The Rules of Regret

by Megan Squires

  “I think you might have just written your own quote with that one, Darby.” Foreheads, noses and hips all touched. “Just you wait and see. You could go down in infamy for that.”

  “If discovering what love is through loving you is what I’m remembered for, then I think that’s a pretty good legacy.”

  “It’s definitely what I will remember.” Foreheads, noses, hips, and now chests.

  “Then that’s enough.”

  To be remembered—even if by only one person in this world of seven billion—for how much I loved was infinitely more than I could ever have hoped for.

  “Um...”

  “Um, what?” Hands. Now our hands touched, too, as Torin wove them together and brought them up by our shoulders. It felt a little like a marionette as he waved them back and forth slowly, my arms and hands directed by his movements.

  “Um-I-want-to-make-out-with-you.”

  “Um-I-think-that-is-an-incredible-idea.”

  Just like with the eyelash fluttering, I could practically feel his smile as he beamed a wide, toothy grin. “Um-it’s-sorta-dirty-here.”

  “Um-I-kinda-like-dirty.”

  I smiled and wondered if he could almost feel it, too.

  “Um-you-really-shouldn’t-say-things-like-that.”

  So I didn’t. But that was because Torin released his grip from my fingers and instead slid his hands down to the backs of my thighs and in one effortless lift, hiked me up onto him. I curled my legs around his waist and he planted his hands on the pockets of my jeans. My elbows were on his shoulders and my hands were in his hair, pulling his head closer to me, needing him to press up against me with his whole body.

  Torin looked up at me with eager eyes that instantly flooded me with what felt like helium, because I was completely weightless, about to take off.

  “You,” he breathed against my skin.

  “Me, what?” I smirked down at him, biting the corner of my mouth playfully. I decided to flutter my eyelashes a little, too, just to see what it would do.

  “That’s all. Just you.” He pulled his bottom lip into his mouth, too, nearly mimicking me.

  “You kinda sound like a caveman.”

  He dipped his hands into my back pockets, grabbing my backside and pulling me even closer. I tightened my legs around him and crossed my ankles to bracket myself there.

  “I’m kinda thinking like a caveman. The fact that I have my hands on your ass right now makes it a little hard to form complete thoughts, let alone sentences.”

  “And what if my lips were on yours? What would that do?” I brought my forehead down to his and looked at him from under my eyelashes. I probably batted them a few times more than necessary.

  “I’m not sure what is more prehistoric than a Neanderthal, but I’d be that.”

  “We wouldn’t want that.” I shook my head slowly.

  Torin almost chomped through that bottom lip. “No,” he said, his lip still pinned, making him a bit of a ventriloquist which I actually found remarkably impressive. “No, we wouldn’t.”

  “Well... “ I tugged his golden hair. “Maybe we would.”

  “Yeah,” he agreed quickly. “Maybe.”

  “C’mere.” I yanked his mouth to mine with my hands coiled in his hair. There was just a slice of space between us. His breath rushed out of him and I pulled it in like I needed it to survive.

  “Mmm-kay,” he muttered against my skin, and then took my bottom lip between his teeth. I jumped noticeably in his arms, startled, and he used his biceps to squeeze me closer, our chests pressed so hard against the others that I couldn’t make any sense of whose erratic pulse belonged to who. It was all just drums and cymbals and rhythm.

  Torin pulled back an inch as he smiled gently, his dimples deepening, his green eyes hooded. Releasing my lip from his teeth, he let his lips take hold of it, sucking it into his mouth so slowly it made me physically ache. My stomach clenched as his mouth pressed to mine, pulling and tugging my lips in a painstakingly deliberate rhythm. I ran my tongue across the fullness of his bottom lip and parted my lips to let his own tongue slide into my mouth. He was really good at this, like too good considering I knew he wanted to keep things at just this for the time being.

  Still holding me wrapped around him, he walked forward several feet. I felt the sudden roughness from the bark of a tree against my back as he pushed me up onto its surface. His hands slid out from under me and he used his weight to press me against the trunk, his chest heavy on mine. One palm was at my jaw, the other trailing down the angle of my neck to my collarbone. “Sleep with me,” he murmured against my skin. Waves of emotion pulsed through my body, taking on physical form in chills rushing across my exposed arms, legs, neck.

  I managed to get out a dizzied, “Huh?”

  “Tonight, under the stars. In the sleeping bag, for old times sake.” He spoke quietly in between light kisses and nips at my bottom lip. “Because at any moment you’re going to realize the permanence of what happened with Lance, and I’m worried you’ll run again.” Holding his head directly in front of mine, our eyes aligned and locked. “Before you run, I want to share tonight with you.” His brow furrowed and his jaw tightened. “Just the two of us, up here, under our very own canopy of stars.”

  “And all you want to do is sleep?” I teased. I dropped my mouth to his again at the same time a low groan slipped through his lips and I swallowed it up.

  “No, I obviously want to do more.” His tongue darted into my mouth and ran along all the sides of it. Mine danced with his, trailing the same path in his mouth instead. Our lips were hard against the others, opening and closing on cue, stealing all control of my breathing because everything right now was centered around our lips. Even breathing at a steady pace took a backseat to kissing Torin. “I’ll always want to do more, but I’m waiting for you Darby. So for tonight, I just want to stay with you, asleep in my arms, the way everyone dreams of it all ending.” His steady gazed penetrated me. “If this is it for us, that’s the only way I’d want us to end.”

  “I’m not going to run.” He didn’t give me much opportunity to get the words out, but I managed speak them. “I don’t plan on running from you.”

  Torin brushed the pad of his thumb against my bottom lip and looked me directly in my eyes, like he was studying me. “You already know my philosophy on making plans.”

  “Then I’ll give you my promise, because that’s more than a plan.”

  “You don’t need to promise me anything, Darby. Just tonight. That’s all I need.” Slowly, he slid my body down the length of the tree, the friction of our bodies as I slithered toward the ground almost too intense to bear.

  “I’d stay here forever with you if you asked me.”

  Torin sighed. “If I honestly believed forever actually existed, I’d ask for yours.”

  “You wouldn’t have to ask. I’d have already given it to you.”

  “Then can I have your for now?” His eyebrow arched with the question. “Since that’s all we’re guaranteed?”

  I shook my head. “Forever might not exist, but for my now isn’t enough,” I said. Because it wasn’t. We’d had a summer together and that felt like just the beginning. There was no way I could let him go now; this wasn’t enough.

  I’d learned something about love and loss and knew the inevitable heartache that accompanied it. If I had any say at all, any remote ounce of control, I’d never willingly lose love again.

  “You can have my always, Torin,” I continued. “As long as you and I are on this earth, I want to be yours.” I pressed my cheek against his chest, loving the sweat and the dirt that all combined to make Torin who he was, this unexpected boy that brought me to the summit. “I promise you that.”

  “That’s a promise I’ll gladly accept.” His lips swept against mine with featherlike pressure. “Always.”

  “Always.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  “There are so many of them.”

  “I know, right?”


  “Is it possible that there are more here than in other places?” I craned my head back further against the crook of his elbow, tugging the nylon edge of the sleeping bag higher. “Because I’ve never seen so many all at once before.”

  “When you’re this high up—without all the lights, without the trees—it’s all you can see.” His fingers combed through my hair and he played with the frayed ends with his fingertips. “And it’s incredible to think that we’re only seeing a small portion of it all. Like it goes on forever.”

  “Feels infinite.”

  “That’s because it sorta is. I mean, when it comes down to it, we’re looking at time,” he said. “Like all of those stars are blazes from explosions years and years ago. Or at least I think that’s what it all is. I’m no astronomer.”

  “No,” I agreed. “Sounds right. We’re looking into the past. I think that’s what it is.” I sighed and curled against the solid line of his body. We’d retrieved a sleeping bag from the shed, but Torin didn’t have any other clothes to wear, so he was tucked into the sack in just his jeans, his upper half bare. I ran my fingers over his torso, over the curves of his stomach, and could feel his muscles clench under my touch. “I wish we could be looking into the future instead,” I murmured, continuing to trace along his heated skin.

  “No you don’t.” Torin didn’t offer more than that, and changed the subject by saying, “So there’s this star called WR 104.”

  “I thought stars had names like Sagittarius and Aquarius.”

  “Those are horoscopes—” he interjected.

  “Which, I believe, are derived from stars, Torin.”

  “Yeah, you’re right,” he conceded, chuckling. He trapped my wandering hand in his and brought it up to his chest, resting it on top of his heart. “Anyway, WR 104. That star apparently is like total Death Star status. I guess there’s this big likelihood of these gamma rays hitting earth once it goes all supernova, which could be tomorrow, or 5,000 years from now.” Our legs had been wrapped together in the sleeping bag, almost pretzeled, and he drew me closer with his knee hooked around mine. I settled into the heat he provided. “Anyway, we wouldn’t even know what hit us when it actually did. It would all be over. Just like that.” He snapped his fingers. Dust to dust.

  “Kinda scary to be staring down the gamma ray barrel of a star.”

  “Sometimes it’s easier to live life under the false pretense that we’re invincible, isn’t it?” A light breeze kicked up in the dirt and Torin tugged the top of the bag up under our ears, sheltering us from the crisp air that skirted around us. “Like nothing can stop us. Not like we have a proverbial gun to our heads that we all kinda do, huh?”

  “I’m starting to believe it’s the only way to actually live at all.” I was starting to believe a lot of things about life. Some more concretely than others.

  “But how do you do that?” His heart echoed steadily against my ear and I pressed further into his chest to swallow up the sound. “Like reconciling the invincibility feeling and the mortal-ness factor; they’re two opposites on the same coin,” he asked thoughtfully, like he always did. I’d never met anyone like Torin that thought so deeply about life. “What, do you just flip each day? Today I live like there’s no tomorrow. Today I live like I have endless tomorrow’s.”

  “I honestly feel like I’m teetering on the edge of that coin. Like it’s spinning and spinning and wobbling, but sorta balancing at the same time.”

  “I get that,” he said and I could feel his head nod against the top of mine, his chin pressed to my temple. “And maybe they’re not actually opposites at all. Maybe we are both mortal and immortal. Looking up at that midnight sky, it kinda changes the whole picture. Maybe we’re mortal here, that might be true. But maybe we’re invincible there.” He didn’t say what there was, but we were both looking up at that same sparkling abyss, its vast expanse of infinity shining on us in thousands of bright, white has-been stars. “Maybe—hopefully—this isn’t it for us, you know?”

  I wanted to agree by saying ‘Yes, I know.’ But I didn’t know. As Torin said, I hoped, and for now that felt close enough to knowing. Sometimes hope was all we had.

  “I’m fine balancing on that edge,” he continued. His chest rose and fell consistently. “Balancing on the edge of that possibility. I wouldn’t regret living like that, I don’t think. I wouldn’t regret living for today, but hoping for tomorrow.”

  “I like that rule.” I wrapped my arms around him tighter, even though the one slunk underneath him was tingling with numbness. Because, finally, nothing else about me felt numb. I’d experienced so much of death that I’d forgotten to experience life, and that was the greatest tragedy of all. Torin brought me back to life. I wasn’t sure he’d ever be able to know the extent to which he saved me, but I was determined to spend the rest of whatever time I was given letting him know.

  “So I remember you saying your parents started this camp to try to use Randy’s death for good.”

  Torin angled toward me, smoothing my hair so he could look more clearly into my eyes. “Yeah?”

  “Do you think that’s our job? To look for the good in the bad?” I’d never lived my life like that, but instead had just refused to believe the bad had even happened. Refusing to come to terms with death by ignoring the permanence of its power had been my default for as long as I could remember.

  “I think there is always a silver lining. I don’t necessarily know it’s our job to find it, but I do know it makes life a hell of a lot better if we do go in search of it.” It was incredible to think that something so simple had eluded me for so long, and that Torin could speak it so freely. “Like those stars,” he continued, waving a hand toward the blackened blanket above us. “It kinda sucks that only after they burn out do they finally get to shine that bright, but I guess that’s the good in the bad for them. Their silver lining.”

  My gaze tried to take it all in, the limitless sky and its millions of sparkles of burnt out energy. I knew there was bad in the world, but in this moment, all I could see was the good. The beautiful creation of light and constellations and shooting bursts that crossed over the galaxy—that was all I could see. And it was honestly the most captivating, breathtaking scene that my eyes had ever, and probably would ever, take in.

  “I want to do all of that, Torin.” I closed my eyes for a brief moment, and the black that shielded my vision made me crave the twinkling illumination instantly. “I want to live for today, hope for tomorrow, and try to look for the good in everything in between.” I opened my eyes again. “I think that’s the only way I can truly live this life without regret.”

  “I like that, Darby. The rules of regret,” he said softly with an understanding that made me feel not only wholly understood, but significant beyond anything I’d ever experienced.

  “I think I can follow those.”

  In fact, I knew I could. For once, I was completely confident in that answer. I could live. I could have hope. And I wouldn’t allow myself to dwell on the bad, but would give myself the freedom to seek out the good. I would allow myself to do that, and Torin would be the one to guide me. He’d guided me so many times before, and that was just around the tree-dotted trails back at camp. Guiding me through life, though much more important on every possible level, felt so much easier to surrender to. And surrendering to the idea of hope felt just as natural. I could do this—I could live this life without regret. “Let’s follow those rules together,” I said again, pulling him so close I could hardly tell where I ended and he began.

  Curling me into his side and holding me with the most gentle, but secure, embrace he possibly could, he kissed my forehead, his lips suspended just above my brow, and said, “I think we just might regret it if we don’t.”

  THE END

  Dear Readers,

  Thank you for taking the time to read The Rules of Regret and for supporting me in my journey.

  I would love if you might consider leaving a review on Amazon.c
om and Goodreads,

  and if you enjoyed Torin and Darby’s story and would like to read another contemporary romance of mine,

  please check out Demanding Ransom.

  And stay tuned for Draw Me In, my contemporary romantic comedy debuting late 2013!

  Megan Squires lives with her husband and two children just outside of Sacramento, California.

  A graduate from the University of California, Davis, Megan is now a full-time mother, wife, and dreamer—though her characters don’t often give her much opportunity to sleep.

  To follow Megan, or to connect online, visit:

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