Broken Little Melodies(28)

We settled on a giant boulder at the edge of the beach. For the longest time we made out before she leaned back against me, safe in my arms as we watched the dark clouds flicker through the sky. Everything we had gone through rolled through my thoughts as I prepared myself for what I was about to say.

“Can you do me a favor?” I finally asked.

“Depends on what kind of favor you’re asking,” she replied with a little giggle. But when she twisted in my arms to look up at me, her big brown eyes shone with lust.

The way she looked at me made my dick hard. I groaned when she started kissing my neck and reached for the waistband on my shorts. “Hold on. I don’t mean that. I mean…you can if you want, but there’s something I want to say to you first.”

She leaned back, her lips bright and slightly swollen from our kisses as she waited for me to continue.

“I…um…you know…thought maybe we could…ah…do something that would give this day a…um…special meaning.”

Her fingers slid into my boxers and she giggled. “Are you sure you’re the same guy who writes those deep songs? You don’t have to be nervous around me, Roman. If you want to go all the way, you just have to ask.”

My eyes bulged from my head. “No! I mean…hell yeah, I want to do that. I mean when you’re ready. But that’s not what I was asking. I just thought that, since you don’t like to celebrate your birthday and everything—”

“Oh.” She withdrew her hand with a cold expression. “I was hoping you forgot.”

“How could I forget the day my girl came into the world?” When I reached out to bring her back into my arms, she started to climb back down the boulder. My windpipe crushed with desperation. I couldn’t lose her. I yelled out, “Belle, wait! I l—lo—ve you!”

It was too dark to see her expression from that far away, but I could hear her sharp intake of breath. She spun her head around, causing her dark hair to twirl around her neck, and pinned me down with her big brown eyes. My heart practically leapt from my chest with the way she made me feel under her beautiful gaze. She looked…pale.

“It’s true,” I said softly. “I think I might have loved you since the first time I looked into your eyes.”

When she merely stood there, unmoving, I couldn’t fucking breathe. I was worried she hated me for whatever reason. Maybe I shouldn’t have picked her birthday to finally tell her how I felt. I simply wanted her to have a different reason to celebrate this day.

Then, finally, she crawled back up to me, and my breaths slipped back out my throat. I wrapped my hand around hers and gently squeezed. I wanted to think that she loved me, but it didn’t really matter. I was sure that I loved her enough for the both of us.





Chapter Nine





Isabelle





“Wait, is that…loverboy?” Melanie sang, throwing her arm over my shoulder and standing on her tiptoes to see beyond the other campers arriving.

My heart fluttered in anticipation. The summer I was to turn seventeen, one year closer to becoming an adult and getting the hell out of Vegas, I practically floated on the brutally long ride to Camp Oscines. After Roman told me that he loved me the night of my sixteenth birthday, I was terrified those words were the final kiss of death in our relationship.

It ended up being quite the opposite.

The only possible way we could’ve become any closer was if I had finally agreed to sex. Not only was I incredibly nervous that I would make a fool out of myself because I had no idea what to do, but I somehow convinced Roman the summer before to wait until I got my hands on birth control.

As the end of our time together closed in, our kisses became more urgent, and we’d touch each other in ways that had me seriously reconsidering my decision to wait. The nights we spent exploring each other’s bodies under the stars lasted longer and longer as neither of us wanted our stolen nights to come to an end. One night on the beach I fell asleep in his arms and we woke just as the sun was gleaming over the treetops. I thought for sure we’d be busted that time, but Melanie and the guys in Roman’s cabin covered for us and none of our counselors batted an eye.

That summer brought our hardest goodbye yet, one laced with salty, tear-laced kisses, and promises that it wouldn’t be the end. He whispered into my ear, “I love you, Belle…always” before he left in the private car.

I couldn’t stop sobbing for most of the grueling ride back to Vegas. As much as I sometimes wished he hadn’t said the words, they kept me going every time they were uttered, whether in person, typed, written, or over the phone. In the year that would follow, it turned out I needed that added strength anywhere I could find it.