Written in the Scars(54)

The ice around my heart, the wall I’ve so carefully constructed, is crumbling. I feel it. As much as I want it to be there to protect me, I like the feeling of . . . this. It’s the warmth of being me, of being part of a relationship that’s a once-in-a-lifetime type of thing. Even though things have been rocky, this is my life. I know it. I feel it. I want it.

He catches me checking him out and smiles, reaching across the console and taking my hand in his. Flipping my hand over, he rubs his thumb across my palm and focuses his attention back on the road.

“You wanna know something?” he asks, his voice deep and crackly.

“Sure,” I say, watching his eyes squint as he turns the truck up the lane to Moon Mountain, a hill that overlooks Dugger Lake. It’s our favorite parking spot, one that we’ve used countless times since Ty got his license. “I said no making out!” I laugh, taking my hand away from his.

“You did not. You asked if I was going to try and I said not unless you ask. I’m hoping if I set the mood right, you’ll ask,” he smirks.

The truck hits the top of the hill just as the final rays of sunlight stream from the sky. The lake that the hill overlooks ripples in the breeze, the green cattle fields surrounding it shining with the dew that’s beginning to settle.

“It’s so beautiful up here,” I say as Ty turns off the ignition. It’s silent, absolutely still, and I pop open my door and hop out.

The air is clean yet chilly, but I don’t have time to take in the cold. Ty opens the tailgate and picks me up and sets me on it, settling between my legs with a hesitant smile on his lips.

“You are so beautiful,” he says, stroking my cheek.

“Charmer,” I giggle, unable to resist the handsome face in front of me.

He laughs and takes his place beside me, his knee touching mine as our legs swing off the end.

“Feels like we’ve done this a time or two,” he points out.

“Because we’ve done this a time or a hundred. So many memories up here.”

I look around the land below. I know what this looks like at dusk, like now, and also as the morning sun rises behind me. I know what it looks like at midnight when the world sleeps and what it looks like at six a.m. when only a few trucks pass along the road below as people begin to come to life and head off for their day.

“We’ve celebrated birthdays up here. Remember when you and Jiggs turned twenty-one and he decided he was going to try to swim that lake to celebrate?” Ty laughs.

“Yeah, in January! He almost got hypothermia,” I remember. “Or when Cord started a fire that one night after you won the basketball Sectional and it got away from him and almost burned that field?”

“I forgot about that,” Ty laughs. “I think he threw gas on the fire to start it. He really should’ve tried Boy Scouts as a kid or something.”

“What about when my parents passed away and I couldn’t stop crying? You brought me here then, remember? And let me just have my tears and screams away from everyone?”

“Yeah,” he says, nodding. He looks at me over his shoulder, his dark eyes peering at me. “Remember when we celebrated our first anniversary in this very spot? We were too poor to go to dinner, so we packed bologna and cheese sandwiches and came here instead?”

My heart fills in my chest at the memory of our sandwiches and cherry flavored drinks in paper cups, the best we could do. “You know,” I say, “I think that’s my favorite anniversary.”

“Mine, too,” he grins. “It was really simple then.”

“When did everything get so complicated, Ty?”

He shrugs, his face falling. “I don’t know. But it sure as shit did.”

The wedge that’s been between us starts to slice its way down, parting us in an invisible trench. Sometimes it makes me feel safe and I’m thankful for it. But now? I’m clamoring to make it go away.

“Ty?”

“Yeah?”

“What are we doing?”

His mouth falls, his eyes leaving mine and heading across the lake to some place, some memory, some thought I’m not privy to. He slips off the back of the truck and faces the lake for a long minute. When he turns to me, he’s resigned to a decision.

“I tell the boys on my team that we don’t quit,” he says, his tone steady. “I’m always reminding them that we set our eyes on a prize and we work our tails off until we get there. Regardless of how painful, even though it might hurt, we get to the finish line.”

“Sounds like good logic,” I say, swallowing a lump that’s suddenly lodged in my throat.

“It is. In theory. But I’m rethinking it now.” He shoves his hands in his pockets and squares his shoulders up to me. “Sometimes you have to let things go. Just because you start on a path, even if you’re balls-to-the-wall at first, doesn’t mean you should stay on it. It’s less quitting, I guess, and more adjusting. Moving on to the next thing you think you want.”