“Yes.” Gram nodded slowly. “I begged your mother and father to let you come to me this summer because I truly believed it was time for you to come back to us. It was time, and I thought that I was going to be the one to catch you.”
She shook her head and smiled. “But it wasn’t me, my darling girl. It was Nathan. He caught you.” She squeezed my hand again. “And I think that he’s still waiting.”
“For what?” I asked.
“Why, for you,” she said in a very serious voice, before she opened her car door and glanced back at me. “To catch him.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Nathan
The week passed by in a blur of hot summer days spent out at the plantation working on a new gazebo with my uncle and hot summer nights spent under the stars with Monroe.
Working with my uncle was good for me. It was hard physical labor, and I wasn’t the kind of guy who liked to sit on his ass and do nothing. Besides, there wasn’t much time to think about shit when you were on a hot roof nailing tarpaper down.
There was no time to remember that night, to think about the stuff I should have done differently. The mistakes I’d made, the choices that had brought me to where I was.
Of course, Trevor was with me, but that was okay. I needed him there even if it was only in my head.
But it was those hot summer nights that I looked forward to, because it was those hot summer nights that made me forget everything but a girl with dark, silky hair and a mouth that I could spend hours kissing. Seriously, the girl could kiss, and over the last week, we’d had a lot of practice. A lot.
Sure, there might have been a bit of touching—okay, I knew that most of her was as soft and sweet as her mouth—but nothing else. And I was cool with that.
Monroe was different from any girl I had ever met, and I’d be a liar if I told you I hadn’t thought about what it would be like to be with her. To hold her and look in her eyes when I was inside her.
But what we had was more than just the physical stuff. We talked for hours about pretty much everything. Music. Books. Family.
She told me about her brother. About the kind of kid he’d been, and for me, to be the guy she was willing to share all that stuff with was huge.
I felt like the king of the world, and for a while there, I felt like nothing could touch me. That’s what this girl did for me.
But being a king and flying high meant that the fall could be epic. And in my case, epic didn’t even come close.
It was Friday afternoon, and I’d come to town with my uncle to pick up a few things at the hardware store. We were nearly done with the gazebo but had run out of plywood trim for the base, and we needed to buy more paint.
Once we stored everything in the back of his truck, my uncle ran to the bank, and I walked a block down to the convenience store to grab us a couple of Cokes.
The girl behind the counter was someone I recognized, but I couldn’t think of her name. Candy…Candace maybe? She was a year behind me in school, and I tried not to stare as she tugged her top down so that her boobs were nearly falling out. It was kinda hard not to. They were massive.
“Hey, Nathan. How’s your summer going? I mean, I know it’s probably hard and everything…and…”
I shrugged. “It’s going.”
I tossed a pack of gum on the counter to go along with my Cokes.
“I heard you and Rachel broke up.”
I nodded but didn’t answer. I didn’t know the girl, not really, and it’s not like we’d ever had a conversation before, so why the hell was she chatting me up about Rachel?
“I hear Trevor’s the same. Not really improving. That’s gotta be weird, you know? It’s almost like he’s stuck or something.”
Annoyed, I ran my hand through my hair and rolled my shoulders. “I really don’t know.”
And it’s none of your business.
The bell jingled behind me so I knew I wasn’t the only one in the store anymore. I cleared my throat, a “let’s get the freaking show on the road” kind of sound, but this girl was dense.
She rang up my order. “So, are you and Mrs. Blackwell’s granddaughter like, you know, dating?”