AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“You don’t blame me? I—I don’t understand, Caden….”
As she trails off, I feel a tremor run the length and breadth of her body, and I pull her impossibly closer, needing more than anything to take this pain from her. To kick my brother’s fucking ass for doing this. To rail against time itself until it allows me to somehow reclaim the fifteen years that we’ve lost as a result of that wretched day.
“It wasn’t your fault. Trust me.”
Silence envelops us for a long beat until her breath ghosts across my jaw when she whispers, “There’s more.”
My stomach dips at her barely audible words, but before I can answer, there’s a whistle through the sky on the far side of the lake, followed by a long bang.
We both jump, spinning our heads around just in time to see the first flash of colour explode in the night sky. Red, followed by yellow, then green. The entire night is lit up around us in a haze of fireworks, just as I’d planned, and I remember my reason for bringing her here tonight.
Summer gasps as a hesitant smile plays around the edges of her mouth. “Wow! It’s like Independence Day back home.”
And that’s when it hits me. We’ve been given a second fucking chance. That’s exactly what this is.
“Maybe that’s what today is here, Bam. Maybe today is the day we shake off the shackles of our past and focus on our future, yeah?”
She turns to face me, fresh tears glistening in her eyes. “There’s so much more you need to know, Cade. The reason I came back—”
I cut her off when I physically hoist her from between my legs to spin her around to straddle my lap.
“I love you, Summer St James. I have loved you almost my whole damn life, and I’ll love you until the day I die, of that I’m absolutely certain…I don’t care about what took you away from me or what you’ve done while you’ve been gone. You’re herenow, and there’s only one thing that matters to me…”
I trail off, reaching up to cup her cheek in my palm while my enraptured gaze holds hers captive.
“Do you love me?”
* * *
SUMMER
My breath catches on a sound somewhere between a sob and a gasp.
This conversation isnotgoing the way I had anticipated. In the slightest. In all the years since I’d moved to the States, I had known beyond a doubt that if I’d ever come clean to a member of the North family, they would call the authorities.
Hadn’t I been told as much?
I glance around, half expecting to see blue lights flashing and instead find the twinkling lights dancing across the sparkling lake. The fireworks have ceased, but that fact hadn’t even registered in the mess jumbling around inside my head.
Caden’s eyes hold mine; the intensity in his deep blue gaze—the pure love that ripples from his every pore, cleansing me with his honest goodness—astonishes me.
“Cade…I don’t deserve you. I don’t deserve to call you my beloved—or to be called yours. You don’t understand—”
He cuts me off, sitting forward at the speed of light so that our chests are flush.
“Answer the damn question, Bam.” He bends closer until his lips brush off mine.
“Do.”
He presses a kiss to the corner of my mouth.
“You.”
He snakes his tongue out to draw it slowly across the seam of my lips as butterflies stir to life in my stomach.
“Love.”
Sliding his hands up along either side of my body, his palms fit around the nape of my neck, tugging me forward to take my mouth with his. I part my lips without hesitation, and his tongue caresses mine once, then twice, before he pulls back to rest his forehead against mine.
