by Lili Valente
“We’ll get by, even though we’ll miss you,” I say, smiling at this tall, muscular man my little brother has somehow become. “Wake Emmie up when you go in, okay? She wants to come with you and Gabe to the airport to say goodbye, and you know it takes an hour for her to get her butt out of bed.”
Danny laughs. “She’s such a slug. I never got to sleep late in the summer when I was eleven. You had me up making breakfast for everyone by seven every day.”
“Poor thing,” I say with mock pity. “But look what a good man you grew up to be, in spite of your summers filled with pain and suffering.”
“Right, right,” Danny says, chuckling as he disappears into the house.
Gabe and I are quiet for a long time after, sitting in companionable silence as the air grows lighter and the ocean sparkles in the first rays of sunlight creeping over the mountains. We watch the water until the fishermen’s boats are specks on the horizon and the only movement is the gentle roll of the waves toward shore.
“What are you thinking?” Gabe finally asks, hands still busy on my grateful feet.
“I don’t know. I’m a little sad, I guess, knowing Danny isn’t coming back from Maui this time. It feels like his life with us is really over.”
“It’s not over,” Gabe says. “He knows he’ll always have a home here.”
I nod, fighting a wave of emotion, refusing to cry before eight o’clock in the morning, no matter how many pregnancy hormones are coursing through my body. “I know. And he’s a pain in my ass. I should be glad he’s finally leaving the nest, right?”
Gabe presses a kiss to my forehead. “I love your good heart.”
“I love your good fingers,” I say, wiggling my toes. “Do I still get foot rubs after You Know Who is born?”
“Of course.” He leans in for another kiss. “I mean, I plan on getting you knocked up again as soon as possible, so…”
“No way.” I smile so hard our teeth bump together through our lips. “I want at least two years between babies. No Irish twins for this Irish girl.”
“All right,” he says, nipping at my bottom lip. “As long as you promise I’ll get lots of practice time in the bedroom. I don’t want to forget how to make babies while we’re waiting for number two.”
I sigh into his mouth, my skin tingling at the thought. “Sounds like a plan.”
We kiss for a long, sweet moment and pull away with twin hums of contentment, and just like that, I’m not worried about Danny leaving any more. My brother will be okay. He has a family who loves him, and even if things with Sam don’t work out, he’ll always have us. He’ll always have a home with me, Gabe, Ray, Sean, Emmie, and You Know Who.
A home full of laughter and love, where it’s okay to make mistakes, and color outside the lines.
Speaking of…
“So how did the job go last night?” I ask Gabe, licking his coffee taste from my lips.
“Perfect,” he says. “In and out in ten minutes and, thanks to a virus unleashed on his computer, Mr. Anic will have a much more difficult time stealing tourists’ credit card information this season.”
I smile, but I can’t help feeling a little jealous. “I want to be busy. I don’t like sitting on the sidelines.”
“You’ve been helping set up a daycare, taking Emmie to a million lessons, and cooking a baby. You’ve hardly been sitting on the sidelines.”
I scrunch my nose and shrug. “Yeah, but you know what I mean.”
Gabe and I are more selective about our targets, and more cautious than we used to be, but tipping the scales of justice back in favor of the underdog is still one of our favorite hobbies.
Gabe squeezes my foot. “It won’t be much longer now. And just think how much babysitting Sean is going to owe us in exchange for letting his obnoxious friends stay here for an entire month.”
I laugh. “All sixteen year olds are obnoxious. They can’t help it. But you’re right. He’s going to have to pay for our pain and suffering. And babysitting will be good for him. I think helping take care of Emmie when she was little made Danny and Ray more empathetic people.”
“And less inclined to accidentally get a girl pregnant,” Gabe says, making me laugh.
“True,” I say. “Changing a few, poop-up-the-back diapers will do that.”
Gabe’s brows lift. “Is that a real thing?”
I grin, launching into an in-depth description of the time I had to cut Emmie’s onesie off of her body to keep from getting the poo that had squirted up to her neck into her hair, laughing as Gabe plays up trying not to gag.
I laugh so loud that I wake the baby, who gives me a strong kick.
“Ow,” I say, still laughing as I smooth my tee-shirt over my belly, glancing down in time to see something small, adorable, and bony ripple the skin of my stomach.
“There’s the little alien.” Gabe lays his hand on my stomach, an awed expression crossing his face as You Know Who rewards him with another kick. “That…never gets old.”
I reach up, patting his scruffy cheek. “Neither do you.”
And then he kisses me, and it is better than our first kiss, or our hundredth, or our thousandth, because every day we spend together proves that some things just keep getting better.
Like wine, and cheese, and a love like the one I was lucky enough to find one hot Carolina summer.
The End
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by Jessie Evans w/a
Lili Valente
Chapter One
Samantha
“And thus the heart will break,
yet brokenly live on.”
-Lord Byron
We’re not going to make it.
We’re not going to fucking make it.
I pace back and forth across the flowered carpet in front of Gate 11B, fighting the urge to scream as the minutes tick by and the Croatia based flight crew takes their sweet time getting the doors to the Jetway open. Danny is less than fifty feet away, but he might as well be at ten thousand feet. I can’t get to him, he can’t get out, and we’re about ten minutes from missing our last chance to get out of Maui before it’s too late.
The plane to Auckland, New Zealand leaves in twenty-five minutes. They’ve almost finished boarding. Every time my pacing takes me closer to Gate 7, I can see the line of people shuffling past the flight attendant dwindling.
Twelve people…nine…seven…
I squeeze my fingers into a fist and press it hard to my lips, afraid I might actually scream in the middle of the international terminal if I don’t.
Panic dumps into my bloodstream and for a moment all I can hear is the blood rushing in my ears and the desperate thud thud thud of my heart thrashing in my chest. My ribs contract, my lungs seize up, and the urge to run becomes almost unbearable.
Dad and Penelope think I’m just picking up Danny at the airport, but if Alec calls while I’m gone they might start to suspect something. If they take a second to glance in my closet, they’ll know I’ve packed for an epic journey, not a forty-minute drive to Kahului. They could come looking for me, force me to go home with them tonight, and put me on a plane back to California tomorrow.
My stepbrother’s future hangs in the balance. Penny never believed he was guilty and she’ll do anything to prove it, even feed me to the wolves. Penny loves me, but not as much as she loves her son. Not even seven years of being the best and brightest blended family on the island can change that.
I glance at my watch. It’s three thirty in Los Angeles. Two hours past my one-thirty appointment time with Detective Spanuth. I’m betting Alec knows I’ve missed it by now, and I know he wasn’t kidding when he said he’d tell our parents the truth if I didn’t come clean about the subpoena and everything else.<
br />
I don’t think he’s called his mom yet, but it’s only a matter of time. He needed me to keep that meeting, and prove he isn’t responsible for what happened to Deidre Jones. If the police believe my version of events, Alec’s buddies might still go to jail, but Alec believes unveiling my secret is going to make everything all right. He thinks, once the beans are spilled, the lawyers will be able to prove this was all some big misunderstanding, and the boys are blameless.
I’m the one who started the rumor, after all. I’m the one who hurt that girl.
Innocent girl, whose only sin was looking too much like me.
I close my eyes, swallow hard against the nausea making my stomach heave, and force Deidre’s face from my mind. If I could go back in time and take it back, I’d like to believe I would. I’d like to believe I’d do the right thing, but if I look deep into my heart…
My heart….
I’m not sure I have a heart anymore. It feels like there’s nothing at the core of me except fear, pain, and hate. I hate Alec and his friends and I hate myself. And when a person is this full of hate, maybe there’s no room for anything else.
When I booked this trip late last night—hiding under the covers in my room like I was a ten year old reading after lights out—I was certain all I needed was distance to make everything all right. Just distance and Danny, and I could be the person I used to be. I could put the past five months behind me and move on.
I am rotting from the inside, hanging on to my sanity by a fraying thread, and so sad it feels like I’ll never smile a real smile again, but Danny always knows what to say to talk me back from the edge. In his arms, with his love wrapped around me, muffling the chaos of the world, I was sure I’d be able to feel good again.
Or at least okay.
But maybe I was wrong. Maybe this time I’m too broken for anyone to put the pieces back together again.
No sooner is the thought through my head than the door to the Jetway opens. Two businessmen in rumpled suits are the first out, then a family with a little girl asleep in her father’s arms. Danny is right behind them, his familiar overstuffed North Face backpack dangling from one hand.
His long, dark blond hair is pulled back in a tangled ponytail, his green eyes look bruised from lack of sleep, and he has his patchy, golden version of five o’clock shadow, but I’ve never seen anyone more beautiful than he is to me at this moment. The second our eyes meet and he smiles that crooked grin, I know it’s not too late. It’s not too late for me, and it’s not too late for Danny and me to have the fresh start I’ve been praying for since I woke up New Year’s Day.
I still love him. I love him so much that, by the time he crosses the carpet in three long steps and scoops me up in one strong arm, tears of relief are streaming down my face.
“Thank God,” I mumble against his neck. He smells so good. So safe.
“Damn, I’m glad you’re here. I’ve missed you so much,” he whispers into my hair, hugging me so tight my feet leave the floor and my breasts flatten against his thickly muscled chest.
By the time we were seventeen, Danny had five inches on me, but it’s only in the past two years that he’s become the kind of man whose chest turns heads when we walk down the beach. If someone had told me when I was thirteen and still capable of pinning Danny to the sand when we wrestled that one day he would have fifty pounds of pure muscle on me, I would have laughed.
When we first started dating, Danny and I were both five-three and I outweighed him by ten pounds, no matter how vehemently he insisted he weighed in at one forty. He was the runt of our junior high school, even shorter and skinnier than the two genius kids who’d skipped a grade.
But he isn’t a runt anymore. Working as an extreme-sports tour guide has made him strong, strong enough to hold me in one arm and his giant backpack in the other. Hopefully, strong enough to slay the demons that have kept me awake for forty-eight hours as I ran from the nightmare my life in Los Angeles has become. If we can just get on that plane and on our way to the opposite hemisphere, everything might still be all right.
“Come on,” I say, pressing a swift kiss to his scruffy cheek before pushing on his chest. “We’ve got to hurry, or we’ll miss our flight.”
His eyebrows lift as he sets me down. “Where are we going?”
“New Zealand.” I take his hand and pull him toward the gate, feeling like my heart is going to explode with relief when I see the door to the Jetway still open. “I’ve booked rooms for our first four days,” I say over my shoulder. “After that, we’ll see where the adventure takes us.”
“I thought we had to wait until after you graduated,” Danny says, even as he picks up his pace, hurrying toward Gate 7 beside me. “Did your dad change his mind?”
“No, I changed my mind,” I say. “I have some savings and I decided it was past time to use it.”
“Sam, wait.” Danny slows and his hand squirms free of mine. “I can’t let you do this. The tickets must have cost thousands of dollars, and I told you, I’m cash poor until the business—”
“I don’t care,” I say, snatching his hand and holding on tight. “You can pay me back later. Or never, I don’t care. I just need to do this. Now. With you.”
“Why?” His tired eyes narrow as he searches my face. “What’s going on Sam? Why haven’t you returned my calls? I swear, I was starting to think…”
“Thinking is overrated,” I say, throat tightening as panic threatens to take over again. We have to get on that plane. Only when we’re strapped into our seats in row twenty-two will I finally be able to take a breath without feeling like it might be my last.
“I don’t know,” Danny says, hurt clear in his voice. “I knew you were okay because your dad said he’d talked to you, but I—”
“I’m so sorry.” I cut him off before he can say what I know he’s thinking. I can’t stand to hear him say he thought I was going to end it, or think about how close I came to telling him I never wanted to see him again. “I should have answered the phone, I’ve just been…really upset.”
“I thought I was the person you talked to when you were upset,” he says, the furrow between his brows deepening. “Or has something changed?”
“Nothing’s changed,” I lie, forcing a brittle smile.
I reach up, smoothing away the line between his brows the way I always do, even that simple touch reminding me that we are us. We are Sam and Danny and together we’re bigger and stronger than anything chasing me.
We have to be, or I’ve emptied my savings and flushed my future down the toilet for nothing.
“I’ve been doing a lot of hard thinking,” I continue, holding his troubled gaze. “About college and my family and all the compromises I’ve made so that other people can be happy…”
I swallow past the lump rising in my throat. “I’m just so tired of it. I’m tired of waiting for my life to start. That’s why I want to go on this trip. With you, my favorite person.”
He sighs, “Sam, you know I’ve been dying to—”
“Passengers Samantha Collins and Daniel Cooney.” The female voice on the loudspeaker turns the middle of Danny’s last name into an “ew” sound, making him raise an eyebrow. “Please report to gate seven for immediate boarding, the doors are about to close.”
“Please!” I capture Danny’s hand in both of mine and squeeze. “Please, just get on this plane with me. We can talk about anything you want once we’re on board. We’ll have ten hours in the air to catch up on everything we’ve missed since Christmas.”
The skin around Danny’s eyes relaxes, but the uncertainty in them remains. “I don’t know, Sam. Do you really think this is the right time?”
“Yes! Absolutely, yes!” I fight to keep the tears from my eyes. If I start crying again, Danny’s going to know something a lot more serious than a missed flight is to blame.
He knows me too well, something I should have considered when I put this crazy plan into motion. We can run halfway around the world
, but if I can’t leave the past behind, it won’t matter how far I am from the scene of the crime. Danny will know something’s wrong, and he’ll get to the truth, sooner or later. The past few months have proven I can hold up under incredible amounts of stress, but I’ve never been able to hold up under the gentle weight of his eyes.
Danny shakes his head. “After this week, and the way you’ve been on the phone the past few months…”
He bites his lip for a moment before pushing on. “Things don’t feel the same, and it’s more than the time or distance. It feels like you’re hiding something from me.”
I’m hiding everything.
I’m hiding a secret so ugly it could destroy every dream we’ve had since we were too young to realize how lucky we were to have found each other.
Or how hard it would be to keep love alive in a world like this one.
Aloud, I say, “We don’t have time for the No Bullshit game, but I promise you, if you get on that plane, you won’t be sorry. I’ll make you remember why you fell in love with me, Danny, I promise.”
“You don’t have to remind me.” He reaches out with both hands, squeezing my arms below the capped sleeves of my gray tee shirt. “I still love you so much.” He pulls in a rough breath and continues in a softer voice, “I just need to know you still love me.”
“I do.” I fight the tears pushing at the backs of my eyes. “And I don’t want to lose you, okay? I can’t lose you.”
“You’re not going to lose me,” he says. “Come on, Sam. You know me. I’m with you. For keeps.”
“Then come with me.” I cup his scruffy cheeks and stand on tiptoe, bringing our faces closer together. “Let’s have that adventure we’ve been dreaming about forever.”
Before he can respond, I press my lips to his.
It’s our first kiss since Christmas, and my first kiss since my life started falling apart. I don’t expect to feel anything—I’m so desperate to get on the plane I’m certain there’s no room on my neural pathways for anything but panic—but the moment his warm lips brush mine, something deep inside me flutters.