Callie: Not tonight. I saved my roll of duct tape and shovel for another time ;)
I can’t help but chuckle at her adorableness.
Me: All right, just as long as no shovel and tape are involved, I’ll b out in a few :)
Callie: k, see ya soon :)
I stuff my phone back into my pocket, wondering what she’s up to. She’s been so happy lately, even with the fact that Caleb – the guy who raped her when she was twelve – is still out there somewhere in the world, living his life, without paying for what he did not just to Callie, but Luke’s sister as well, along with a few others. He likely won’t ever have to pay for what he did to them. He’ll go on living his life, doing whatever he wants, while his victims are left to cope with the destruction. A huge flaw in life and one I understand way too well.
Shaking the depressing thought from my head, I tug my beanie over my brown hair before I depart toward the cold again. I try to stay upbeat as I take the elevator to the bottom floor, go back outside, and wind around the building, heading to the side where Callie instructed me to go. The leafless trees around the building are decorated with lights that reflect against the ice covering everything. It’s freaking freezing out here, my breath puffing out in a cloud in front of my face. I should have worn a heavier coat. But once I step out into the open area on the east side between a few benches and rows of trees I stop caring that I’m outdoors and freezing my ass off.
Callie is standing in the middle of the frosted trees and lights, staring down at the ground. She has her head tipped down, her coat zipped up to her chin, and she’s kicking at the snow with the tip of her boot. Her hood is down and snowflakes dot her long brown hair, but she doesn’t seem to mind, lost in her thoughts.
She’s beautiful.
Amazing.
Perfect.
I give myself a moment to appreciate everything that’s her before I walk toward her and make my presence known. She must hear my boots crunch against the snow because her gaze lifts and finds me before I reach her. Snow dots her eyelashes, her cheeks are flushed, and she has a smile on her face, her eyes so full of love I seriously nearly turn around and look over my shoulder to make sure there’s no one else standing there that she could be looking at.
‘Hey you,’ she says, still grinning at me. Then she shifts her weight and a hint of her nerves slips through, which makes me nervous as well.
Why would she be nervous?
‘Hey you, back.’ My feet move toward her on their own, wanting – needing – to be near her. ‘Why are you standing out here in the freezing cold?’
She holds up her finger, indicating to wait just a second. Then she glances at the leafless, snow-bitten tree beside her before she ducks behind it. A heartbeat later, music envelops me. When she steps back out from behind the tree, she’s smiling as the snowflakes swirl around us, almost moving with the slow rhythm of the song.
‘What do you have back there?’ I ask. ‘An iPod dock or something?’
She shakes her head as she hikes through the snow toward me, reducing the space between us, something I’m ridiculously grateful for. In fact, I want it all gone – not a single drop of space left between our bodies.
‘No, it’s Luke’s stereo. Seth borrowed it from him so I could use it for this.’
My smile rises, the first time I’ve smiled all day. ‘God, he’s so weird with all that old crap he keeps around, right?’
‘Like all his mix tapes?’ she says with a soft laugh as she stops in front of me and tips her head back to look up at me.
I eliminate the rest of the space between us and put my hands on her hips. Suddenly, I become warm in the midst of the cold. ‘I seriously think he belongs in the eighties.’
‘Maybe he does.’ She loops her arms around the back of my neck and draws me closer. ‘What era do you think we’d belong in if we could go live in a different one?’
I consider what she said. ‘How about the sixties?’
She beams up at me. ‘We’d be all about the peace, love, and happiness.’
‘I think that sounds a lot like you.’ I tuck a strand of her damp hair behind her ear. ‘I’m not sure about me, though.’
Her forehead creases as I stroke her cheek with my finger, mesmerized by the softness of her skin. I’ve touched it a thousand times, yet every time is as amazing as the first.
‘You’ve seemed a little bit down lately. Has something been bothering you?’
‘I’ve just been thinking about some stuff.’ I trace a path up her jawline to her temple.
‘About family stuff?’
‘Yeah … I can’t help it … with the holidays coming. It’s just got me thinking.’
‘About your family?’
I swallow the stupid lump that has wedged its way up my throat. ‘Yeah, about my lack of one.’ I don’t really mean to say it because I don’t want to be a downer when clearly she had some sort of fun night planned, but it just slips out.
‘You have me,’ she says quietly, placing a hand on my stubbly cheek. ‘You always will.’
My heart tightens in my chest. ‘I know I do,’ I say, wishing it were that simple, that I did fully believe she’d always be here with me, that nothing would change, and that that could be enough in life. But I’ve been abandoned before, so there’s a bit of a skeptic in me.
Still, being here with her momentarily lifts my problems away, and I lean in to kiss her, unable to take the space between us any longer. However, she pulls away, stopping mid-kiss, and leaving me panting for air.
‘What’s wrong?’ I ask.
She lets out a shaky breath, jittery and shivering from the cold. ‘I have to ask you something … something really, really important.’
I search her eyes and I see the same nerves I noticed when I first walked up to her. ‘What’s wrong?’
She takes another unsteady breath and her hold on me tightens, her fingers digging into the fabric of my coat, like she’s afraid to let me go. ‘Okay, so I have something I want you to think about, but I don’t want you to answer it tonight.’
‘Okay …?’ I’m trying not to get worried, but it’s hard when she’s acting this way.
Her eyes are wide and full of terror, but she refuses to look away from me. ‘Okay, so I’ve been thinking a lot about our … our living situation.’ Her chest rapidly rises and falls, causing a cloud of fog to rise around her face. ‘Remember how at the beginning of the school year I mentioned something about how much easier it’d be if we were living together?’