Without a doubt, this was home.
“Beau . . .”
“I know.” He stepped forward, glancing back over his shoulder when I just stood there in wonder, a small smile lighting up his features. “Come on.”
A giggle wrapped up in a moan slipped free when Beau placed soft, open-mouthed kisses on my stomach hours later. The action tickling and making me ache for him all over again.
I laced my fingers through his dark hair, my eyelids slipping shut as a peace settled over me in a way I’d never known.
We’d explored the entirety of the house, falling more and more in love with it with each room we stumbled upon. Expanding on the dream we’d had for so long now that we were finally seeing it.
The plantation house turned into our bed and breakfast.
Beau had been saving everything he made working for his dad in their orchard. I’d just started teaching three- four- and five-year-olds at the dance studio—it wasn’t much with taking my own classes, cheer, and going to school, but it was something.
We’d find a way to make it work. We had to. This was our future—I could see it.
“You really wanna double the size of the kitchen?” Beau asked, resting his chin on my stomach so he could look at me. “Thing’s already big.”
I lifted an eyebrow in defiance and felt his hushed laugh.
He raced his hands up my thighs to grip my bare hips, making my stomach curl with heat even though I was still trembling from the bliss he’d just given me. Slow. Reverent.
Easy.
“It’s big enough for how much I like baking now. Baking and cooking for other people?” I tugged playfully at his short hair. “Double the size. And I want two islands in there.”
“Two,” he said dully.
“Mmhm. Need them, actually.”
He studied me for a moment before those dimples graced me with a hello. “Yes, ma’am.” When he continued, there was a hint of humor behind his words. “Blossom Bed and Breakfast.”
“It’s a great name,” I said defensively.
“I know it is,” he agreed immediately.
“You’re making fun of it.”
“Babe,” he murmured, giving me a look that said he clearly hadn’t been. “I was thinking about tiny you in a massive kitchen with two islands.”
I gave his hair another tug. “Watch me dominate that kitchen one day.”
“I plan to.” He shifted his head to sweep his mouth along my stomach before meeting my stare again. “I’m gonna get you this house, Savannah,” he continued, voice softer than before. “I’ll do whatever it takes to make that dream come true, I swear to you.”
“I know.” I let my fingers drift through his hair to lightly scratch along his neck and back. “What do you want?” One of his brows ticked up in question. “I’ve been talking about all the things I wanna do to the house . . . what do you want?”
“You,” he said without hesitation. “I just want you.”
Instead of getting lost in Beau’s undeniable love for me, my dad’s words echoed in my mind, hushed and ominous, like a wraith in the abandoned home. I let my head fall back against the cushion of blankets as I struggled with worry over the unknown. “Beau, no matter what happens, I’ll always come back to you.”
He went still.
His fingers gripping me like he could keep me there. The air in the great room filling with suffocating dread in an instant.
“What?” he asked, voice soft, dark.
“Please don’t let your mind go there,” I begged, heart wrenching because I could feel the way he was at once terrified that I was leaving him and accepting it because he thought it was best for me. “You know I would never willingly leave you.”
He didn’t respond.
Just stayed there, partially laying on me, still as stone.
“My dad said something tonight when they came to check on me, and I—” My throat tightened as that deep worry rose and bloomed in my chest. “What he said, I just know—I could feel it—they’re going to do something.”
A slow sigh sounded from him before he rolled away, his deep voice echoing in the room. “Your grandparents’?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
His hand slowly curled around mine in response.
“I’ll always come back to you, no matter what happens,” I repeated. When the responding silence got to be too much, I said, “I need to know where your head’s at.”
“Trying to figure out what to do,” he said softly. “If following their rules around them will be enough, or if . . .” Beau cleared his throat, his voice twisting with sorrow when he continued. “If I really do need to let you go for—”
“No.”
“Savannah—”
“No,” I said quickly and scrambled to sitting, grabbing at the closest thing to me to cover my bare chest. “Just no.”
He sat up with me, anguish and denial ripping across his fierce expression. “Savannah, if I need to let you go for the next year and a half so I can at least have you near me? I’ll do it.”
“I can’t,” I said, choking over the emotion tightening my throat.
“So, you’d rather spend the next year and a half with states between us?”
“No, I just—” My chest shook from my trembling breaths. “I can’t pretend that I don’t love you. That I don’t need you.”
“I wouldn’t be pretending shit,” he ground out. “I’d make sure the entire town, including your parents, knew what we were sacrificing to keep the peace. Knew that every day was a day closer to when we got to be together again.”
My head shook wildly as he spoke. “I can’t, I won’t. Beau, I’m not going to let them push us apart just to keep them happy for any length of time. I just needed you to know that I think it might be coming, and if it does, I will do whatever it takes to get back to you.”
He dragged his palm across his jaw, dipping his head in acceptance as he did.
“And I think . . . I think maybe we should consider some of those things we were talking about earlier.” I curled my fingers into what I was clutching to my chest—Beau’s jersey. My heart racing with anticipation and maybe breaking a little at the same time as I erased a seven-year dream. “I can’t tell you what it does to me that you remember the things I say and that you want to make them all come true. But I just want a life with you. And with our situation—with my parents—we have to take control of it so it can’t be taken from us. We have to do whatever we can.”
Beau’s dark brows slowly pulled together as I rambled.
Watching. Studying. Listening.
“And that fake Elvis or the courthouse is what I want. With you. The day I turn eighteen, or the day after. I don’t care. Whatever it takes because they won’t be able to do anything once we’re married, and then it’ll just be us the way it’s supposed to be.”
Long, torturous seconds passed before he uttered a single word: “No.”
My shoulders shook with the force of my exhale. “What?”
Beau’s eyes drifted down, lingering on my chest for a while before he reached out. His fingers grazing my arm before touching the jersey. “That name on you, Savannah . . . it’s right, and it’ll be right one day. But not like that.” His darkened stare flashed back up to mine, intense and somber. “Your dream for how we get married changes, then it changes for me too. Whatever it is, I’m there. But we’re not sneaking off to try to end this war with your parents. It’ll just make everything worse.”