Page 97 of Barefoot Dreams
“What is he doing?” Grace asks in hushed tone.
“I have no idea. Caressing her?” Hope whispers back. “No, it looks…like he’s counting her freckles?” My lips tilt up at their cute confusion.
“But it’s dark out. How can he see?”
“I don’t need to,” I tell them, not taking my eyes off my girl. “I know where each one is by heart.”
Julie looks up at me, her bottom lip in between her teeth. “And how much are there?”
“Right now?” I trace her cheek. “There are fifteen prominent ones and twenty-seven of the fainter ones.”
Julie’s lip pops free from her teeth as she gapes at me. “Did you really count them?” she asks, her voice soft.
“Of course.” I kiss the tip of her nose as she blinks at me.
“Fifteen? Really?”
“Mm-hmm. On the days you’re not out in your garden, it’s always around fifteen to twenty. Sometimes less. But on those sunny days there’s usually double or triple the amount. Yesterday, I counted forty-three!”
“Forty-three…” Julie whispers, tracing the tiny reddish speckles on her cheeks and nose with her dainty fingers.
“Sigh,” Grace says with an actual sigh and Julie burrows her face into the crook of my neck, blushing, no doubt.
It’s been a little over two weeks since we started dating and there’s not a day that I don’t still wonder if this is some kind of a dream. Because everything’s been utterly perfect.
Julie and I spend every moment possible together. When I’m working, she drops by so we can have lunch and dinner together and I’ll be there for my morning coffee every time.
When I’m off, I go in to help out at Sip of Love until she’s done, taking up my now honorable position of dishwasher.
We then spend evenings either with our friends around the bonfire, like tonight, or just at home, cozied up by the huge window in her kitchen after making dinner together.
There are moments when I catch myself waiting for the floor to drop from underneath me. I’ll look at her and think, since when do my dreams just come true like that?
Julie always senses when I got into one of those moods and the next thing I know she’s climbing into my lap, curling around me like a little kitten and just sits there. In my arms. Reminding me how real it all is.
She knows I need to take it one day at a time. Knows that my head is still fucked up from before but day by day, she’s helping me build that steady ground underneath my feet.
She’s my safe place. Someone I can talk to about Caleb, about the mission that ended his life. Obviously, not the specifics, but the feelings. The memories, the good and the bad.
“How many freckles do I have?” Grace demands to know, and I don’t have to look his way to know Luke is scowling at me right now.
“Wild one, do you even have any at all?”
“Well, I don’t know, do I?” Her voice pitches. “You never checked!”
My shoulders shake silently as he lets a few curses fly underneath his breath and I just burrow my face deeper into Julie’s hair.
“I don’t know about freckles but you do have that one beauty mark right above your p—” Luke’s voice gets cut off when Grace slaps her hand over his mouth.
“Okay, okay, you pass,” she quickly tells him.
“Is it in the shape of a heart?” Alec asks out of nowhere, and everyone, including Julie and I, look up at him as Luke growls threateningly, but his younger brother either doesn’t hear it or doesn’t care.
Probably the latter because he continues. “Hope has one too, don’t you, Lovebug?” He smirks at her blushing cheeks, visible even in the dark.
“Hey, Joy’s got one too!” Jacob jumps in, excitedly.
“Okay, that’s way more information that I wanted to have about my sisters-in-law,” Luke grumbles.
