The Road That Leads to Us

by Micalea Smeltzer

  “Here you go.” She handed me a bag of potato chips, knowing that I’d want them, and started the movie again.

  She pushed the food down to the bottom of the bed and then wiggled her body close to mine.

  She laid her head on my chest and her hand rested on my stomach.

  Cuddling and watching a movie had never been one of my favorite things to do. I was discovering with Willow that lots of things I used to never like I suddenly loved and it occurred to me that who you’re with can change how you see everything.

  ***

  A day and a half later we arrived in Roswell, New Mexico.

  “Maybe we’ll find one of your brothers or sisters,” Willow said from the passenger seat after I parked the car so we could take pictures in front of the sign like we always did.

  “Huh?” I asked, raising a brow as I waited for her to explain.

  She huffed and rolled her eyes, a white lollipop stick hanging out of the side of her mouth. “The aliens, Dean. They must be your brethren because you are not of this planet.”

  I shook my head at her silliness when I really wanted to kiss her senseless.

  I stepped out of the car and met her at the sign for our mini photo shoot.

  Once Willow had all the photos she wanted we got back in the car and sat for a moment.

  “Forget the game,” she said, crossing her legs and propping them up on the dash. “Isn’t there some weird ass museum here? That’s where I want to go.”

  “I’m sure there is.” I grabbed my phone and typed in museums in Roswell, New Mexico. “International UFO Museum and Research Center? I can’t believe that’s a real thing,” I muttered to myself.

  She jabbed a finger at my phone. “That’s where I want to go.”

  “Okay.” I pressed a button so it would give me directions.

  She threw her hands up in the air. “Oh, so now we can use the fucking maps app. I see how it is, Dean.” She crossed her arms over her chest and tried to look menacing, but it was impossible when she was sucking on a lollipop.

  “I’m pretty sure a UFO museum isn’t marked on the map.” I shrugged, waiting for traffic to clear before pulling back onto the road.

  She pulled the lollipop from her mouth and pursed her cherry colored lips. “You never know. UFO’s could’ve been very important to this map maker.”

  “Doubtful.”

  “It would be important to me,” she countered.

  I pointed a finger at her. “But you’re not a map maker.”

  She stuck her tongue out in response. “I could be if I wanted to be.”

  “You’d be bored out of your mind.”

  “You don’t know that. I might find it very rewarding.”

  “You freak out every time we get lost.”

  “Well aren’t you just the mighty crusher of dreams.”

  “So, you’re telling me it’s your dream to make maps?” I glanced at her.

  “Well, no…”

  “Exactly,” I nodded, “so why are we even arguing about this?”

  She gasped. “Is this our first official fight as a couple? We should commemorate this with make-up sex.”

  My eyes widened as I turned to her laughing form. “I think you actually have to have sex at least once before you can actually have proper make-up sex.”

  “Then giddy-up cowboy.” She grinned and waggled her brows.

  This girl was going to kill me.

  “You’re worse than a guy,” I told her. “And you’re seriously testing my restraint here.”

  “If I took my top off right now would that send your restraint straight out the window? Because seriously, that fucker needs to take a hike.”

  I said a silent prayer to any deity that would listen to me because I needed all the help I could get when it came to resisting this girl.

  “Leave your top on, Willow.”

  “Are you sure about that?” She asked in a low, sultry voice.

  I turned and nearly drove off the road.

  She’d pulled her shirt up so the bottom of her lacy black bra was exposed. My dick twitched in my pants and my hands tightened on the wheel until my knuckles turned white.

  “Put. Your. Shirt. Down,” I said through clenched teeth. Not only was she teasing me, but with the car open anyone could see her.

  She lowered her shirt and sat there with a pleased smirk.

  When I saw the white building straight ahead with the blue UFO sign I let out a relieved breath.

  Saved by the bell—or in this case aliens.

  I parallel parked—which was nerve-wracking as fuck—and before the car was turned off Willow was out and racing towards the door of the building.

  “Hurry up, Hot Buns!” She called, waving her arms like she was trying to land a plane or direct traffic.

  I cringed at the stupid name and felt a sudden understanding for why she always hated it when I called her Will.

  I grabbed my phone off the seat and shoved my keys in my pocket before following her inside the building.

  After paying the ten dollar admittance fee we strolled down the hallway.

  Aliens.

  Aliens everywhere.

  Willow stopped in front of a UFO display with four aliens standing around it. Their skin was gray and they had large black insect-like eyes.

  Willow tilted her head to the side and her lips thinned as she inspected the model.

  “You know,” she mused, “if aliens are real, I don’t think they’d look like this.”

  I chuckled, grabbing ahold of the chain that kept us a few feet away from the display.

  “What would they look like?” I turned to her, studying the elegant arch of her neck as she stared up at one of the tall aliens.

  “I think they’d look like us.” She shrugged. “But they’d probably be a lot smarter. We’re all kinds of dumb.”

  “What would you say if you ever met an alien?”

  She twisted her lips, taking my question seriously. “Take me with you.”

  I busted out laughing. “You’d willingly let the aliens abduct you?”

  She shrugged. “Like I said, I figure they’re smarter than we are, so maybe I’d learn a thing or two.”

  Unable to help myself I reached out and stroked my thumb over her freckles. “You’re already plenty smart.”

  “And stupidly crazy,” she added.

  “That too,” I agreed with a grin.

  “Don’t think I’ve forgotten about swimming with sharks,” she warned me.

  I groaned. I’d forgotten about that.

  “No,” I growled.

  “I’m sure Liam will know a place to go,” she continued. “I know he did it once, but it was a few years ago.”

  “A few years ago?” I repeated in shock. “How old was he?”

  “Sixteen.”

  “His parent’s let him do that?” I was shocked. Mathias and Remy were crazy protective of Liam—even worse than Maddox was with Willow—so I couldn’t believe they’d let him do something like that.

  “Are you kidding me?” Willow snorted, moving towards the next display. “He did it on his own. They still don’t know.”

  “Between the two of you I don’t know how your parents’ haven’t suffered a heart attack.”

  Willow stopped in front of a glass display where a doctor and what appeared to be a businessman were about to perform an autopsy on an alien.

  Willow placed her hand on the glass and tugged her bottom lip between her teeth.

  “That’s how I feel sometimes,” she whispered. “Like I’m being poked and prodded and people are trying to figure out what lies underneath the outside.”

  I didn’t know what to say to that, and actions spoke louder than words, so I reached out and tugged her against my side so I could press my lips to her forehead.

  She let out a breath and relaxed against me. Her arms wound around my torso and held tight.

  “Don’t ever leave me,” she whispered. “Please, promise that even if things
don’t work out with us, you’ll always be in my life.”

  I swallowed thickly. The thought of a life without Willow in it was far too bleak to even contemplate.

  “I’m not going anywhere.”

  It wasn’t a promise. It was simply the truth.

  Willow

  Dean and I had been hanging around the hotel room for a few hours, and dark had long since fallen, when he suddenly jumped from the bed and held his hand out for me. “Come on.”

  My brows narrowed in puzzlement. “Why?”

  He clucked his tongue. “Willow Wade, since when do you ask the question why?”

  I made a face. “Okay.” I put my hand in his, letting him take control.

  We left behind our hotel room and he led me down the hallway to the elevator.

  “What are we doing?” I asked him.

  I was used to being the one to get an idea and drag him along, not the other way around.

  The elevator doors opened and he made a sweeping motion with his arm for me to go first.

  He followed me inside and pressed the button for the lobby. He refused to look at me and instead fiddled with the sleeves of his plaid shirt, rolling them up to his elbows.

  The elevator dinged cheerily before opening into the lobby.

  Dean took my hand once more, dragging me around the columns and to a door that led outside.

  “Where are we going?” I giggled, trying to keep up with his long-legged stride. He was on a mission and I was along for the ride.

  “Outside,” he replied unhelpfully and smiled cheekily over his shoulder.

  “I deduced that.” I tried to sound mad, but it was futile. It was impossible to be mad around Dean.

  The night air was slightly chilly and goosebumps dotted my skin where my arms were exposed.

  He followed a sidewalk that wound around the hotel property.

  Eventually he veered off the path into the grass.

  “Dean!” I giggled, digging my feet into the ground.

  “Almost there.” He tugged a bit to get me moving.

  Before I could blink he’d wound his arm around my waist and dropped to the ground, pulling me down with him.

  I landed in his lap and he burst into laughter at our clumsy demise.

  “If you wanted me in your lap, all you had to do was ask. You didn’t have to go through all this trouble.”

  He shook his head at me, but couldn’t hide his smile.

  I slid off his lap and sat beside him.

  “Tell me, Hot Buns, why are we here?”

  He groaned and lay back on the ground, stretching one leg out and bending the other.

  “How much would I have to pay you to erase that stupid name from your memory?”

  I pretended to ponder his question. “I’m cheap.”

  “How cheap?” He lowered his arm so I could see his brow tick.

  I bent and leaned close to him. My hair swept down, forming a shield around us.

  “I accept sexual favors.”

  “Fuck, Willow. You’re worse than a horny teenage boy.”

  “A teenage boy gets more action than I do.” I gestured with my hand and he laughed. “I can’t even do that because you’re in bed beside me.”

  He made this rumbling sound in his chest and suddenly I found myself lying flat on my back with him hovering above me. Every delicious inch of his body was pressed into mine and my heart pulsed like an out of control drumbeat.

  “You don’t play fair, Willow.”

  “There’s no fun in fair,” I countered.

  “You can try all you want,” he ducked his head and pulled my bottom lip between his teeth before letting go, “but you won’t break me. Not until I know we’re truly ready for that. I won’t ruin us before we even start.”

  “Why do you always have to be the voice of reason?” I complained, unable to keep the whine from my voice. “For once in your life can’t you do the bad thing?” I pleaded with him. I reached between us and brushed my fingers against the thick stubble on his cheeks.

  He rolled off of me and chuckled. “The right choice isn’t always the easy one.”

  “Yoda,” I groaned throwing my hands in the air before they fell to my sides. “You’re fucking Yoda.”

  “So you tell me, practically every day.”

  He turned his head to grin at me and his teeth were startling bright in the darkness.

  “Why are we out here?” I asked him.

  He shrugged. “Dunno, really. I just wanted to get out of the room.” Pointing to the sky, he said, “Maybe we’ll see some UFO’s and get abducted.”

  I couldn’t help but laugh, and turned to bury my face against his shoulder to muffle the sound.

  Rolling onto my back and staring up at the clear star-filled sky, I said, “I’ve been thinking.”

  He groaned and pinched the bridge of his nose. “You thinking is never a good thing.”

  “I don’t want to pick a random place on the map anymore…at least not until we’re headed home.”

  “Okay.” He drew out the word and turned his head to look at me. I could feel the weight of his stare like it was a physical thing. “What do you want to do then?”

  “I want to go to the Grand Canyon.”

  I glanced to see him nod at this. “Excellent choice.”

  “And then I want to go from there to Liam’s.”

  “He still doesn’t know we’re coming, does he?” Dean raised a brow and plucked a piece of grass from the ground while he waited for my answer.

  I wrinkled my nose. “No, but he’ll be happy, you’ll see.”

  Dean made this noise in the back of his throat and I wasn’t quite sure if he was agreeing with me or not.

  “So…the Grand Canyon,” he clucked his tongue, “you’re not going to try to jump are you?”

  I had a thing for jumping off cliffs into water and it drove Dean nuts. I liked the free fall—that few seconds moment of feeling like I could fly. I lived for that.

  “No, Dean. I hate to disappoint you, but that’s too big of a jump for even me. I’m an adrenaline junkie, not suicidal.”

  “You haven’t tried anything crazy while we’ve been gone,” he commented.

  I poked him in the cheek. “Yet.”

  The fact of the matter was, I’d been having so much fun with Dean being silly that I hadn’t felt that urge I sometimes got to do something stupid and reckless. Maybe I was outgrowing it. I laughed out loud at that thought. There was no way.

  “Yet,” he repeated with a groan, and scrubbed both hands down the sides of his face. “Great.”

  I laughed and rolled over onto my side, scooting closer to him.

  Already knowing what I wanted, he opened his arms and gathered me against his chest.

  I sank into him and felt his fingers tangle into my hair. He rubbed my scalp and I let out a long moan.

  “You keep that up and I’m gonna fall asleep,” I warned him, stifling a yawn as my eyes fell closed.

  “S’okay. Go to sleep if you want.” He applied more pressure and I wanted to roll to my back so I could stretch all my limbs into the air like a happy cat.

  “But then I can’t watch for the UFO’s.” I smiled at my own words.

  He chuckled and the rumble in his chest echoed against my ear.

  He brushed the hair off my cheek and his cool fingertips tickled my skin.

  Whispering, he said, “Don’t worry, I’ll watch for the UFO’s.”

  I nodded against his chest. “Wake me if the aliens come. I want to greet your friends.”

  His laughter boomed around us in the night air and my lips lifted in a closed mouth smile.

  “Goodnight, Dean.”

  “G’night, Willow.”

  ***

  I shivered and moved impossibly closer to the wall of heat I was wrapped around.

  Grass tickled the bare skin of my ankles and I wrinkled my nose.

  Grass?

  I slowly became more aware of my surroundings and sat up
, my palm pressing into the wall of heat.

  The wall of heat moved and groaned.

  “What the hell?” It muttered.

  Not wall of heat, clearly, but a person.

  I rubbed my eyes and blinked around. “We slept outside,” I stated the obvious.

  Dean yawned and sat up, stretching his arms above his head so that the plain white t-shirt he wore beneath his plaid one rode up his stomach revealing the dark trail of hair disappearing into his jeans. I stared greedily at the exposed bit of skin like someone stranded in a desert seeing a mirage. I licked my lips and the gesture caused Dean to clear his throat and lower his arms.

  I met his gaze unabashedly.

  “Enjoying yourself?” His lips lifted into a sleepy half-smirk.

  I took a moment to take in his sleep rumpled messy brown hair, half-cast green eyes, and pouty lips. Finally, I nodded. “Very much.”

  He chuckled and ducked his head, stretching out his legs completely and laying back down on the ground.

  “I didn’t mean for us to sleep outside,” he muttered around a yawn and pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes. “Especially considering that room cost me two-hundred for one night.”

  “It’s okay,” I shrugged, “I’ve always loved sleeping under the stars.”

  “You do this often?” He jested, raising his brows.

  I pushed his shoulder and he mock-winced. “Not since the last time we did it,” I admitted.

  His forehead wrinkled in thought. “I was fifteen, right?”

  I nodded, tucking a piece of hair behind my ear. “Yeah, and I was thirteen. My dad kept checking on us all night. It was hilarious.”

  “That’s the time he woke us up by drumming on the pots, isn’t it?” Dean laughed.

  “Yep.” I nodded. “He certainly has a unique take on parenting.”

  “Your dad’s awesome,” Dean supplied, “even if he scares the crap out of me. But,” he drew out the word and stood, his joints popping with the action, “that’s only because I want him to approve of me. Of us.” He held out a hand to me and when I took it he hauled me up so fast I nearly got whiplash. “Whoa.” He chuckled, wrapping an arm around my body to steady me. “You okay?”

  I rolled my eyes at the silly question. “It’s going to take a lot more than that to get to me.”

  “Right.” He laughed. “I forget that jumping out of planes is as easy as walking to you.”