Page 1 of It Happened Back Then
PROLOGUE - BLOSSOM, AGE 16
“Let’s run away.”
“Run away?” I ask as I meet his serious gaze. “Where would we go?”
Bennett shrugs. “I don’t know, anywhere but here.”
Sure, I’d love to run away and start over. Heck, if I could erase the last five years of my life, I would. Everything about living in Bluemoon used to be perfect, back then, when I didn’t know anything but love in my family.
I never thought our family would be destroyed in the blink of an eye. I never thought life would crush my dreams.
It’s been five years since my dad died, two years since my sister took off for New York, and one year since my brother went with her. Now, it’s just me, Mom, and my other sister, Meadow, in the house, and it’s the weirdest feeling to go from a full house of six to a lonely house of three. Actually, it’s more like a lonely house of two because Meadow doesn’t come home most nights. I don’t know where she goes, but she isn’t home with us. Those nights are the worst, because I hear Mom crying and I have to be the strongest one in the home even though I’m the baby of the family.
Five years later and we’re still no closer to moving on than we were the day it happened.
Thank god for my best friend, Bennett. He’s been with me since day one, and even when everything crashed around me, he didn’t leave. He’s the only one I can count on.
“What if we ran away and followed January and Lief to New York?” I ask, my voice barely above a whisper.
“Why don’t we make our own plans? Do you really want to go to New York?”
“Well, at least we wouldn’t be alone.”
“You have me; you're never alone.”
I sigh, and even though everything inside me wants to scream, ‘Yes! Take me away!’ instead I respond, “I can’t leave Mom, Bennett. Meadow is always god knows where, and I don’t know if Lief or January will ever come home. And Dad would hate me forever if I left Mom.”
He takes my hand, intertwining his fingers with mine. “You’re right. I wouldn’t want you to feel bad about doing that.”
I sit quietly, looking around his small bedroom. It’s filled with magazines about cooking, posters of race cars, and pictures of him and I in school. “I miss him so much. I just can’t figure out how to move on from here.”
“We’re sixteen, Blossom. We have our entire lives ahead of us, and we get to write it the way we want it.”
“What do you want from it?” I ask him.
“I want everything with you,” he says, and I pull back, confused by his words. I’ve had a crush on Bennett since we were ten years old, but I never thought he saw me that way. Sure, we hung out all the time, ate at each other's homes, snuck in through each other's bedroom windows, but I didn’t think he saw me as a girlfriend.
“Well, we’re friends,” I say, testing the waters. “We're always gonna be together.”
A blush creeps up his neck and cheeks but his eyes are focused on me when he responds, “No. I want forever with you. I want to be more than just friends.”
My heart races at his declaration. Bennett has changed so much from the ten-year-old kid he was to the sixteen-year-old guy sitting in front of me. He’s tall and is filling out more, and though sometimes I still feel like we’re just kids, to me, he’s a man. A handsome man that I’ve fallen for.
Bennett pulls me closer, and all of a sudden, everything shifts between us. The way he’s holding my hand feels different. The way his other hand rests on my thigh gives me tingles in my belly. And the way he drops his gaze to my lips and back to my eyes makes me realize we’renotkids anymore.
“Bennett, do you mean…” I trail off, unsure how I want to word my question, and a bit scared to have it out in the universe.
“I love you, Peach,” he replies solemnly. “I’ve always loved you, and I want to be the man to take care of you. I just regret that I’ll never get to ask your dad’s permission.”
“Permission for what?”
He gives a shy smile as he says, “Permission to date you, to marry you.”
“Marry me! Bennett, we’re sixteen!”
He sits up on the bed. “I know, I know, but listen. Can we make a pact tonight? Right now? Can we make a promise to each other?”
“A pact?”
