Page 79 of The Scars I Bare
“You’ve read it?”
She nodded. “Last year.”
He just shook his head like he should have known.
We made it down to baggage claim, stopping only one more time for a potty break for Lizzie. By the time we made it to the carousel, our few bags were the only ones left making the rotation. Dean jogged forward and pulled them off one at a time.
“I’m not even going to feel bad that I enjoyed every minute of that. Were you always this muscly?” I said after blatantly checking him out. I’d adjusted my voice to what I liked to call my Lizzie-proof voice. It was the volume I used when talking about things less than appropriate.
So, that was about fifty percent of what I’d been saying to Dean lately.
“A little more so than before,” Dean answered with a wicked grin.
I leaned in closer, doing my best attempt at flirting. “And no one snatched you up?”
“Well, I mean, they tried, but I was waiting for the perfect woman.”
I blushed, something I’d been doing a lot.
Grabbing my hand as we turned toward the door, he suddenly stopped. “So, are your parents meeting us here or outside? What’s the deal? Are we taking a taxi, and they’re just waiting for us at their house?”
Oh boy, here goes nothing.
My lips pressed together as my face turned red for an entirely different reason. I looked up, as if searching for divine intervention. “I didn’t tell them we were coming,” I said quickly, the words rushing out of my mouth so fast, I didn’t think he’d processed them for several seconds afterward.
“What?”
I grimaced with the nervous, sick feeling I got whenever something started to go south in our relationship.
Would he get mad?
What happened when he did?
Oh God, what was I doing?
“Hey,” he said, touching my shoulder, “you okay?”
I swallowed hard as our eyes met. “Yeah, I’m sorry. I just—how do you explain, you know? I didn’t know how to tell them”—I waved my hands around, encompassing him and me—“this. And I was scared, if I did—”
“You’d chicken out,” he said, finishing my sentence.
I just nodded, feeling like the coward I was.
“It’s okay,” he said, taking my hand as he offered the elbow of his prosthesis to Lizzie.
She laughed, gladly wrapping her tiny arm around it.
“Everyone loves a surprise, right?”
Tears stung my eyes as he escorted us out of the Austin–Bergstrom Airport.
“And, besides, no one gets mad at the guy with the fake arm,” he said, giving me a wink. “It’s going to be great. Promise.”
I swallowed the lump in my throat as the familiar Austin heat hit me. I breathed it in, the dry, warm air and the subtle smell of oil in the breeze.
I was home at last.
I knew every street corner and turn like the back of my hand. But none of that mattered. I doubted I could have driven that day if my life depended on it. Thank God for Dean and GPS.
