Waiting On You (Blue Heron #3)(36)

From that night on, he and Colleen were together. They weren’t dating, hanging out, hooking up. They were together. He was locked in from the second he kissed her, something he’d been thinking about doing from the moment he first saw her, something he’d vowed not to do because it was certain that even one kiss would bind him to her.

He was right. The second his lips touched hers, a word came into his head, a word from long ago when his mother was still alive, when Spanish was still spoken at home.

Mía. Mine.

Colleen was his.

They managed to wait until after graduation to seal the deal; the first time for both of them, two kinds of birth control because he was paranoid about getting her pregnant, the way his father had done to his mother. He went as slowly as he could, heart thudding so hard he shook, unable to believe that she’d have him.

It got awkward, they were nervous and inexperienced, and it was amazing anyway, and when he was on top of her and inside her at last, and he was just holding still for fear of causing her any more discomfort than he probably already was, she opened her eyes, those beautiful clear eyes, and just looked at him. Colleen who always smiled and always laughed was serious now, and for one beat of his heart, he thought she was going to say Get off, leave, this isn’t working.

“I love you,” she whispered instead, and the words wrapped around his chest and squeezed hard.

No one had said those words to him in a long, long time.

“Say that again,” he whispered, just to make sure he’d heard right, and she laughed, and the sound was even better than her words.

She could do that—flip a switch like that. She’d be laughing with her friends on the green, eating an ice cream cone, and she’d see him walking to the hardware store, and her eyes would change from that slightly knowing, sly smile to unguarded and soft and full of so much that he could drown in it. Or the reverse, too—one July night they were lying on a blanket in the backyard of her house, just holding hands, and Lucas was trying to figure out a way to tell her he loved her, because of course he did, and of course she knew it. But the actual words...they were harder.

Just say it, his brain instructed. Don’t be such an ass. She tells you five times a day. You’re gonna blow this, you know.

But the words stayed locked.

Colleen rolled on top of him, looking at him, and there it was, that soft, gentle gaze that seemed to know every event that had torn off a chunk of his heart—his mom’s slurring voice as her ability to speak died little by little, his father’s arrest, the phone call that came from the prison at 2:36 a.m., asking if he was the son of Daniel Wakeman Campbell—every jealous thought he’d ever had about Bryce, every lonely minute spent trying to be invisible...Colleen’s love erased them all.

But all he could do was look at her, touch her face, and hope she knew.

She smiled just a little, almost as if she was answering his question. “I’m starving,” she said, and her smile grew in a flash, and his was born. Because yeah, it felt as if he had never smiled until her.

Her family liked him well enough—except for her father, which was understandable. Pete O’Rourke tolerated him, though, and Lucas appreciated it. Her mom exclaimed over his manners and always made a lot of noise when she was coming down the hall, giving them a warning to keep it clean. Connor watched him at school, and then seemed to mellow, realizing that Lucas wasn’t some player out to break his sister’s heart.

In late August, she drove him to Chicago, ten hours of them holding hands and barely talking, and dropped him off at the university, took an unnecessarily long time to unpack his meager belongings and walked around campus with him.

Then it was time for her to leave.

“I’ll call you in an hour,” he said, kissing her for the hundredth time.

“Nah,” she said, wiping her eyes. “I’m already over you. It was a passing thing, like a virus.”

He waited.

“Fine,” she said. “I love you.”

“Say it again.”

“Say it again,” she grumbled. “Not that you’ve ever said it once, mind you.”

He kissed her, feeling as if he was saying goodbye to the brightest, best thing that life had ever granted him, and Colleen wrapped her arms around his neck and buried her face against him. “I love you, too,” she said, and her back hitched with a sob.

“Adiós, mía.”

“God, I love when you speak Spanish. So hot.”

Then she got into her car and drove off, tossing him a cheery salute that contradicted the tears that gleamed on her cheeks.

He stood there until her car turned the corner. Kept standing there until she pulled up again, because he’d known somehow that she’d drive around the block to see if he’d left. She got out of the car, laughing, and jumped into his arms again. “Go to your dorm, idiot,” she said. “Call me in an hour.”

So his plan became more complicated. Stay in college, make good grades, get a job that earned a lot of money, take care of Steph and the girls...and marry Colleen.

For three and a half years, it worked. Whenever possible, in between working as a security guard at a gleaming skyscraper downtown, between fixing Stephanie’s car/furnace/pipes and the occasional stint babysitting the girls, working summers for a construction company, keeping his GPA over 3.7, he saw Colleen. He’d hitchhike back to Manningsport when he could, or kick his roommate out for the weekend when Colleen came to Chicago. They called, emailed, instant-messaged, took advantage of whatever form of communication available to them.