Page 41 of Butter My Biscuit

“Remind me. It’s been a while.” I tuck straight blonde hair behind her ear.

“We promised one another that if we weren’t married by twenty-seven, we’d give each other a real chance.”

“Why did we choose twenty-seven?”

She gasps. “You don’t remember?”

I try to dig up all of our old conversations, but my brain isn’t cooperating. It’s still in a fog from all the shots I took last night or from kissing Grace. I shrug.

“Because all the greats don’t make it past twenty-seven.”

“The 27 Club,” I whisper, and it all comes flooding back. “Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Kurt Cobain, Amy Winehouse.”

“We’re twenty-seven now.” She holds up her bare ring finger.

I laugh because she was a little bit superstitious at times. I think we all are. Kinda happens when you grow up in the west.

“And we’re gonna make it to twenty-eight.”

She sucks in a deep breath, and we lie in silence for a few minutes as the moonlight splashes across the marble floor of her penthouse. She’s done well for herself, and I’m proud as fuck of her.

This was Stephanie’s dream—college, moving to the city, becoming a successful criminal defense lawyer with a heart of gold. Oxymoron, I know, but it’s true. She cares about her clients. She has too much empathy at times for people. And at one point in our young lives, we desperately cared about each other.

“I’ve got a confession to make,” she says.

I nod, and she continues, “I’ve kept up with you over the years, especially after you went viral after training that girl to ride. I think I gave the video a million views myself. Did you really have to ride shirtless?”

“It was hot as fuck outside. You know how it gets in the dead of summer.”

She gives me a smirk that saysyeah, right. “I also know you haven’t been with anyone long-term since us.”

“You’re a little stalker.” I waggle my brows.

“No. Maybe a little, but not in a bad way. I just always felt like you were the one who got away, and I think it’s why I couldn’t commit to my fiancé.”

I sit up in bed. “Steph, it’s been so long. We’d have to try to get to know each other again, and it’s obvious we’ve both changed.”

I hold out my hand because her bedroom is extravagant. The woman in front of me isn’t the cheer captain that used to suck my dick after every Friday night football game.

“But back in the day, we were good together—the quarterback and head cheerleader, Danny and Sandra Dee, prom king and queen. We had something special, Harrison. Everyone knew it. Even Grace, and you still trust her with your life. I haven’t been able to find what we had all those years ago, and I don’t want to live my life with regrets.” She’s confident. Knows exactly what she wants.

But she is right in all aspects.

“We were good for each other.”

“And you never said goodbye,” she whispers, and I’m brought back to the memory of when she moved away to college.

“I never do,” I remind her, and she tilts her chin so she can meet my eyes. “Unless it’s the actual end.”

After graduation, we spent the entire summer together and were glued at the hip. We made love on the hay in the loft of the barn, slept in each other’s arms in the tree house behind my parents’ house that my little brothers and sisters played in, and underage drank until we passed out. The days turned into nights, and when the leaves started to fall, I knew it was time for her to move to Austin—the party university, one of the best in the entire state. She’d gotten a full-paid scholarship and cheered, and she was ready to leave it all behind for me. But I told her to go. I wouldn’t be the man to stop her from fulfilling her dreams, and I told her if she stayed, I’d break up with her. To protect her future. I wanted her to be sure that I was what she really wanted. And then a decade later …

“Do you remember that time I snuck out of my window and jumped off the second story of my parents’ house to meet you in your truck at the park?”

“Ahh. Yeah. Teenage you was dumb as hell and didn’t think about how you’d get back up there, and we had to sneak into your dad’s garage for the ladder. Then, I nearly got busted when I was putting it back.”

“I was an only child! I didn’t get to learn how to sneak out from my older siblings, like you. I had zero practice!”

I chuckle. “We had a lot of fun together, didn’t we?”

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