Let Me Go (Owned 2)

“So you like it?” Eli laughed, peeling me off his body.

“It’s one of the most amazing things you’ve ever done! Eli…” I broke off, tears of happiness clogging my throat. “I just…I don’t know what I did to deserve you.”

“Gracie,” Eli whispered, stroking my cheek. “Gracie you deserve the world and I’m going to spend the rest of my life trying to give it to you. Starting with this tree. Come on, let’s sit.”

With our backs against the palm tree, Eli and I absorbed the morning. The beach was quiet with only the occasional early morning jogger sharing the sand. The sky faded from a deep indigo to a steel grey-blue as the sun rose from its depths. Though we were on the wrong side of the world to watch the sun rise over the ocean, there was something beautiful seeing the world spring to life slowly.

“What are you thinking?” Eli asked, pulling me closer to his warmth.

“I’m thinking about how much I love you,” I mused, digging my feet into the cool sand.

“Yeah?” Eli asked, hugging me closer to his body.

“Yeah,” I repeated.

“I love you too, Bug.”

Eli and I stayed under the palm tree even after the sun rose. We watched the beach go from deserted to teeming with families and surfers and girls laying out on their mats. The sun rose high in the clear blue sky, but we were shaded under our big palm tree. We hardly said a word to each other, both of us simply taking in the moment.

We stayed long after the families had packed up and the surfers had gone home. The sun started to drop into the ocean and stripes of orange and purple fell across the sky. Still our backs rested against the palm tree.

Eli pulled my palm into his own before looking into my eyes. “Sometimes, Gracie, I can’t believe my luck. This doesn’t feel real.”

“I know,” I said as the sun began its final descent into the darkening ocean. “I never thought we would end up here. I thought we would live and die beneath that sugar maple tree but this…this isn’t so bad.”

It was actually kind of perfect.

I know there are questions on many of your minds. Is there going to be more? Is that all we get to see of this world? As we end this second book of the Owned series, there are obviously some unanswered questions. For instance, what happened to Vera? Are Vic and Lenny going to get their happily ever after? Some of you want to know what happens to these couples.

Well, I have two more books planned for this series: a novella and a novel. Vera gets her own story, a novella. And Vic and Lenny are just too full to put into one story, or even two, so they get another book as well. The last book will be a novel written in Vic’s point of view.

Basically, I have much more planned for the people of Owned, so I hope you stick around!