Love You Better (Better Love 1)

“I have something for you,” she sing-songs and wiggles her eyebrows.

“Is it you, naked, underneath me?” She snorts out a laugh, but I’m very serious. “I’m serious,” I stress, and she laughs again.

“It is not...yet. Later, that can be arranged. But right now,” she opens the top drawer of her dresser and pulls out a small white box, “you’ll have to settle for this.”

She hands it over to me.

“Are you giving me your zombie apocalypse badge?” I gasp jokingly. After Ivy drove my friend Scotty’s truck to the police station, she wouldn’t stop talking about how it validated her reasoning for needing to learn to drive stick. She talked about it so much, in fact, that Jesse knitted her a grey diamond-shaped “badge” with a blue Z on it. He told her it’s the “official getaway driver of the zombie apocalypse” badge, and she fucking beamed with pride.

“Heck no. That’s mine forever. But this might be better.”

When I open the white box, I’m surprised to see a small blue enamel pin.

“Uh...thanks...” I raise my eyebrow in question. “You want me to wear this?”

Ivy rolls her eyes. “Look closer.”

I pick up the pin and study it.

A blue cornflower.

On the pin is a picture of a blue cornflower, and my eyes shoot to hers.

“This way your Bachelor’s Button will never wilt,” she says quietly, and my heart races.

“And what does that mean?”

Her smile grows and her dimple pops. “It means the girl you’ve fallen for returns your feelings.”

I swallow, and I’m pretty sure I fucking blush a little.

“Ivy Rivenbark, are you saying you have feelings for me?” I tease despite my thundering heart, and she nods seriously.

“Very strong feelings,” she whispers, running her hands up my chest and stretching on her tiptoes to press a kiss to my lips. “I’m saying I’m in love with you, Kelley Allen Pierce.”

We’re both smiling, and I press my forehead to hers. “I’m in love with you back,” I say, and then I kiss her again.

Epilogue

The first day of spring semester is in two days. My last first day of undergrad. It’s strange. Part of me wants to savor it so I can bask in nostalgia, and the other part just wants to get it the fuck over with.

Knowing all of the changes on the horizon, how we’re all leaving one phase of life and standing on the cusp of another, fills me with excitement and dread. I’m excited to get into my own classroom, but I’m gonna fucking miss undergrad.

I spent most of my winter break back home with Ivy and our families. With Allison and Matthew now staying with Ivy’s mom, though, she stayed over at my house frequently.

It wasn’t a hardship.

I smirk when I think about all the ways she and I got comfortable in my childhood home. I finally got to spread her out on my bed, just like I’d always fantasized, and I will never look at the pool table in my media room the same way ever again. Just the thought has me shifting my stance to relieve the tightness in my jeans.

As I’m unpacking my laundry and reliving every single moan I pulled from Ivy over the break, I hear my bedroom door open and my entire body fucking erupts in tingles. I don’t even try to fight the grin. I don’t have to hide it anymore.

“Kelley,” she croons behind me.

“Ivy,” I greet back, then I shut my dresser drawer and turn to face her. “Hi, baby.”

“Hi,” she smiles sweetly, and I look her over. I just saw her this morning, but I swear I’ll never get enough. I want to commit every look, every outfit, every moo

d, every smile to memory so that I am never without her. Until she’s tattooed on the back of my fucking eyelids.