Tucker (The Family Simon 1)

“Where are we?”

Tucker tugged on her hand and after instructing the driver to wait, he opened the car door and waited for her to join him.

Something was up. Something big. She could see it in his eyes.

“Abby,” he said quietly.

Tucker bent down and kissed her so sweetly, his mouth so gentle and so giving, that like the emotional baby she’d been lately, tears immediately sprang to her eyes.

“Hey,” he said pulling away. “Don’t cry.”

Something about the tone of his voice and the look in his eyes pulled at all sorts of stuff inside her.

“I can’t help it. What’s going on, Tucker?”

They were leaning against the car, and she had no idea what the driver was thinking, but at the moment, she didn’t care. She could have been standing there buck naked with a basket of bananas on her head, and she wouldn’t have cared.

Something important was about to happen. She could feel it.

“I love you. You know this.”

She nodded, but didn’t speak.

“I want us to be together.”

Again she nodded, though she frowned. They were sharing an apartment. They lived together.

“This here,” he motioned in the air around him. “This place is called Blackheath. It’s kind of infamous around this area you know, considering the house was built by a pirate.”

“A pirate?”

He grinned, and that flash of the young boy he must have been made her want to hug and kiss him silly.

“Yeah. A pirate.”

“I still don’t understand.”

His hand slid to hers once more, and he pulled her away from the car, leading her a few feet away. And then he turned her around. And Abby’s mouth fell open.

Several hundred feet away stood an old antebellum mansion, though from her first quick glance, it looked in need of some serious love and attention.

“It’s beautiful,” she whispered, the artist in her visualizi

ng what it was. What it could be.

“Come on.”

Tucker led her down an overgrown path that led to the house, and when they got closer, she saw that the windows were all broken and missing, the paint was peeling and the general condition was much worse than she’d originally thought.

“It’s amazing, Tucker.” She turned to him. “But I don’t understand what we’re doing here.”

“I grew up in Florida, and no matter where I am, it will always be home. I only moved to New York to…”

Her heart turned over.

“I moved to New York to get away from the memories, and for the most part, it worked. I think for a while there, I needed to get away. Needed to put some distance between myself and everything that Florida represented to me. But…”

He glanced away, and for the first time, a bit of fear took hold.