heading, but I also didn’t know if I wanted to find out. “C’mon, Camila,” I said, taking a step closer to her and tightening my hold around her waist. “This isn’t something we need to figure out today. I’m not even sure that’s possible.”
She furrowed her eyebrows as she glared at me. “Then what are we doing together, Ridge? Just killing time before I go off to college? Time’s running out, you know. Or do you even care?”
“Whoa.” My chest puffed, and tension radiated in my neck. “Why are you picking a fight with me?”
“Why are you making it so easy?”
Camila was a spitfire, but I hated it when she used that fire against me. I put my good hand on her face to force her to look at me. “You know I want to be with you. I came back here for you. And when you go off to college, I’ll wait for you to come home. Don’t you think it will be much easier to deal with our fathers once you’re out of high school and working at the vineyard full-time? Either way, we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.” I squeezed my eyelids shut, realizing the significance of those words. When Camila’s giggle left her throat, I opened my eyes and smiled. “We’ll deal with whatever obstacles are in front of us then. And one day, when the vineyard is yours and the corn farm is mine, then we won’t have to worry about what anyone else thinks. We’ll be the ones making the rules.”
A tear fell from Camila’s eye, and she swiped it. “That could be thirty years from now.”
“No way,” I said gently. “Four years, tops. We’ll be more equipped to deal with our fathers then. Plus, they’ll be too old to argue with us anymore.”
She smiled, a challenge in her eyes. “You’ll really wait for me? Four years is a long time, you know.”
“Not as long as the lifetime I’ve already waited. And I’ll wait forever more if it means we get to exist in this world together. We’re going to change the future together, Wild One. Four years isn’t going to stand in our way.”
She looked at me for several seconds before tugging me by my collar and smashing her lips to mine. We kissed until the moon hung brightly above us through the treetops and the stars twinkled boldly in the dark night’s sky. We kissed slowly then feverishly, saying all the words we wanted to say but couldn’t.
Camila and I had only explored each other the way we had on Last Dollar Road, and I ached to touch her like that again. “I’ve missed you,” I said before planting a soft kiss between her neck and shoulder.
Her body relaxed into me. “I’ve missed you too.”
When the next few seconds filled with awkward silence, worry crept into my chest. I was so used to Camila always driving the conversations with her intense enthusiasm. “Is something else wrong?”
She searched my eyes, and the extra stretch of silence worried me more. “Um.” She looked down, like she was guilty for something. “There’s this dance thing at my school…”
“Senior prom?” I asked.
Camila nodded.
“Okay, what about it?”
“I haven’t decided whether I’m going yet.”
“I never went to mine.” I was still confused but also trying to make her feel better about whatever had upset her.
Her eyes were cast down, at the top button of my shirt, which she’d undone. “Why didn’t you go?”
I chuckled. “Probably because the only girl I would have taken was a sophomore at the time.”
A smile tilted her lips. “I wish you could come with me.”
I frowned, wishing all the things that she did. Is that what’s upsetting her? “Be careful what you wish for. I might just show up with a dozen stalks of corn instead of flowers and wearing a flannel instead of a suit.” I winked, trying to lighten the mood, but she didn’t laugh. Closing my eyes, I let my forehead rest on hers. “I wish I could take you to your prom, Camila. You’ll be the most beautiful girl there.”
“What’s the point in going if I can’t go with you?”
Something yanked at my chest. A selfish part of me wanted to tell her not to go, but I couldn’t ask her to do that. “The point,” I said, cupping her chin with my fingers, “is to have one last hurrah with your friends. Dance until your heels hurt. Laugh until you cry. Make memories that you’ll never forget. Then when it’s all over, save me your last dance and meet me at the bridge so that we can make a memory of our own.”