Page 50 of It Started with a Sunset
They both chuckled and glanced down and then just as quickly looked back into each other’s eyes, and he wondered if she felt as unwilling as he did to be apart.
She slid her arms around his back and rested her head against his chest, her forehead against his neck, fitting ever so perfectly into the space like they were made for each other. His heart that had been beating so erratically before had calmed, a peaceful right-ness washing over him.
After a moment, he pulled back enough to see Summer’s face. “So you wouldn’t have wanted some kind of big grand gesture?”
She grinned at him. “Oh, I’m not saying that at all. Will I get to see the video you made later?”
He smiled right back. “I will definitely recreate it for you.”
From his peripheral vision, he saw Pavani raise her hand. “Will we get to see it, too?”
He chuckled, shaking his head.
“Okay, okay,” Tess said, “let’s let them have their picnic in peace. Everybody out. Chop, chop.”
Summer held his hand as everyone filed out of the room, smiling at them. Then he turned back to the woman he loved as she pulled him down onto the blanket and scooped the pile of packed snacks closer to them. “This calls for a celebration. Pick your poison.”
“I think we need a bigger celebration. How about we order takeout, load our arms full of all of this, go pass it out to as many hungry-looking college students as we can find, then come back here and kiss until the food arrives.”
“Ooo. I like the way you think,” Summer said, then she leaned across the pile of snacks and gave him a kiss.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Summer
Summer stood at the front side of the seated crowd of one hundred fifty prospective students, a couple hundred of their parents and guardians, and all fifty of her ambassadors during the opening session of the second Aquamoose Tracks overnighter of the year, watching Brock on stage. He had tweaked his presentation about scholarships since their first time, five weeks ago now, and the crowd was even more engaged.
For as much as getting up in front of a crowd of people wasn’t really his thing, he was remarkably good at it. Probably because he was so passionate about the subject—and it showed.
She also marveled at how much things had changed since Monday when she’d had so many big realizations before laying her heart out for Brock. And then experiencing how sweetly he cared for that heart. She watched him on stage, trying to put a name to the feeling she had experienced with him ever since.
Then it hit her: confidence.
She was now confident in her love for him. Confident in his love for her. There was something remarkable about the feeling that someone would love her unconditionally, no matter what, and she couldn’t believe the difference it made. It was something she wasn’t sure she had fully experienced with anyone before. She had experienced it to some degree with her dad over the past few years and with friends, especially Valeria. But she’d never felt it this strongly. Not strongly enough to name it.
When Brock finished his presentation and the admitted student who knew her login information stood on the stage, beaming, the crowd enthusiastically applauded right along with her.
Brock walked down the stairs, grinning, and she noticed how the grin changed ever so slightly when his eyes landed on her. The first grin had been for how the crowd had reacted to something that was so important to him. The second grin had been just for her, and she wanted to take a picture and look at it always.
As Pavani took the stage to emcee, Brock walked straight over to Summer and gave her hand a quick squeeze.
“You did good,” she whispered, squeezing his hand back. Then she looked up at the stage. “Remember how, a couple of months ago, we each worried this event wouldn’t go well for vastly different reasons?”
He chuckled and reached up to give his glasses a nudge. “And then remember how well it went?” He glanced at the back of the room. “There aren’t any kids in here with balloons this time, right?”
She glanced around the room, too, a split second of panic at the memory, even though it wasn’t the first time that she had checked since the event started.
“And remember how we disagreed on everything?” he asked.
She shrugged and then winked. “To be honest, we likely still will.”
“Well,” he said, cocking his head to the side, “maybe not oneverything. I think we can both agree, for example, that you’re about to walk up on stage and capture everyone’s heart. And that you’re pretty good at that.”
She smiled and looked down. “And we can agree that my shoes are pretty spectacular.”
He looked at her heeled ankle boots that were a camo pattern, but with an incredibly perfect-for-Aquamoose-Tracks purple and teal color, and nodded. “We can definitely agree on that.”
Then she met his eyes. “And that you’re a rather smart, generous, kind, gorgeous man.”
