Page 243 of One Wild Wish

He held me to him, his length still nestled deep. Breathing hard, he pressed my face into his neck and kissed the top of my head. “Making love to you could rebuild worlds. It could part oceans. Drop the stars from the sky. Making love to you is my reason why.”

This man was a triple threat. “That was cheesy”—I kissed his neck, his jaw, his lips—“and I loved it.” I love you , I wanted to say. There was no denying it. It had always been August for me. It also didn’t change what tomorrow would bring.

I tried to reel my emotions back in, but it was like rewinding a ball of yarn, the shape never quite right again, always threatening to unravel. I also couldn’t ignore what I’d just experienced. “I want to stay like this all night,” I said, taming my freakout.

He clamped his hands on my ass, keeping himself seated inside me. “Might be weird when people show up in the morning.”

“It could be great for your career. No such thing as bad publicity, right?”

“Considering the rumors that likely got started today, I’m hoping the answer to that is yes. But”—he rocked me against his pelvis—“I’m still dying to get you on a proper bed and take my time with you. I haven’t tasted you yet. I need that like I need to breathe.”

Whoa, boy. I wouldn’t take much convincing, but I didn’t want to leave yet. We’d had sex where my mother and father had made love. Where I might have been conceived. I wasn’t ready to walk away from my bone-deep connection here. The first place I’d grieved for my mother. “Can we look at the stars for a while first? I’d like to read a bit more of the journal, too.”

He ran his nose through my hair, stealing a scent with each pass. “Anything, Possum.”

We got dressed, the two of us ridiculous in our condiment-streaked clothing. We lay on the ground, diary and flashlight in hand, reading my mother’s heart.

She’d loved her man. She’d hated her parents. It sounded all too familiar. She mentioned a vacation with her guy, a sneaky trip camouflaged to her parents as a church excursion. Hozier’s “Take Me to Church” came to mind, and a whole lot of “taking.” It could have been where her luggage had gone missing, but it wasn’t the final entry and didn’t explain the eleven-year gap between being packed and riding a Greyhound.

A few lines about trust also gave me pause. I didn’t think I would trust anyone after Marcus. I didn’t think I would ever date again. But Ted is a man, not a boy. He is different. He wouldn’t hurt me like that. He better not hurt me.

Wariness bled through her words. Distrust. After August read the passage, I relayed Uncle Rex’s comment to him, how some girl had come looking for Ted or Tom. “If my mother had been betrayed by this Marcus guy before, she’d be wary of it again. It would hurt worse a second time.”

“It likely would.”

“Right, but…if this new guy got her pregnant, and she later found out he was seeing someone, don’t you think she’d flip?”

August paused, but didn’t offer much insight. “That kind of betrayal would cut deep, for sure.”

His lack of rebuttal annoyed me. As teens, we’d pick apart clues, him more than me, always analyzing, figuring, solving. I wanted to do the same now. He seemed distracted. With all we had on our plate, I couldn’t hold it against him. But my mind whirred, questions and possibilities spinning.

I wasn’t sure a cheating boyfriend was enough to embitter my mother, unplanned pregnancy or not. Flat out refusing to share my father’s identity seemed too extreme, but she’d been a kid with no parental assistance. It was possible.

Without August’s analytical mind to bounce ideas with, I read on. Her tone resumed its previous swooniness, especially when mentioning a bench they’d visited at Fisherman’s Wharf. “We should go tomorrow,” I told August. “After I meet the girls at the gym.”

The bench in question had supposedly been inscribed with my mother’s name, a rebellious scratching into wood she’d done instead of doodling in a notebook margin. The kind where you wrote your boyfriend’s last name as your own.

Possibly my father’s last name.

If she had, it was the key to finding him. With that clue, I could narrow the possibilities and visit each man. I didn’t mention the last-name detail to August. He didn’t seem keen to obsess over this as much as me, and it felt too fragile: a wish only possible if kept private. I also needed to talk with Ainsley and Rachel about this insane night. Specifically how I wanted to handcuff myself to August and never let him out of my sight.

“I’ll take the guys up on their run offer,” August said. “We’ll hook up after.”

I snuggled in closer. “That means we’ll be apart for a bit.”

One arm latched around me, he dragged his boot heel over the loose dirt. “I’ll miss you.”

Raw, simple honesty.

He deserved the same in return. “I’ll miss you, too.” And it would only be a few hours. Not days or weeks or months.

A shiver ran through me.

He rubbed his hand down my arm. “You cold?”

I wished it were the cold. I rested the journal on my belly, needing to talk and drown the shouty voices in my head. “What’s your favorite part about touring?”

He played with my hair. “Singing. Unleashing everything into song.”