The Beautiful Now

by M. Leighton

  And thrilling.

  So, so thrilling.

  My laugh trails behind me as I pick up speed. Off in the distance, I see a shape, tall and trim, erupting from the solid base of our rock. As I approach, he bends to throw his hand over the side. The moment I’m close enough, I slip mine into it and he hauls me up.

  Dane pulls me straight into his arms, crushing my mouth with his. He’s as starved as I am. Ravenous, like we’ve waited a lifetime for this moment. And in some ways we have.

  He devours me, his need lighting me up on the inside. The clock turns back and, suddenly, I’m seventeen again, so in love, so on fire. I don’t even take a breath. I only feel.

  I taste Dane’s tongue, savoring the flavor of his mouth, the flavor of him. I’m losing my grip, losing my mind. I’m overwhelmed with a need I haven’t felt in half a lifetime.

  Heat and want ratchet up. My fingers reach, my tongue licks, my breasts ache. I breathe him in and exhale his name.

  And then we are burning. Together. We are tugging and ripping and tearing at each other’s clothes. There is an urgency between us, but not one born of dwindling time. No, this one is born of the passage of it. It’s been so long. I feel like I’ve waited a lifetime for him, and in many ways I have.

  When I’m clothed only in moonlight and the cooling night air, Dane presses his hot skin to mine and, chest to chest, bends to pick me up. With a will and a want of their own, my legs wrap around his waist, putting the part of me that aches most for him inches from the one thing that will ease that ache.

  I realize he’s bare, which gives me a moment of pause. “We’re adults now. We should be smarter than this, right?”

  I let my head fall back as his lips burn a trail down my throat. “Probably. I’m okay with whatever happens, though. You?”

  A little thrill, like the zing of an electrical current, buzzes through my core. “Yes. Oh, God, yes!”

  He’s breathless as he speaks. So am I. “This seems vaguely familiar.”

  “So familiar.”

  “You still feel like you were made just for me. My lips belong here.” He kisses the little hollow under my ear. “My hands belong here.” He flexes his fingers on my butt where they’re holding me up. “And this,” he growls as he teases between my legs, “belongs here.”

  With that, Dane lets me fall onto him and we both cry out at the same time.

  Our chests are heaving and our skin sticks together as we pant. My muscles squeeze and contract around him, a silent plea for more.

  “Oh shit.” Dane’s whisper makes me smile, and I laugh when he lifts me off him and turns to kneel on the heap of our discarded clothes. “I don’t trust my legs to hold us up for this. You don’t mind, do you?”

  I don’t even get my answer out before he pulls me down onto him again and turns me upside down from the inside out. We are a flurry of hot kisses, teasing fingers, and desperate moans. We claw and grasp, bite and lick. Every inch is on fire, every nerve alive, and it all boils down to Dane James.

  I don’t know when he scoots me underneath him and begins to mark me with thrust after thrust of his possession. I only know that at some point, I forget that the world exists outside this man, outside the love that we’ve nurtured for over half our lives, and time stands still. For us, for this moment, the earth stops spinning and there is nothing else, no one else, but Dane and me.

  I’m in the arms of my soulmate, and when we explode together, I’m gripped in the throes of a passion unlike anything I’ve ever known.

  Several long, beautiful, breathtaking minutes later, I hear his voice. A breath. A groan. A promise. And it seals my fate as well as his. “I love you, Brinkley Sommers.”

  “I love you, Dane James. Don’t ever let me go.”

  “Never.”

  Chapter 36

  Christmas Eve

  Dinner is over. The kitchen is clean, leftovers stowed in plastic containers in the fridge. There’s enough for four families to eat for a month. Momma never did know how to do simple. She didn’t just throw a Christmas Eve dinner for us; she threw a banquet, one that four people could never make a dent in. She wanted this one to be special, though. Not only is it our first Christmas together, all of us, as a family, but it’s a celebration of Celina’s successful examination. The bone marrow transplant seems to be grafting perfectly, no problems at all. She’ll still have to be monitored for a long time, and she won’t be completely in the clear for a while yet, but for now, she’s well. Seemingly cured. That alone is reason to rejoice.

  The baton of doling out gifts has been silently passed to Dane. When we are all seated around the room, he starts in on the pile of presents under the tree. It seems endless. “Momma, you bought too much.”

  “Oh pish posh,” she says with a wave of her hand.

  “Pish posh? What the heck is that? It sounds like bad sushi.”

  She rolls her eyes. “Brinkley, honestly. Must you pick on me all the time?”

  “Uh, yeah. It’s what I do.”

  She shakes her head, but I see the upward curve of her lips. I see the happiness radiating from her face.

  “Just wait until Celina gets older and starts doing this to you.”

  “That won’t happen. I’m awesome. There’s nothing to pick on.”

  “What about when you get old and you start wearing old lady pants?”

  “Never gonna happen. This ass is staying in these jeans until I die. I’ll be buried in them, thank you very much.”

  “Brinkley Renee!” Momma chastises.

  “Butt. I meant to say butt.”

  Celina sniggers and I wink at her. Meanwhile, Dane starts calling out names.

  When every present is accounted for and we’re all sitting behind shamefully enormous piles of presents, Dane aims his phone at my mother and tells her to start the festivities. Momma is more than happy to do that, of course. She loves presents. That will never change. She oohs and aahs over every present, which thrills Celina and makes my heart curiously warm, and when she’s done, she gets up and comes to each of us to thank us individually with a kiss on the cheek and a hug. And for me, a look that says thank you for a hundred different things that aren’t under the tree.

  Dane goes around the room, to me, then to Celina. Lastly, he turns to his pile and unwraps a surprisingly thoughtful array of gifts. Across the room, I give my mom a high five and she rolls her eyes. But then she holds up her hand to complete it.

  I laugh.

  I can’t help myself.

  I go to the kitchen to get a trash bag to collect all the wrapping and Dane follows me in. I can hear Celina laughing with Momma and I smile. I’ve been doing a lot of that lately.

  “There’s one present left,” he says, his eyes as warm as the pumpkin pie we had for dessert.

  He holds up a box, about the size of a wallet, and hands it to me. I drop the empty bag and dig in. “Who’s it from?” I ask, ripping through paper and tearing through tape.

  He doesn’t answer; he just watches me.

  I open the lid only to find two smaller boxes inside the first, both about the size of a ring box. They’re labeled as ONE and TWO.

  I inhale sharply. I don’t want to make too much of this in case it’s not what I think it is, what I hope it is. It could be earrings or a matching set of jewelry. I mean there are two boxes, not just one.

  But, still, it could be something else, too.

  My eyes flicker to Dane’s and they’re trained on me, happy yet intense.

  Gently, I remove the paper from the first smaller box labeled ONE, and I lift the velvet lid. Inside it is a ring that I’m familiar with. The last time I saw it was fifteen years ago when my mother slid it off her finger and gave it to me. “Is this…is this what I think it is?”

  He nods.

  “How did you find it? I mean…how?”

  He shrugs. Like it was no big deal when I know it had to have been. God, I love that shrug. “It took some digging. And some bribing, but luckily nowadays t
here’s a paper trail for everything. And a price. Most anything can be bought. Once I found the shop, it wasn’t that hard.”

  “Not that hard? Are you kidding me? I bet this was a huge pain in the as— butt!” I grin as I correct myself.

  “Ass,” he whispers, and I giggle. “It doesn’t matter how hard it was, you’re worth it. I thought maybe this ring would mean something to you.”

  “It does.” I pick it up and move it in the light.

  Dane takes my hand, the ring pressed between our palms, and grabs the other box. “Come on.”

  “Where are we going?”

  A sly yet stunning smile slides across his face. “To our place.”

  As always, Dane James could smile like that and ask me anything and I’d do it. I’d follow him anywhere.

  Butterflies take flight, fluttering in my belly and dancing through my veins. “Give me just one second. To tell them we’ll be back.”

  He nods then kisses me quickly, whispering, “Don’t take too long. I’ve been waiting for you my whole life. I don’t want to wait anymore.”

  I smile, a wobbly, nervous, elated smile, and I dart into the living room. I come up short when I see that John, my mother’s new boyfriend (or whatever they call one another at their age), has arrived.

  “Oh. Hi, John. I don’t mean to be rude, but Dane and I have to step out for just a minute. We’ll be right back.”

  “Not rude at all. Take your time.”

  He and my mother smile at me and then at each other, and they resume whatever they were discussing with Celina as though I never popped in. I find it odd, but I don’t take too long to think about it. Rather, I race back through the house toward Dane, stopping by my purse along the way to pocket the gauze bag tucked away inside it.

  And then, with my heart ablaze, I return to the kitchen.

  Dane is standing patiently by the door, still smiling, and I realize when my eyes fall on his face that I’ve never felt more alive, more complete than I do in this moment.

  When I stop in front of him, he must be able to see it on my face—my feelings, my heart, my love. “Hold that thought for just a few minutes.”

  He takes my hand again, the ring once more pressed between his palm and my own, and he leads me out the back door, around the house, and through the field. He leads me to the rock.

  Our rock.

  The path feels as much like a part of us, our love, our history, as the feelings themselves. I revel in each one, in every step we took to get to this place in time.

  With each other.

  Finally together.

  At our rock, Dane releases me just long enough to leap up onto it and pull me up after him. When we’re standing face-to-face, I anxiously blurt, “I bet we look like one of those plastic couples on top of a wedding cake.”

  He grins. “I guess that’s kind of fitting. In a weird way. This has always been kind of the cake in my life. The good part. The sweet stuff. This is where it all began, isn’t it?”

  We both take a second to look around at the vast fields that glow in the moonlight, at the endless sky, and the equally endless possibilities the future seems to hold from this vantage point.

  Dane takes my hand and lays the ring on my palm. “I can never give you back what he stole. If I could, I would. I’d give my every last cent to pay you back for all that you’ve suffered.”

  “Dane, you—”

  He presses a finger to my lips. “This is a symbol of our past, of all that we lost. But I’m done living in the past and I hope you are, too. I got you back, and all I want now is a future with you. You and Celina. Our family. Alton…he can’t hurt us anymore. He’s gone.” Dane curls his fingers over mine, forming them into a fist around the ring, and then takes a step back. “Throw it.”

  I glance down at my closed fingers, the weight of the ring heavier than mere gold and gemstones. It’s a burden I’ve carried for twenty years, fifteen of them by myself. Like Dane, I’m done. I’m done living in the past, letting Alton and this town and all the ugliness rule my life. I’m done sipping on the poison of what he did and tried to do to me. I’m done suffering for him.

  I draw my arm back as far as it will go and, with a grunt, I hurl the ring out into the darkness, imagining it being swallowed up by the newly planted fields. The wheat will grow up and around and over it, and it will remain there for the rest of my life, buried, where it belongs.

  A soft, cool wind blows and I inhale. I inhale the night and I inhale freedom. The kind of freedom I used to dream about as a little girl.

  A laugh bubbles up in my chest. I feel a thousand pounds lighter. I want to spin in circles and laugh so loud the whole world hears me. But that laughter gets stuck in my throat when I turn around and see Dane kneeling on our rock. His arm is outstretched, his palm open, and on it sits box TWO.

  Slowly, I walk forward and take the box. I roll it over and over in my hand a few times before I slide one finger under a crease and tear away the paper. I do it with great reverence, a reverence that, to a casual onlooker, might seem out of place. But it’s deserved. Well-deserved. My gut, my heart tells me that what’s in this box will change the rest of my life. Even without seeing it, I feel that whatever rests inside is the culmination of two decades of love and want.

  With trembling fingers, I lift the lid. I gasp when I see an earring inside, nestled against velvet the color of the sky above. It’s a single dangling emerald and diamond earring. And I recognize it, too.

  “This is…”

  Dane nods.

  It’s the earring I left for him that day so long ago on this very rock. It was my way of saying all the things I couldn’t say, that I wasn’t allowed to say.

  And he heard them.

  I rub my finger over it, marveling at the thin piece of jewelry. “You kept it? All this time?”

  Again he nods. “It was the last piece of you I had. Even though I thought it was you saying goodbye, I couldn’t get rid of it. I just…I couldn’t.”

  “It was never ‘goodbye’. It was ‘I love you’.”

  Dane’s face, his handsome, handsome face, is shining up at mine when he says, his voice hushed in the quiet night, “Brinkley Sommers, love of my life, mother of my child, will you marry me? Will you be mine? Will you finally be mine?”

  As usual, I can’t stop the tears. They pour freely down my cheeks.

  I don’t notice the pain when I fall to my knees in front of him. I only feel love. So much love and so much happiness, everything else is muted. Everything and everyone else has faded into the distance, into the background, into the night, and once again, it’s just Dane and me, on our rock. Alone in the world, surrounded by darkness and filled with the profound adoration that’s between us.

  I slip out one of my earrings and tuck my hair behind my ear. “I’ve always been yours. Not for a day in twenty years have I ever been anyone else’s.”

  “Don’t ever leave me again.”

  “Never. Not ever.”

  He puts my old earring in and then takes my shaking hands in his. He rubs my left ring finger with his thumb. “I want to have the stones put into an engagement ring, but for tonight, for this, I wanted to give you back every piece of us that you left behind.”

  “I never left you behind. You were always with me, in my heart, every day. I couldn’t get rid of you either. I didn’t want to.” I reach into the pocket of my slacks and I produce the little gauze bag. “I have something for you, too.”

  I take Dane’s hand and turn it palm up to place the gauze bag on it. He glances down at it, a bit of confusion clear on his face, but he tugs open the little strings anyway.

  I watch with a hammering heart as he takes out the slender stick and stares at the window on it.

  “You probably can’t see it in the dark, but there are two pink lines there.”

  He lifts wide eyes to mine. “Does this mean…” I nod. “You’re…” I nod again.

  He whoops so loudly I can’t hear for a few seconds. But I
can feel. I feel joy, unspeakable joy, rolling off him, rolling off me. Colliding in the space in between. It shoots up into a spray above our heads and rains down on us as Dane pulls me to my feet and into his arms, then swings me in a dozen dizzying circles.

  When he finally stops, I’m breathless. “This time, I’ll be by your side the whole time. This time, you won’t be alone.”

  He kisses me with such tenderness, a few more tears leak out and crawl down my cheeks.

  “I love you, Dane James.”

  “And I love you, Brinkley Sommers.” He buries his face in my neck. “You’re shivering. We should get back.”

  “It’s not the cold that’s making me shiver.”

  “I wish I’d brought a blanket.”

  “Why? I’m fine. Really.”

  He leans back and looks down at me. “Because if I had, I’d peel every stitch of clothes off you. I want to see you in this earring and nothing else.”

  His words heat me more effectively than any blanket ever could. “We might be missed, and I’d really hate for someone to come looking for us. This is our spot. I don’t want anyone else ruining it.”

  “How about we meet back here later then? I’ll bring a blanket. You just bring you. And a big appetite.”

  My stomach squirms in the most delicious way. “Done!”

  I laugh as he drags me back to the house. Now I just want the night to be over with so I can sneak out and meet Dane like we did when we were kids. And like we’ll probably always do.

  Because the rock is our place. And we belong there. Together.

  Epilogue

  CELINA

  Two years and eight months later

  I stand at the front of the aisle, waiting, like everyone else. The air smells like lilies and roses. Everything that would stand still in Grandma’s backyard has been draped with layers of white gauze and clumps of white flowers. It looks like a princess’ dream that someone brought to life.

  That someone being my grandmother.