Page 18 of Reckless and Rooted
Felicity said something to the girl and smiled before leaving, ignoring the calls for her attention with her focus completely on me.
I was a lucky son of a bitch.
She reached me, her arms coming around my shoulders and her smile broad as she took me in. “Good morning, cowboy.”
I watched her, resisting the urge to slam my mouth against hers and getting caught again by the principal for PDA. “Good morning, City Girl.”
She moved back, knowing I couldn’t do what I wanted, when she finally noticed the flowers in my hand. Her gaze softened, and she moved her eyes from mine to the bundle. “What’s this?”
I cleared my throat, looking at the bundle of wildflowers I painstakingly picked at the florists early that morning. I could tell that Ms. Mary, the florist, was giddy over it, but she kindly didn’t say a word against me.
“City Girl, will you go to prom with me?” I asked, holding out the flowers and holding in a breath that was going to make me faint if she didn’t answer soon.
I couldn’t get any part of my body to function right.
“Are you serious?” Felicity took the flowers, her eyes glistening with tears. I knew that crying came easy to the girl. She was a sensitive soul who required tenderness, and I was dead set on treating her with the love she deserved for as long as she would have me.
“Dead,” I replied, letting loose the air that I held tight in my lungs. “I wouldn’t want to go with anyone else.”
“Of course I will!” she replied, her emotions overcoming her and her arms making their way back around me, throwing caution to the wind when her lips came to mine.
Cheers rang out around us, and we pulled away to see some of our friends and fellow students surrounding us.
Felicity laughed and looked back at the flowers again. “I’m keeping these.”
“I’m keeping you,” I replied, and in that moment, I meant every word.
10
felicity
Unwrapping the bundle,I knew what I was about to find before I even saw it. The flowers from junior prom.
I bite my lip as I carefully look over each flower, dried from where I hung them back when I was seventeen. How was it that thirteen-year-old flowers were making me so damn emotional?
I remember every detail from that day Jax asked me to prom. What’s more, I remember the night. I remember wanting Jax so badly I couldn’t hold out anymore. Even though he wanted to make it special, I had dragged him into my mom’s classroom with no shame, and we shared our first time together there.
From then on, we’d grown infinitely more serious about each other. We’d already told each other we loved one another before that, but something about becoming intimate and sharing our dreams for the future had solidified everything for us.
Until I was eighteen, and I had ruined it all by selfishly chasing my own dreams, by leaving Jax behind, and ended us.
I didn’t want to break up with Jax. But I saw a boy who was willing to put everything on hold for me, to not chase his own dreams when he vowed to follow me to LA and basically workso I could live my dream life. So he could support me the entire time and not have dreams of his own.
And I couldn’t ask him to do that. I couldn’t have him set aside his life for mine. It wasn’t fair.
I don’t regret my time in Hollywood making a name for myself, but I do regret not taking better care of Jax’s heart, or my own, in the process.
I look at the things littered around me as I combed through each trinket from my childhood. My parents were keepers and set up several boxes of things for me to have when I was an adult.
Now that I am getting a house of my own together, I am planning on taking all of this with me.
I smile as I pull out a frilly little church dress, one that fit me when I was just an infant, and I dream of the day when I get to dress my own little one in fancy baby clothes for church.
I pause and look to the wall. The clock says church in town starts in an hour. My parents are already getting themselves ready, and despite the fact that I know it may cause some chaos, I am ready to get back out into the community, whether they are ready for me or not.
Church, for me, was about an experience shared with friends and family. There were people more into it, who boasted about religion, and that was great for them, even when I didn’t always believe everything that was spouted.
But going to church in a small town was just as much about the social aspect as it was about the religion surrounding it.
