Tyler
“Imean, what are you doing here?” she scrambles, trying to find her words as she fidgets in front of me. I remember her just like it was yesterday—the sweeping curve of her hips, the silken feel of her long blonde hair, the way she moans when I kiss her…Seems my dick remembers her too.I struggle to contain my groan as my cock rises in salute to her beauty, knowing on instinct that this is the woman we’ve been waiting for.
“Isn’t it obvious why I’m here?” I ask, stepping toward her and smiling. With each step I take, she takes a small one back, so I stop and just let my eyes drink her in. She hasn’t changed a bit.
My mind is taken back eleven years, to the night before I left Oakwood Falls, when she climbed into my bed and told me she loved me. Up until then, she was off limits to me—my best friend's little sister—but the moment she uttered those words, her eyes so full of love and promise, I couldn’t make myself turn her away. So I admitted that I loved her too. I told her I loved her, then I kissed her. And I kept on kissing her and whispering words of love to her until we eventually fell asleep, wrapped in each other's arms. I know she’d intended for her admission to make me stay. But I couldn’t. I was nineteen, with nothing but pain to offer her. So, when the sun came up the next morning, I left her there sleeping and got on the bus to New York, and I haven’t seen her since. Her brow knits together as her eyes move over me too. From my feet to my face and back down again. She lingers on my tattooed hands, then her doe-brown eyes filled with swirling emotion. “No, Tyler, I don’t think it’s obvious why you’re here,” she says finally.
I don't have many regrets in my life. Since leaving Oakwood Falls, I've become immensely successful as a tattoo artist in New York. And I've built a significant following on Instagram, which means people come from all over the world to have my art permanently inked on their skin. Professionally, my life has exceeded my expectations of what I’d become. But personally, my one and only regret is leaving her. Especially in the way that I did. She gave me her heart in the hopes I would stay, and I took that heart she offered, and I walked away with it. That moment I left her sleeping has haunted me ever since.
At the time, I thought leaving was the right thing to do. I mean, who wouldn't with a story like mine? I was the kid Oakwood Falls didn’t want. All my life, it felt like an itchy sweater that didn’t fit properly. I dreamed of being a tattoo artist, and there wasn’t a tattoo shop around for miles that could teach me. I struggled to even finish high school, and at nineteen, I had no home, barely enough cash to last a week on my own, and I wasn’t about to drag this beautiful angel down with me. I had nothing to offer her if I stayed. No way to support her if I took her with me. So the only option available was to leave.
But now...things have changed.
“Staring at me isn’t giving me an answer,” Avery says impatiently, her mouth pressing into a thin line.
My smile broadens as I gesture to the structure in front of us. "I’m here to buy a cabin. I’m moving home."
