The Girl I Was Before (Falling #3)(109)

For all of us.

Part of being on the school’s executive board for council is arriving two weeks early to plan orientation for the next year’s group of freshmen. I’ll be staying with Houston when I come. I’ll be moving in to an apartment nearby with Cass, Ty, and Rowe a few weeks later, though. I’m not ready to stay with Houston again full-time yet. The next time I move in for good with him, I don’t want to have to feel the pain of moving out. So I’m going to take it slow.

Slow is good, so I’ve learned.

In the meantime, I’m happy to be a part of Cass and Ty moving in together. I think that’s the only reason my parents didn’t freak out like they could have—because they knew there would be four of us living together—Rowe and me around constantly to keep Ty and Cass from having too much time alone.

Not that Rowe will be around much, either.

She was too nervous to ask her parents about moving in with Nate next year. So instead, he hooked up with one of his teammates, Cash. Their apartment is only a building away. I’m not sure how that makes a difference, and I’m pretty sure her parents are aware of how much time she’ll be spending with Nate, too, but if it makes her feel more innocent, whatever.

I’m actually excited to be her roommate. Maybe next year, I’ll get things right.

Nate won’t be eligible again for the draft until he’s twenty-one, but he impressed a lot of people over the spring—especially a group of scouts from the Houston Astros who spent a lot of time in the McConnell coaching suites.

I like the idea of him ending up in Houston. But maybe I’m partial.

I’m carrying the last box, and when Houston takes it from me to place in the back of his trunk, I hesitate a little on letting go. He tilts his head to the side, catching my attention, and I shake my head and smile, finally letting him take over lifting my things.

“Sorry, I was lost a little there,” I say.

He slides the box into the only space remaining, then closes his trunk before walking back up the curb to me.

“You? Lost? Never,” he teases. I laugh with him, but stop when the words hit me differently.

“No, I was pretty lost,” I say, my face more serious, his reflecting nothing but love for me. I reach my hand up to touch his cheek, catching the vision of my sister and my friends climbing into the airport shuttle behind him. When I look back into his eyes, the way he looks at me proudly makes my hesitation fade away. “I think I was worried for a moment there—that if I left right now, when I come back nothing will be the same,” I admit.

He exhales, pulling me to his chest to hold me tight, and his lips fall to my head. “Paige, when you’re gone, time for me…it stops,” he says. I step away to look at him, so happy with this place I’ve ended up. “I waited years for you. Seven weeks? That’s nothin’.”

“Seven weeks,” I repeat.

“Seven weeks,” he smiles. I press my lips to his, standing on my toes, until I have to peel away and join the others in the shuttle. Houston follows me to the edge of the curb, and just as he’s about to shut the door, he reaches into his back pocket and pulls out a rolled-up booklet of notebook paper, stapled together on one side.

“What’s this?” I ask, taking it from him, noticing his handwriting and doodles on the front page.

“It’s your story,” he says. “I wrote it for you. It’s cheesy as hell, and I’m pretty sure the things I tried to write in Spanish mean totally the wrong thing, but it’s…I don’t know…romantic, I guess? I thought it would be, but now I feel sort of lame.”

“It’s very romantic,” I smile, clasping my story to my chest. “And we’ll work on the Spanish.”

“Damn right, we will,” he winks. “I failed last semester.”

“Love you,” I say one last time, the door closing between us. We both hold up a hand and press it on either side of the glass, and I watch his skin slide over it as the van slowly pulls away.

Ty and Nate are making fun of me from the front seat, and Cass and Rowe are yelling at them for me from the back. I’m in the middle, where I ignore their noise, flipping through my rag-tag fairytale—the notebook fringe flaking away on the edges. I run my finger over the stick-figure girl with long blonde hair and the prince standing next to her, holding a sandwich, and I smile when I read his butchered Spanish confession of love near the end, an arrow in the margin pointing to the words, reading “this means I love you.”

Yes, Houston.

Yes, it does.



THE END





Acknowledgments





This is harder to write than it normally is. This series was a special one for me. It was special thanks to the many readers who found Nate Preeter first, then championed him, and asked for more. It’s special because of his brother, Tyson Preeter, who will remain one of my favorite characters I’ve ever written for his ability to overcome adversity and his smart-ass mouth. And it’s special because of Paige—my strong-willed, albeit a little harsh, girl on a mission. It didn’t hit me when I wrote THE END on Paige’s story. It didn’t even hit me through the edits and the final read. But now…

Now…it’s hitting me.

Book 3 in the Falling series is done. One year at McConnell College is complete. And Paige, Cass, Rowe, Nate, Tyson and Houston will move on. To where…well, I sort of left that up to you. Maybe I left that up to me a little, too. And maybe there will come a day where I check in on them, where we all gather at McConnell for graduation or for Nate’s big day. I don’t know. All I know is I couldn’t make it a final goodbye forever, even if that ends up being the case. I didn’t want to close that door, because these characters—I am going to miss them. And I just feel a whole hell of a lot better knowing they’re still there should I need to visit.