He slows the kiss and rests his forehead against mine. “W-What was that?” I ask, trying to catch my breath.
“That was our first kiss.”
“That shouldn’t have happened.” I say the words, but I don’t mean them. I want to beg him to do it again.
“The first but not the last,” he assures me, ignoring me as usual. With a small peck to the corner of my mouth, he removes his hands from my hair and pulls away. “Now, let’s get you some Chick-fil-A.” He backs out of the parking lot, reaches over, and entwines his fingers with mine as if it’s something we do every single day.
He acts as though it’s normal for us, and if I’m being honest, it feels normal. Like I’ve known him and his hands and lips for a lifetime, when I don’t know him at all. It’s odd yet comforting at the same time.
“You still want to eat on the beach?” he asks.
“Yes, if that’s okay with you?”
“Perfect. What do you want?” he asks, pulling the car around to the drive-thru speaker. I rattle off my order, and he adds a milkshake for both of us. Reaching into my purse, I hand him a ten-dollar bill. “What’s that?” He stares at my hand as if I’m offering him a rattlesnake.
“For my food.”
“Put it away.”
“Please, take it. I can pay for mine.”
“I don’t care if you have millions of dollars sitting in the bank. You’re with me, I pay. Get used to it.”
“Why?” I blurt out.
“Why what?”
“Why do I need to get used to it?”
This time he turns his head to look at me. “Because, this”—he points at me then back at himself—“there’s something there, and we’re going to take the time to find out what it is.”
“What if that’s not what I want? What if what you’re feeling is all on you? What then?”
He hands his credit card to the girl at the window and hands me a bag of food and the milkshakes, which I place in the cupholders. He pulls up, then stops to look at me. “You want it. You want me. This feeling, the spark that charges between us, the current that flows through me when I touch you, you feel it. I can see it in your eyes. This is not all on me, not by a long shot.” He turns back around and drives us a few short blocks to the beach.
After finding a spot that’s not littered with tourists, we sit on the sand and begin to eat in silence. The sun is starting to set, and I realize we’ve spent the entire day together when it only feels like minutes.
“I love the ocean,” I say, breaking the silence. “Growing up, life was hard. My father, I never knew him, and my mom, well, she blamed me for him leaving. She was hooked on drugs. We moved from one dumpy apartment to the next, following whatever man she’d latched herself onto at the time.” I take a break and grab a sip of my milkshake. “I turned eighteen three days before I graduated from high school. Something, I wasn’t sure I’d get to do with all the moving around we did.”
“That had to be hard.” His deep timbre is soft. Soothing.
“Yeah. I wanted better, you know? I knew that I had to graduate. That I had to get that little piece of paper, or I would end up just like her. That wasn’t what I wanted. I wanted out. I wanted a new life.”
“Where are you from?”
I look over at him and smile. “Indiana.” My eyes scan the ocean with the setting sun as its backdrop. “I’d been saving, working after school, and hiding the money. Mom didn’t care if I was home or not. On the rare occasion she did ask, I simply told her I was out with friends. I bought a bus ticket for the day of graduation. As soon as they handed me my diploma, I walked off the stage and out the doors. I didn’t have close friends, I was always the new girl, and it’s not like I could invite anyone over. So I stayed to myself. With just a backpack filled with a few meager items of clothing, I walked onto the bus and never looked back.”
I turn to look at him and find him watching me intently. “This is the first place I came to—this beach. I sat here for hours, just looking out at the ocean. It was the first time I’d ever seen it, and I was in awe of its beauty. The way it’s never-ending.”
“The water, it matches your eyes,” he says huskily. “Like you, I could stare at them for hours.”
“You are unlike anyone I’ve ever met, Owen Riggins.”
“Good.” He leans in and presses his lips to mine. “Now, eat up, and we’ll take a walk on the beach.”