Kathy continued in the same vein but more gently, “I know you said he keeps changing his mind, but wasn’t it always that he was going to marry Maggie and the question was whether or not he could see you? Have a friendship with you? I don’t recall him ever choosing you over her before.”
Rachel’s pitch climbed with excitement, “Sarah, that’s a huge breakthrough for him. A HUGE breakthrough. What the fuck is wrong with you?”
“I think what Rachel means to say,” Kathy laughed, “is that you should at least give him a chance. See if he really is going to leave Maggie.”
Sarah stood in the middle of the kitchen, dishwater dripping off her hands, feeling like she was trapped between two dimensions. The significance of James’s choice was slowly beginning to sink in as her two most trusted confidants framed it for her.
“So you think I should have listened to him?” she asked and watched their heads bob up and down in agreement.
“Sarah,” her mother said, “this is the man you love, the man you love more than any other man you’ve ever loved. Rachel and I both know it. We can see it!” Rachel nodded in agreement.
Kathy’s eyes were glowing with excitement as she continued: “It’s written all over your face; it’s in your tone; it was in your voice when you sang to Anatoly on stage. You were singing to James. Even when you were with Garrett, I know the entire time you were missing James. You love him. He’s worth fighting for, sweetheart!”
Sarah felt like the proverbial deer in headlights. The entire year and a half I have known this man I’ve been locked in a constant battle between my fight and flight reflexes. And now they’re telling me I need to fight again?
“Go after him,” Rachel urged. “Go get him!”
Sarah was trembling as it continued to soak into her synapses, the words James had shared, the speech her mother had just given, Rachel’s admonishment. I’ll go over there tonight after everyone leaves, she thought. I’ll go talk to him and we’ll...we’ll figure out what we can do. Oh my god, I can’t believe this is happening...
Abby suddenly slinked around the corner, “He’s in North Carolina,” she said, having heard the entire conversation from the living room.
“What? What do you mean?” Sarah asked.
“He sent me a message last night telling me you rejected him and he went to the mountains to think about stuff,” Abby revealed.
“GO!” Rachel shouted. “Go pack your bags, get in your car, and go to him.”
“Are you nuts?” Sarah laughed at her. “I can’t drive all the way to North Carolina for a man! That’s ridiculous.”
“Not for just any man,” Kathy corrected. “But you can for James!”
“Oh, Mom, you have to!” Abby jumped on the bandwagon. “Please? We’ll find out where he’s going exactly and call you. Go pack, you have to go!”
Sarah scanned the room looking from face to face: her mother, then Rachel, then Abby. Here were the three people who knew her best telling her to go after her man, to fight for him. Suddenly the Chorus of Nature from the Garden of the Gods rang out through her mind, underscoring the trio urging her to go fight for James.
This is it, she thought, feeling absolutely certain at last. This is it.
***
There were many times during the drive that Sarah was sure she’d lost her mind. Abby and Rachel had been in nearly constant contact with her, helping her stay awake and finally sending the address of the cabin where James was staying. “I wrangled it out of him,” Rachel said, feeling victorious. “I told him I felt bad about everything that had happened, and I wanted to have dinner delivered to him tomorrow. He kept arguing saying it wasn’t necessary but I finally said, ‘Look, if you don’t say yes and tell me where you’re staying, I’m going to keep calling and harassing you all weekend.’ That seemed to do it!”
Sarah laughed at the story and remembered how James had conspired with Rachel to find out where she was staying when he’d shown up at her hotel room during her conference in Denver. Turnabout is fair play, she mused. She glanced at the clock. Five hours down, two to go.
The seven hour drive winding through the Appalachians felt like an eternity. She spent the time flipping through the photo albums in her memory. She flashed back to her first drive to James’s house for New Year’s Eve, 2010, remembering how long it felt even though it was only thirty minutes.
Other flashes sparkled through her mind like Fourth of July fireworks: conversations over coffee, climbing the rock wall, waking up in his arms and spending lazy mornings making love. She cranked up the volume on her radio to underscore the memories, singing along to 80’s pop tunes. She began to measure the distance of her journey in songs, not miles. How many Prince, Madonna, and Cyndi Lauper songs now stand in the way between James and me?
Finally the sun began to rise in the east as her trusty red Toyota moved at a fast clip southwest toward Asheville. Through the lavender-laced clouds she began to see peaks rising up from the dark hills that had been concealed in the black velvet sky during the night. She saw layer after layer of mountains stacked against the horizon, each layer paler as it faded into the brightening sky.
I’m getting close, she realized. Her heart was so full of hope and love, she thought it might explode as her GPS identified the next exit as the one where James could be found. Her heart pounded as she slowed to make the turn, and its fluttering continued to escalate as she followed the winding road up the mountainside.
I can’t believe I’m doing this, she thought for the millionth time. I hope he doesn’t turn me away. I hope he’s alone! she worried. So many nervous thoughts swirled around her like a tornado of fear, but the constant hum of nature drove the fear away. The familiar chorus resonated off the faces of the mountains on either side of her, amplifying the song, the message of which was that this path, this journey to James, was the single truest mountain climb she had ever undertaken.
***
The cabin was isolated, and even under the rising sun was enclosed in a dark canopy of pines. She saw his truck parked in the drive and whipped her car in behind him. I probably look like a mess and I don’t even fucking care. I just want to see those blue eyes and feel his arms around me. She scrambled up the stone steps to the porch and rushed toward the door, her heart pounding with anticipation, trying to guess what his reaction would be when he saw her.
She didn’t have to knock. He was standing there, peering out the door. As if he’s been waiting for me, she thought.
He opened the door and stood, his eyes glowing and a mixed expression of confusion and excitement spread across his face. She hadn’t even crossed the threshold when all the words she’d rehearsed during the seven hour drive began to tumble out, “I feel terrible for everything I said the last two times we talked, James. I don’t know what’s going to happen. I don’t know if you’re really going to leave Maggie, but yes, yes, I will give you a chance.” She paused for a moment to wipe away a tear.
“I love you and all I want is to be with you. I don’t know how it will all work but I know that we can do anything together...I just - “
He softly placed a finger to her lips as his confusion gave way to an undeniable joy that even his boyish smirk could not conceal. “Later,” he said and pulled her through the door frame and into his waiting arms which felt like home as they wrapped around her.
Without any further discussion, he led her into the bedroom at the back of the cabin. He stripped off their clothes and they were completely nude in mere seconds. Their bare flesh pressed together as if time refused to continue moving until their reunion was consummated.
His arms encircled her, her legs wrapped around him, and their lips connected as though they were magnetized. All of the feelings they’d both tried to deny, ignore, and reject had been renewed a hundredfold and were funneled into their limbs, their fingers, their lips. Their solitary shared desire brought their bodies together again like long lost puzzle pieces. The worry, the fear, the elation, the longing: every e
motion they’d faced during the past year suddenly dissipated. All that matters is right here, right now, she thought. It’s all come to this moment.
She felt his manhood throbbing against the opening of her sex, and she didn’t care about anything else in the world besides having him inside her. Reading her mind, he shifted his hips, the tip of his cock catching between her soft, yielding lips and allowing his passage.
As he slid inside her, inch by inch, he sighed, “This is where I belong.” And when he reached the very depths of her, he whispered, “I love you, Sarah.”
She remembered the last time they’d made love, the night they’d said goodbye before he left for Afghanistan. She feared it would be the last time, so she bottled up the sensation of him slowly filling her so that she could relive it again and again, until it became too painful. It felt just as she had captured it a year before, precisely the way it was imprinted on her memory. Like nothing in the world could feel more right than this, she thought.
Realizing that at last she had all she wanted, all she had been fighting for, the tears began to flow down her cheeks and her body began to shudder against him. Every fiber of her being was suspended on the edge of the orgasm he was bringing her toward. She heard his breathing, his soft moans of intense pleasure alongside the chorus of voices that had resounded in the Garden of the Gods and swept across her path that morning through the Smoky Mountains. They were singing out to her again, reminding her that love is worth hoping for, fighting for, and never giving up on.
“I love you too, James,” she softly breathed into his ear as he thrusted deep and slow inside her, edging her toward the peak. “I’ve always loved you.” Just before she surrendered to the heights of ecstasy, she looked across the horizon to all the other mountains that lay before them, feeling absolutely certain that together they'd climb every last one.
THE END
Phoebe Alexander’s
Mountains Trilogy
Mountains Loved, Book 3 of the Mountains Trilogy will be available on Amazon in Summer 2015.
Even at the tender age of eighteen, Abigail Lynde already knows a lot about love.
She learned that love is worth fighting for when her mother Sarah married the man of her dreams, James McAllister. She saw that love transcends the boundaries of distance and time when she met her long lost father. She realized love has no gender when her Uncle Adam and his partner Brandon built a life together. And she discovered love has no age when she witnessed it blossoming in the heart of her seemingly ageless grandmother.
Despite all these wonderful examples, Abby is still completely confused about who she is and what love means to her. As she heads off to college in her beloved mountains, her heart is set on finally facing these questions -- along with finding the one who can help her answer them.
***
Also by Phoebe Alexander
Fisher of Men
Available on Amazon 6.5.14
Leah Miller has come a long way from her ultra-religious upbringing in Wahoo, Nebraska. A graduate of Cornell, she's climbed the corporate ladder to the position of assistant general manager of The Pearl, a resort in Ocean City, Maryland. She dreams of falling in love again someday but isn't sure if her heart has healed from her last two rounds on the battlefield.
Working a private party at The Pearl, she meets party guest Captain Chris Sheldon, an Ocean City born and bred charter fisherman with a colorful past and even more colorful present. She's shocked when he tells her what kind of party it is, but she can't seem to get him out of her mind. Although there is definite chemistry between the two, their lifestyles and beliefs are at opposite ends of the spectrum. Is there any way Leah can reconcile Cap's lifestyle with her faith? Is there any way Cap can give up the lifestyle he loves for the woman who's stolen his heart?
Follow Phoebe Alexander on Facebook www.facebook.com/phoebealexanderauthor
or Twitter @mountainswanted
Mountains Loved
Phoebe Alexander
Text copyright © 2015 Phoebe Alexander
All Rights Reserved
Dedication
To my love, Mike, the mountain I wanted,
I climbed, and am now preparing
to build my life upon.
I will always credit these books for bringing us together. We represent this epic love story come to life, and we’re still writing our happy ending. Here’s to many more mountains for us
to climb together!
Chapters
Chapter One - Orientation
Chapter Two - Back in the Swing of
Things
Chapter Three Parties & Parities
Chapter Four – Timing
Chapter Five – Anniversary
Chapter Six – Hearts
Chapter Seven – Thankful
Chapter Eight - Christmas Gifts
Chapter Nine - Rock Bottom
Chapter Ten - New Beginnings
Chapter Eleven – Rendezvous
Chapter Twelve - Second Chances &
Threesomes
Chapter Fourteen – Betrayal
Chapter Fifteen – Finals
Chapter Sixteen - The Show
Chapter Seventeen -
Might Have Beens
Chapter Eighteen - End of Summer
Chapter Nineteen - Moving On
Epilogue
Chapter One
Orientation
Six inches.
That’s how far away she was standing from the girl in line in front of her. New student orientation is pretty much the worst thing ever, Abby decided as she studied the backside of the girl from a half foot away. She absorbed herself in her subject and tried to forget that she and her fellow freshmen –- ahem, First Year Students -- were being herded from an ice breaker event to a placement exam. They were packed in the narrow hallway like cattle on a dude ranch.
What the hell is a dude ranch, anyway? Abby wondered. Does that mean no girls are allowed? The analogy may have been inspired by the attire of the girl in front of her. She wore a coral lace skater-style dress that fell mid-thigh paired with cowboy boots which hit mid-calf. Abby was fascinated by the exposed skin in between the two, the length of her taut, golden-tan legs as they emerged from the flounces of her skirt. Abby’s eyes scanned up the dress to the burnished ringlets cascading around the girl's shoulders, perfectly-shaped spirals molded from shiny bronze threads.
Abby glanced down at her own legs, which were undeniably pasty. The left one was scraped up from a cardboard box sliding down it during move-in day. The abrasion was healing, but there was a deep purple bruise all around it. She was wearing long gray board shorts and canvas Chuck Taylors in a bright aqua color. On her top half, she donned a black-and-aqua-striped tank. I could never walk around campus in the hot August sun wearing a dress and cowboy boots, she mused.
There was something about fashionably-dressed girls that both enthralled and intimidated Abby. She hadn’t inherited the genes for hair-styling or makeup-application, not to mention the genes for color coordination and choosing flattering skirt lengths. Abby had given up wearing dresses and skirts in eleventh grade, although she made an exception for the prom. She remembered the tears in her mother and grandmother's eyes when she appeared in her flowing chiffon gown on the night of senior prom. They seemed mesmerized by the nearly unrecognizable young woman floating down the staircase to meet her date. Or, rather, dates. She went to prom with a group that included two other girls and two guys.
It was hard for Abby to believe that nearly four months had passed since her senior prom, and three months since graduation. Her summer had been a whirlwind of shifting ideals and fleeting romance, the details of which she’d tried to shove down into the part of her brain reserved for “childhood memories.” She vowed to start over in college as she opened up a new memory bank with the label of “adult memories.”
Abby’s mother Sarah had tried to warn her that separating her Child Self from her Adult Self so cleanly, like severing an
umbilical cord, was probably not going to work out like she hoped. “You need those childhood memories to help you navigate your Adult World,” Sarah had lectured. Abby tried to keep an open mind after that. And besides, those memories kept cropping up anyway, despite her best efforts to suppress them.
As much as she hated to admit it, Abby was starting to learn that her mother was right about most things. Sarah had long ago confessed that she didn’t learn her own mother, Abby’s grandmother, was right about most things until she was a mother herself. Abby amused herself with this consolation: At least I’m ahead of schedule!
***
Sarah hurried down the long corridor, weaving in and out of slower traffic and opting to forgo the people movers on her way out of the terminal. She dragged her navy blue wheeled suitcase behind her, its lime green satin ribbon waving like a flag as she flew past. She liked being able to quickly identify her bag from amongst the hordes of similarly dark luggage. She smiled thinking about how she liked to stand out from the crowd in other ways as well.
She turned the corner as she exited under the Ground Transportation signs and proceeded to walk directly into his arms. She felt his strong muscles squeezing and pressing her to his firm body before she saw his familiar blue eyes and smirk. After a few moments in his tight embrace, she pulled back to look at him.
“James,” she said, face beaming. She locked her dark eyes onto his blue ones. “I thought I was supposed to meet you at the car.”
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