AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I’m hungover today,” I agreed.
“You good to go? We can stay home.”
Those words, ‘We can stay home’, sounded impossibly good to me, like we were a family, a unit, as if we shared a home. I wondered if we would get to that point. I mean, that’s where we were headed, we weren’t just messing around filling time with each other. Would we live at his place or mine? If we had a bedroom for Olivia, and I could redecorate, I didn’t mind living at his place. It was bigger than mine and had room for his enormous bed.
Maybe he’d want to move into a house? I wondered where he pictured himself living once he got married. Did he want a dog? The next thought I didn’t even give voice to in my head, did he want kids? Could I give that to him?
I’d asked him the night before, but he had neatly dodged the question.
The idea of being responsible for a child chilled me.
I didn’t deserve a child after what I’d done to the first one.
It would be unjust, welcoming one but annihilating the other.
Further, although I knew I wasn’t my mother, I didn’t know how much of her was in me. What if the demands of parenting brought it out? I’d done things my own way for so long, I didn’t know if I could live for someone else.
“You’re burning up all the oxygen in the car.”
“What?” I looked at Barrett.
He glanced at me and smiled. “You’re burning up all the oxygen in the car with your thinking. Relax. It’s a beautiful day. We’re together. We had a great night last night with our family. We love each other. It’s all good. Just sit back and relax. Drink your water and shake off the rest of that hangover.”
I nodded. “You’re right.”
I relaxed back in my seat and sipped my water. He reached for my hand and held it on the seat between us. I wondered at the fact that he could read me so easily, that I did not feel the compulsion to wear my mantle of cheer around him. In fact, I couldn’t. Which was sometimes uncomfortable like it was yesterday with his dad. It’s not that I was completely open with Barrett, I still leaned strongly in favor of hiding, but...
He chuckled and squeezed my hand. “You’re doing it again.”
I laughed out loud. “All right, all right!” I switched my attention to the scenery, the music, and the glorious man beside me.
He pulled into the tiny parking lot of a secluded beach. We had headed to Blue Mountain this time. The beach was different from the one in Port Stanley. Cliffs and greenery surrounded the basin, making the water darker and the air slightly cooler. He turned off the ignition.
“We’re going to go get something to eat soon, but I wanted to show you this place first, so you’d know where we’d be going. Do you want to get out and look around? Take some pictures before we go find lunch?”
I wasn’t quite at the eating stage, but my headache had dissipated. I opted to walk around and take a few pictures. We got out and skirted the edge of the beach, looking for the perfect vantage point.
“It’s almost too hot,” Barrett muttered.
“It is. Let’s go get something to eat.”
I raised my camera to get a shot of his grumpy face at the same time as my stomach rumbled. Loudly.
He turned and flashed me a huge smile. I clicked. Held my breath. Checked the viewfinder.
“Woo hoo! I got it!” I jumped up and down, holding my camera in the air and looked at him delightedly. “I got you smiling at me!”
I let loose with a happy jig, and he let out his great boom of a laugh as he slung his arm around my shoulders.
“Come on, curly,” he grinned down at me as I beamed up at him. “Let’s fill that tummy.”
He chose a mom-and-pop diner a little way out of the way, but so worth it. The staff treated each other like family, complete with loud reprimands and laughter echoing back from the kitchen whenever the kitchen door swung open. Wait staff laughed often as they came through with the food. Certainly, there was a joker back there.
Barrett ordered a big breakfast with extra everything and only smiled when I stole some of his bacon. He had just finished settling the bill, I had learned not to argue about these things when his phone dinged with a notification.
He glanced down at his phone and frowned. The man was delicious all the time, but when he frowned in concentration it did a little something extra to my insides.
He looked up at me from under his brow, his eyes snapping with anger and concern. “We have to go.”
