Page 285 of Boots, Bucket Lists & Bad Ideas
I lick my lips, resisting the urge to kiss her. “You’re the most beautiful person I’ve ever met.” She smiles at my words. “The kind of beautiful that makes me forget everything else, but also in a way that goes deeper than skin.”
We stare at one another for a long beat.
“See?” I touch her now with a chuckle. “No flinch.”
I watch something shift in her eyes. “You don’t laugh often anymore.”
She’s not asking. She’s telling me. And for a second, I don’t even know how to respond. Her eyes search mine, like she’s trying to peel away my layers.
“You used to laugh.” She says it as a memory, a distant truth. “All the time. You were an obnoxious jock. Loud and always cracking a joke.”
I nod, remembering that kid. The one who didn’t take anything seriously, who was always the life of the party, always the loud one.
“That feels like someone else now, someone I don’t even recognize.”
Her palm finds my jaw. “All these years, I convinced myself you only growled when I was around.” Her fingers graze my stubble. “But I suspect over the years you stopped laughing altogether.”
Her words hit me harder than I want to admit.
She’s right. I did stop.
I lost everything that night, the night I won’t tell her about it. I lost her and my ability to trust. Fear stomped down on my recklessness, and after that, my entire world crumbled.
My scholarship.
My future.
Hell, I can’t even remember the last time I wanted to laugh.
Silence stretches out between us, and I hate it. I also hate that I’m vulnerable and open, talking about things I haven’t said out loud in years—if ever.
“I reckon I grew up.” My words are flat and hollow.
Her eyes are unblinking, and I know she sees through the bullshit. “Is that what you really believe?”
“It didn’t seem as easy to laugh after you, and the football dreams I left in the dirt. It was easier to push people away. My folks. My brothers. You. It was easier to hide in an office than try to laugh.”
Her fingers move over my whiskers, and the sadness in her eyes cuts through me like a knife. She doesn’t say anything for a moment, but I can see the understanding there, like she knows exactly what I mean.
“I’m sorry you had to deal with that.” Her voice is a whisper, and my heart tightens in my chest.
I lean in and kiss her—softly and gently—like it’s the only way I know how to make the sadness go away.
“Don’t be sorry,” I murmur against her lips.
I pull back just enough to look at her, to feel the warmth of her skin under mine.
“I didn’t know how to find my way back, you know?” I cup her face. “I got stuck. And laughing—hell, even smiling—felt like something I couldn’t do anymore.”
“I didn’t laugh much, even before everything went down with us.” She says it like I don’t remember.
Like I didn’t spend a ridiculous amount of hours trying to make her laugh, only to realize it was never the big gestures that drew out a smile or laugh. It was the thoughtful ones.
“I remember. It took a lot to even get a smile from you.”
She smiles now.
“That was almost too easy.” I dip down and kiss her lower lip, but I stop it there, and lift my gaze back to her, because I sense she has more to say.
