Page 157 of We Redeemed the Rain

Years ago, I used to run along the deer trails in the hay. I could follow them straight into another field, another ranch, another state, another time. As a young boy, waist deep in harvest-ready hay, they seemed to stretch into infinity, never fully explored. I remember wanting to stay lost there, wanting to tread every path and find every treasure.

I would’ve stayed lost in Bea forever if not for reality dragging us back.

A vehicle rumbled up the drive.

Penny’s Ram.

She slowed to a stop when she saw the Ranger, but gassed again when she got closer. Must’ve caught sight of the woman crushed between me and the truck. I didn’t bother acknowledging her arrival.When she had roared out of sight, I looked down at Bea. Her hair was now wet, her lips beautifully red and swollen, her face shocked—like she was still trying to grapple with all that had just transpired. Hell, me too.

“Tag, that was…” Her whisper was hoarse, a raw scrape.

“I know.”

We took a few moments to breathe.

The rain picked up a bit. Bea blinked against the drops hitting her face, and water trickled over her lips. Slowly, I leaned forward and kissed that trickle then kissed the dark freckle beneath her bottom lip—the one I’d been staring at for three weeks now. Then the one on the ridge of her shoulder. Then the one on her wrist.

Her body quaked under my gentle kisses.

Then I saw it. The ink smudged everywhere.

“Ah, crap. Bea, I got ink all over you.”

She looked down at the faint smears across her shirt and arms. It was on our faces, necks, and hands. There was watery blue evidence of me in every place I had touched her.

She laid her head against the Ranger and laughed with abandon, the rain hitting her face. “Samuel Taggart, I can’t think of a better way to seal this moment than to have your words all over me.”

The thing that joined us—words.

I laughed, too.

When I realized what our letters had weaved, the bond they’d welded, the abiding friendship they’d forged…I believed in words again. I couldn’t stop laughing. I was the happiest I’d ever been in my life.

Nothing could ruin this moment.

Nothing.

FORTY-TWO

Bea

It was, hands down, the best moment of my entire life.

We were intoxicated on love, giggling and cracking jokes, giddy like children on Christmas morning. He wrapped his arms around me and showed me how to “fix” the electric conductor pegs on the outside of the barrier fence. But he might as well have been speaking Latin with the way it entered one ear and exited the other. He knew I just wanted him to hold me. When he peppered my neck and shoulders with kisses, we laughed until our sides ached. We kissed until our phones racked up missed calls. We stood in the rain until our clothes hung limp on our bodies.

Our time together was ecstasy. A thrill nothing in my life could compare to.

Welovedeach other.

The truth was so big, so right my heart couldn’t even contain it. If I let myself dwell on what it meant—whatwemeant—I felt overwhelmed to the point of bursting. To the point of joyous tears spilling from my eyes. To the point I wanted to sing from the top of my lungs—and even did a couple times.

With the way I was purposefully distracting him, it was a puremiracle Tag finished the fence repairs at all. After a long time, we dragged ourselves to the Ranger and went to the house to grab fresh clothes.

Tag and I bumbled through the kitchen door. I staggered in like a drunken idiot, hanging on his arm and cackling at something dumb I’d said before we walked in. Tag’s quiet voice was punctuated by his own laughter as he halfway dragged me inside.

I swiveled toward the kitchen bar to see Jackie looking at us over her open laptop, her jaw hanging as she watched our side show.

I straightened, singing a greeting, “Hey, sis!”

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