Maybe it was pushing it, but I decided to lay it on the line with Brynn.
I know you want time. Maybe this is too much, but I still love you. I don’t think I ever stopped.
Brynn
Every time I read Caden’s text, my belly flipped and my pulse raced. Gah! It was just a text. He still loved me? How could he even know that?
I thought about Amelia’s advice the other night, and I knew the answer. I would definitely regret it. Her question didn’t even require contemplation on my part. I absolutely knew I would wonder forever about what might have been with Caden if I didn’t let myself see what happened.
Hours later that evening, I drove down the driveway to his father’s old home. I had borrowed my mother’s car. Of course, she didn’t need it tonight the second I told her Caden had invited me out to his place for dinner. Coming out here somehow felt intimate. Because no one else was here.
When I slowed to a stop in the driveway and looked ahead, I laughed to myself, a fizzy sense of joy rushing through me. I found it hard to believe, but Caden had apparently decorated the tree in their yard with lights. They’d always done that before. Although Caden didn’t become my boyfriend until we were in high school, Willow Brook was a small town. I knew they decorated a tree in their yard every year.
A vivid memory flashed in my thoughts—the time I helped him string the lights in high school. He kept teasing me and kissing me while I kept trying to get him to behave because I was afraid his parents could see us.
Emotion welled inside. I couldn’t believe I was feeling hopeful about romance. I couldn’t even believe I’d kissed Caden again. I never thought I’d see him again, especially not after he got big and famous.
My pulse went completely out of control the second I stood on the landing in front of the house. Just when I thought it couldn’t go any faster, it felt as if Caden slammed his foot on the gas pedal and sent it rocketing when he opened the door.
In what felt like another time and world, I’d loved Caden fiercely. But then, I was just a girl, and he was just a boy. It had been intense, and we’d lost our virginity to each other. Then he moved away, and that was it. I was left to grieve our youthful romance in disillusion alone.
After he gestured me through the doorway and took my coat, I walked with him into the living room. My eyes arced about the space. It felt as if I’d walked into a time warp. The peaked roof with beams crisscrossing above, the windows offering an expansive view of the mountains bathed in the pearly illumination from the moon, and the holiday tree glittering in the darkness.
“You’re not an easy woman to persuade,” Caden said softly as he stepped a little closer.
The butterflies camped out in my belly fluttered about. I tried to catch my breath as heat chased over the surface of my skin.
“No. I suppose not.”
“Did you get my text?”
Okay, so we were jumping straight into the deep end of this conversation.
“Yes.” My voice was raspy, and that annoyed me.
I let my gaze coast over Caden’s face. He was different than the boy I knew, sharpened and edged. He still had those intense green eyes that bored into me with thick lashes that weren’t really fair for a man to have. His dark hair was rumpled. His faded black jeans hugged his fit thighs like a caress, and his charcoal gray T-shirt did nothing to hide the muscled planes of his chest. He totally had a mysterious rock star vibe, and I couldn’t even believe we were standing in the same room.
“Can we try again?”
His question dropped into the silence, sending ripples through the electrified space around us. Time felt suspended as we stared at each other, and my heart went thump, thump, thump.
I didn’t realize I’d stepped toward him until I heard his breath hiss between his teeth. Then I was folded into his arms in a full-body clench.
The very second his arms came fully around me, I nearly moaned in relief. Caden’s absence in my life had been the equivalent of an emotional burr in my side. I’d moved on, but I’d missed him. It had been hard not to think of him when he rocketed to fame, and I knew he lived in the same city as me. Before he’d found me a few months ago, the last time I’d seen him, he was sneaking out of my bedroom window, and I leaned out to kiss him good night.
What I didn’t know that night was the court would finalize his parents’ divorce the following day, and his mother would move away with him. He broke up with me over the phone.
As we stood there in his childhood home, this man who’d been honed and hardened in the time we’d been apart, simply held me. Words couldn’t serve this moment well. It felt as if our bodies were communicating with each other.
I missed you.
I never forgot you.
I needed you.
I’m here.
They say not many people get to experience true love. Even though I didn’t know what happened twelve years ago, even though I felt betrayed because Caden broke up with me, I’d never forgotten the halcyon days of our short-lived and young love.
Caden murmured something as his hand slid up my back in a heated pass. His fingers laced into my hair as he cupped the back of my head. I took a shuddery breath and finally lifted my head. His eyes searched mine. The space between us felt crowded with feelings.
“I missed you,” he said gruffly, forming words our bodies had already communicated.
“I missed you too.” My voice came out frayed, ragged at the edges with emotion. This startling reality that Caden was here with me and actually wanted me, sent a storm spinning inside me.
“I wish I’d tried to find you sooner. I wasn’t in Seattle that often with touring, but you were right there.”
My heart twisted, but there was nothing to be done.
“How come I couldn’t find you online? Not many people can manage to stay off the radar.”
“It was nothing big. I got married and changed my name. That’s it.”
Caden stayed quiet, but I could practically see the gears start to grind in his thoughts. He arched a brow, almost imperiously. The boy I had once known was such a man now. So confident, so hardened. So incredibly sexy.
“Why? You have such a good last name,” he commented, just as I was about to derail into wanting to tackle him right here and now.
I shrugged. “I don’t know. I didn’t think about it too hard. As you can see, I changed it back.”
His eyes darkened. “You did.”
Caden
“Brynn Sparks,” I murmured right before I brushed my lips across hers.
I was trying to take things slow, but it was hard, much harder than I’d imagined. To have Brynn here, to finally be back with my girl and to have spoken my feelings aloud was almost overwhelming.
There was that, and the fact that my need for her was like a mountain river after a thaw, the water rushing at a breakneck pace downhill. Like always, everything with Brynn tangled into itself, vines twining around each other and strengthening the binds tying us together.
Her body was soft and yielding as I slid my hand down her back to cup her luscious bottom. The feel of her sweet curves had me mindless with lust. Sensation roared through me, threatening to overtake everything.
Brynn’s tongue glided against mine, and I let go as desire galloped through me. Our kiss was a tangle of lips, teeth, and tongue, and I couldn’t get enough of the feel of her.