Page 71 of Between Now and Always

“Don’t swear, don’t promise, just do it,” she says.

“So, you’ll give me a chance to make it up to you?” I ask.

She rolls her eyes.

“I’ll need more groveling, but I guess coming here when you should be getting ready for your show tonight is a good start,” she smiles and links her fingers with mine.

I fall deeper, harder, irrevocably.

“Thank God,” I say with an exaggerated sigh.

She laughs, but it’s not my imagination, when her eyes they dart to and linger on my lips.

I’m so tempted, but not yet…I clear my throat and back away a little.

I skim my lips across the top of her head and she leans into me. I press my lips to the sweet curve of her ear and she trembles.

“Remember when I told you your eyes were the color of the sea in the place I loved most in the world? Well, now it’s that sea that’s the color of the place I love most in the world. These eyes are my paradise.”

She stares up at me, her tears dry, her smile as wide and beautiful as rainbow. “I don’t know if anyone’s ever told you…but you’ve got quite a way with words, Carter.”

I laugh, not because what she said was funny, but because she makes me so damn happy. And now, it’s my turn.

I pull the paper I’ve been carrying out of my shirt pocket. “Here are words so beautiful, only nature could have written them,” I say and hand it to her.

Her smile fades. She pulls back and she eyes the paper like it’s a spider.

“What’s that?” Her voice is hard and clipped, when she looks back at me, fear has overwhelmed everything else that was there.

“Our miracle,” I say. And then, I smile.

The fear in her eyes disappears and determination takes its place. She smiles back and takes the paper from me and holds it to her heart.

There’s my girl.

She opens it.

“Oh my God.” Her eyes race across the results.

She covers her mouth with her bandaged hand and looks up at me. Her eyes search mine, hopeful and dazed.

She looks back to the paper. “Not evenonemarker? What does this mean?” she asks, still reading.

“That …we can be whatever we want.”

Her sea-blue eyes fly up to mine, full of challenge and blazing with joy.

“And what do you want?” she asks.

“Well, first, I’d like to fuck you again,” I growl without any shame.

A slow smile spreads across her lips. “Well, what are you waiting for?”

The Eleventh Commandment

BETH

As soon as the words leave my lips, the jaunty grin on his face disappears. His hands close like vices around my upper arms and he drags me to him. My breath catches in my parched throat at the blaze of raw hunger in his eyes.

---