I opened my eyes again, my heart collapsing in relief.
He shrugged. “This—you here with me right now—it’s enough.”
I felt bruised and battered inside and my heart moved in shaky half beats, weary but ready to start slamming again if given the provocation.
“You here on my birthday?” He smiled. “It’s the best gift I’ve ever gotten.”
“Oh, I almost forgot,” I said, glad for the reprieve and the reminder that I had something else for him. My fingers still felt stiff from the cold and the adrenaline my heart had been flooding my system with, but they functioned enough to dig into my bag and pull out a small cardboard box. I handed it to Adam. “Open it.”
He did, and his smile made me feel warmer than when he’d given me his coat. Seeing his face was worth the cold. Way worth it.
“It’s apple cinnamon,” I said, nodding at the cupcake. As if he couldn’t tell. It smelled amazing, all spicy and buttery vanilla. I hoped it tasted almost as good as his mom’s apple pie, which he’d once said was like eating summer. I dug back into my bag and pulled out a candle and a pack of matches. The tiny flame flicked to life and made both our faces glow as I lit the wick. “I’m not going to sing to you, but you do get to make a wish.”
He glanced at the cupcake and the flame added liquid gold to his hazel eyes. “That’s easy. I already know what I want.”
My heart missed a beat, then made up for it with two more right on top of each other, not painful, but fast. Adam said what we had right now was enough, sitting together, talking together, keeping those last few crucial inches between us. My insides warned me that if I let him get any closer I wouldn’t survive, but I knew with a burst of heat that chased away every last bit of cold from my body that I’d never truly live if I tried to keep him away. I was ready for my heart to make one last brutal assault trying to protect itself, but it never came.
Because when Adam blew out his candle and his gaze locked with mine, I knew he’d wished for me.
I could feel it in the way his lips fit to mine: warm and so soft, with a trace of the mint toothpaste he must have used that night. I inhaled when his mouth touched mine, and it wasn’t just air that filled my lungs, it was Adam. That too-heady feel and scent and taste. My heart was racing again, only this time I wasn’t afraid of the way I felt. He overwhelmed me in the most frighteningly perfect way. A camera could never capture it, and for once I didn’t get lost trying to imagine the moment as any better that it was. The kiss made me light-headed, and when his still-warm hand rose to lift my chin so he could kiss me deeper, that dizzy, tingling heat consumed me.
It wasn’t just the sensation of Adam’s mouth against mine; it was what I knew he meant when he said I made him happy. Me. Comparing every other touch or hug or kiss I’d had before Adam was like comparing salt water to sweet. One took and the other gave. They’d all carried baggage and motive, but what Adam gave me was free. He kissed me because I was exactly what he wanted. He made me feel all the things he’d said on my birthday—that I was amazing and beautiful and the one thing I’d never let myself hope I’d ever be.
The thing I hadn’t let him say.
In his empty red barn that was a million miles away from anywhere I’d ever imagined, Adam Moynihan made me feel loved.
ADAM
I woke to the smell of bacon and what I thought were voices downstairs. Jeremy typically woke up just early enough to put on pants and grab a handful of whatever Mom had made for breakfast—he was notorious for eating scrambled eggs out of a paper towel with one hand while driving us to school with the other. But according to the clock, that still left him a good forty-five minutes.
I was groggy from the late night with Jolene, and my senses overflowed with thoughts of her. I smiled, hoping they stayed that way until I could see her again, kiss her again.
She’d tasted better than summer. And she’d let me kiss her, hold her. She hadn’t made a single joke about how shaky my hands had been, or the one time I’d accidentally banged our teeth together. It was like she hadn’t noticed any of that.
She’d noticed me.
And I hadn’t noticed anything beyond how right she felt in my arms and how maybe I’d found my way into the heart she pretended not to have. If she didn’t know before last night, she had to know after that she was forever in mine.
I’d had one panicked moment when I’d tasted her tears. I’d thought I’d done something wrong, or she hadn’t wanted me to kiss her, but then she’d given me the most achingly beautiful smile I’d ever seen. She hadn’t been crying because I’d done something wrong, but because I’d done something right.
I’d kissed Jolene.
My stupid/happy smile lingered as I showered and got dressed, and it was still on my face as I sauntered downstairs, replaying the night in my mind.
When I walked into the kitchen, it felt like I’d traveled back in time. Mom, still in her rose-print bathrobe, flipped a pancake onto an already high stack by the stove while Dad manned the toaster. She had only to glance at him before he silently moved closer to her and reached up to grab the powdered sugar shaker from the top shelf for her.
I couldn’t stop my head from snapping to the kitchen table and the spot where Greg always sat. But of course he wasn’t there, and the rush of grief that punched me in the gut told me never to make that mistake again.
Everything else was the same though. It was exactly the same.
Only the longer I stood in the doorway, watching my parents watching each other when they thought the other wasn’t looking, the differences began slamming into me.
Mom was still in her robe, but Dad was dressed, and there was gravel and mud on his boots from the driveway. Faint tracks on the floor from the back door where he’d come in, too. Not to mention the snow that had melted on his head and shoulders, leaving both wet. Mom’s hands didn’t reach out to touch Dad whenever she passed behind him, and he wasn’t whistling some off-key song that he’d insist was perfectly in tune even when Mom played it back for him on the piano in the next room.
Dad also wasn’t yelling to Jeremy to get his butt downstairs, and Greg and I weren’t at the table arguing baseball over glasses of orange juice.
We weren’t laughing. We weren’t happy. We weren’t together anymore.
The old floor creaked when I shifted my weight, and my parents both jumped before turning toward me.
“It’s the birthday boy.” Mom, metal spatula still in hand, hurried over to hug me. “Sixteen. I can’t believe it.”
My gaze slide past her to Dad. “Me either.”
She tugged the sash of her robe tighter. “He called last night,” she said, her hands shaking, along with her voice. “He didn’t want to miss your birthday. I thought maybe you wouldn’t want him to either.” Then she returned to the pancakes, probably needing to stay busy before she started feeling more than she wanted. “I’m making you sixteen, so I hope you’re hungry.”