She squeezed her eyes shut.
“I get now that they were waiting for me. Waiting for me to come back to them. That they needed me before they could start to heal.” Her eyes were shiny again, and she reached for me. She kissed me then, her mouth soft and tentative. I tasted the salt from her tears and the pain from her heart.
It was a slow, lingering kind of kiss that I wanted to keep going, because I could kiss this girl all day, but she pulled away and slipped her hand into mine. “We’d better go.”
The birds sang as we trudged through the damp grass. We’d just rounded the corner of her grandmother’s house and I was picking a twig out of Monroe’s hair when the front door banged open and we both froze.
“A little early in the morning for a stroll, isn’t it?”
Mrs. Blackwell leaned against the railing in a blue and white housecoat that fell almost to her feet. Matching slippers tapped along the floorboards, and she stared down at us with an expression that wasn’t exactly pissed off, but it was something. What that something was I couldn’t say at the moment.
She arched an eyebrow and pinched her lips when neither one of us answered right away.
Yeah. Okay, maybe she was pissed off.
“Mrs. Blackwell, I can explain. There was a meteor shower last night and I wanted Monroe to see it.”
Her eyebrow arched a little higher.
“I called late and she, uh, I guess you were in bed and…”
Damn, that eyebrow was even higher now.
“Well, we kinda fell asleep in the maze,” I finished, a smile pasted to my face. Usually a smile was enough to get any sort of female to melt a little bit. But she wasn’t budging.
Though her eyebrow relaxed a bit, which made me feel a whole lot better.
“It’s not Monroe’s fault, so I hope if you’re upset with anyone, it’s me.”
“I see,” she said, eyeing my backpack and the state of our rumpled clothes. “Well, come on in then. I’ll make you breakfast.”
Breakfast.
“It’s okay, ma’am. I’ll just be heading home—”
“No, Nathan Everets, you will not. If I’m going to be upset with you, I’d rather do it over a pot of coffee and some bacon and eggs.”
She gave us each a good long look and then slowly turned around, disappearing inside the house.
“Come on.” Monroe tugged on my hand. “I wouldn’t argue with Gram. She’s pretty fierce and even though she looks sweet and maybe more frail than, say, a,” she paused dramatically, “dragon, she’s not.”
“Is she pissed?”
“She’s gotta be. At least a little.”
“Should I be worried?”
“Probably.” She tried to hide a grin. “Definitely.”
Okay. Good to know.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Monroe
There are things in this world that will never surprise you. Things that are absolute. The sun rises each morning and sets in the evening. No surprise there.
The four seasons fall, one after the other. Again, no surprise.