Still Not Over You(27)
I'm outside on my parents' porch, trying to figure out how the hell I'm gonna get an elf princess out of a dragon's belly while she's naked with a human Prince, when I hear the tapping on the wood banister behind me.
I smell his ocean breeze cologne, the stuff he's started wearing the last year or two, before I even see him.
“Landon?” I whirl around, leaving my clumsy try at Tolkien fan fic with some really naughty parts behind.
“Nice night for a story, Reb. Clear one, too.” He sits down on the step next to me, folding his hands neatly.
“Crap! I didn't realize you'd be home. Steve said you'd be gone for another week.”
I don't want to stare too much, to let him know how hard it is to keep my eyes off him.
Of course, I can't control it.
He's only been gone in basic training for a few months. Maybe it's just having him back here. Or maybe it's because he already looks bigger, harder, a more chiseled, bestial strength sprawling over his old quarterback looks, but I like what I see.
I like it so much my blood turns strangely hot, and I'm clutching my notebook over my thighs too intently, hiding the burn intensifying between them, watching my knuckles turn white when I finally look away.
“Yeah, well, training wrapped up early and the flights were good. I haven't even told your bro I'm back and my folks are out. Still owe Steve like two hundred bucks for those fireworks last summer.”
I laugh, grateful it sputters out to hide my blush, shaking my head. “He was so worried about that part of the fence you guys blew up before you left. Had to scramble all weekend to get it patched up before mom and dad got back from Japan.”
“Great. So more like three hundred for labor and materials, then.” Landon coughs into his hand and I giggle again.
“Mum's the word,” I say, pressing a finger against my curling lips. “I won't let him know until you're ready to announce your grand entrance.”
“Probably tomorrow,” he says, nodding his thanks.
“So, why'd you come by anyway?” I ask, wondering why such a simple question takes so much freaking courage.
Then he gives me that blue-eyed stare, and I remember. The gaze that says c'mon, darling, in my dreams. The wild, crazy ones where I somehow think this man might ever consider me any kind of darling at all.
“Got a present for you,” he says, pulling something from behind his back. Smirking, he pushes it into my hands.
It's heavy, cool to the touch, metal. It takes me a second to realize I'm holding a huge pair of army tan binoculars, their lenses slightly scratched.
“Wrong direction, Reb. Point them up. Here.”
Suddenly, his hands are on mine, and it's way too hard to breathe. Landon Strauss helps me remember how to lift the lenses to my eyes, slowly eases my glasses off my nose, and then rotates the little wheel for focus on top.
“See anything yet?” he asks.
“I'm not that blind without my glasses.”
He laughs, spinning the wheel just a little more.
Then it happens. I gasp.
The cool, crisp California sky comes alive with more lights than I've ever seen. Bigger, brighter, and bolder, like a magic trick happening in the yawning blackness above. “Holy –”
“I know. These things are military grade, about as good as it gets before you start getting into telescope territory. Shame about the damn light pollution.”
“No shame. No, Landon, it's beautiful.”
“You saying that to impress me, or because you know what you're actually looking at?”
My cheeks flush again, a heat like an invisible sun blossoming on my skin. I shrug. Landon laughs, that low, throaty chuckle so so good at making goosebumps on my skin.
“That's Perseus, Kenna,” he says softly, shifting the binoculars very slightly, my face moving with them. “Little ways over there, we've got Aries the Ram, and below him, Pisces. Look a little lower. See that bright star on the horizon? Saturn. Can't see her rings with something this low powered, but –”
“Wow. Oh, wow.”
It's not just the majestic patterns named after ancient gods leaving me hot and bothered and totally speechless.
Every time I feel the rush in my blood, I know.
Every time he whispers a few more exotic sounding names in my ear, I know.
Every time his hands move, cradling mine, moving us so close to twining fingers it almost hurts while he helps guide my eyes to the sky, I know, I know, I know.
Wow is too weak a word for anything happening in front of me.
He didn't come here to lay out an abstract atlas in the sky for cold, distant stars no one will ever know up close for the next thousand years.
He came to show me the stars. The fireworks. The secret constellations that are there for us.
That's what I came to believe, anyway, that night he sat with me for over an hour. Just him and me and a lot of laughs and soft murmurs.
I knew if I ever fell for Landon Strauss, it'd be like soaring.
Just like I knew if we ever fell apart, the crash would be just as cataclysmic.
*
Present Day
I wake up with a groan, rubbing at my eyes.
I drag myself out of sleep with my eyes crusty, my mouth gummy, a crick in my neck, and a rather urgent pressure in my bladder. Probably because there's a furry lump curled up on my stomach.