So. Long(258)

I drag to my feet, flip the lock, but don’t bother turning the handle before I flop face-down onto the bed.

The door creaks and a second later Buck’s kiss lands on the shell of my ear. “Go brush your teeth. We have something important to do this morning.”

“Well, go do it. I don’t have a thing on my schedule. Let me sleep.”

He tugs at my shoulders. “C’mon, Lou. I think you’ll be glad you came.”

I roll over, his smile warming me. “I’ll get up, but under protest.”

“Protest is fine.”

I brush my teeth and spend a few minutes detangling my curls.

When I step out of the bathroom, Buck shoves my dress into my hands. “Here, throw this on.”

“What the hell? Can’t I have a half a minute to wake the fuck up?”

He drops a kiss on my brow. “Nope. Not this morning.”

I barely get my feet into my boots before he grabs my hand and drags me out the door. “I love the sundress-combat boot combo, by the way. Very sexy.”

I grin. “Hey, I worked hard to earn these boots. Besides, they’re more comfortable than you’d think.”

He ducks in for a quick kiss, his tongue sliding along mine before he pulls away. “I was serious. You’re hot as fuck.”

Dawn breaks, and a faint gray glow illuminates the tops of the trees.

Buck hands me the yellow lantern as he pulls a picnic basket over his arm. “Delores packed up some coffee and breakfast.”

I dig in my heels. “Where are we going?”

He tightens his grip and tosses a look into the woods. “Just come with me, will you?”

“All right.”

He’s leaving in a few days, and I’ll have a very long wait before I see him again…If I see him again. We’ve pretty much avoided the subject over the last day or two.

My heart constricts at that thought. I push it away so I can enjoy every minute with Buck between now and the moment Hollywood takes him away—again.

We trek through the trees a ways. In the distance, flickering points of light shine. As we approach our old fort, the trees are illuminated by hundreds of tiny white lights, wrapping the trunks and into the branches of our magnolia and several smaller trees in the area.

White ribbons flow through the leaves, some loose, others with lighted balls of tissue on the ends. Some are tied to jars with lights stuffed into them, hanging at different heights. Mason jars holding LED tea lights are set around the clearing. A blanket covers the ground at the foot of the magnolia, in the same spot the other quilt laid the last time I was here.

A stream of warmth rushes to my pussy, just thinking of that magnolia tree. My nipples pucker as they remember the way the bark on that tree rasped across their tender tips as Buck made love to me.

He drops the basket at the foot of the tree. He sits on the quilt and pulls me down too. When he lies back, he drags me with him so my head rests on his chest. His heart beats frantically.

We lay in silence until I can’t stand it anymore. “You’re such a morning person. All this so we can make love under the trees before you leave? We could’ve done this tonight.”

“No. I mean, yes, we can make love out here later tonight, if you want. But that’s not what all this is about.”

He rolls to his side, so I shift to face him. We both lay with our heads propped up on our hands.

His finger draws lazy circles over my bare shoulder. “You know, I’ve been thinking…this is the place where we played together as kids, where we pretended to be grown-ups with our own house. This place kept you safe that—that terrible day. But, I guess that day wasn’t all bad. It was that day, in this place that I first truly wanted to make you mine. I wanted so badly to keep you safe from the world, to protect you from the unfairness of your childhood.”

I cover my mouth as tears gather, prickling and stinging as they try to get loose. All the memories of all the moments we’ve spent under these trees, too many moments to count, rush to mind.

He’s right. We used to pretend all sorts of things in the safety of this hidden place.

Buck leans close, looking deep into my eyes. “I bought this property yesterday, Lou.”

“Wow. That’s—that’s really great.”

“I figured it was time.” Buck rolls to the base of the magnolia, digging the leaves away from the base of it, scraping away the dirt from around the roots with a little gardening spade he must’ve brought.

I sit up, peeking around his shoulder. “Time for what?”

He tugs something from the ground and holds out a dirt-encrusted pickle jar. “Don’t you want to open our time capsule?”

Oh, out time capsule; I’d forgotten.