Leaving this town was my only option. I had to make a new life somewhere else. I didn’t want to leave my parents. I hadn’t wanted to leave Scarlet either, but now she’d left me. I liked this place, I loved my home, but my life here had always been intertwined with the Sutton boys.
A new town with new friends and a new independence would help me get on with my life. I’d tell Daddy tonight I was ready to commit to Clemson in the fall. He could pay the tuition and I’d start making plans to leave Malroy in August. My chest felt heavy from knowing I had to leave. Even though Asher would be leaving soon and finishing his last year at Florida, this town was still my connection to him. It was the place where he’d been mine.
I looked in the rearview mirror as I came to a stop at the red light. Asher was outside his truck talking to Steel who was now more animated and yelling at Asher, while Asher remained calm and relaxed. Right now, they had to be both wishing they’d never met me. Dixie Monroe had been nothing but a problem. But soon I’d be gone and they’d be rid of me for good.
Asher Sutton
THIS WASN’T OVER with Steel. He’d cursed me, drunkenly ranted, and then asked for Brent to come get him. I left him there with him. Brent was probably who he needed right now. They both were hurting. They both needed to drink and forget. They could drown their sorrows together. Hopefully, they wouldn’t both wake up next to women they didn’t know. But then maybe that was what they needed after all. As long as they stayed away from the married ones. Bray was infamous for messing around with married women he didn’t realize were married. It was a miracle he hadn’t been shot yet. Brent and Steel were hurting, but they were both more cautious than Bray.
I didn’t want to go home and talk about Steel. He could tell them what he wanted when he was sober enough. What I needed right now was silence and my thoughts, but I knew I wouldn’t find any peace. As I turned my truck onto the dirt road that led to the lake connecting our land to the Monroe’s working farm, one that no one used unless Luke was fishing. At least not anymore. My brothers and I used to swim and fish there as kids, but those days were long gone.
It had also been the spot where I’d taken Dixie’s innocence. She’d told me she loved me along that grassy bank. I’d told her I loved her, too, holding her naked body snugly against mine for the very first time. Most would say any teenage boy would declare love when he had a naked female in his arms. But I knew this moment had been special. It had been honest and real. I’d known I loved her before that moment. It had just fallen from my lips as emotions washed over me like a tidal wave. She hadn’t been my first, but she was my one.
I turned off my truck lights and sat there in the dark watching the moonlight dance across the water. Dad taught us to swim here. There were nights when I was away that I’d close my eyes and think of just sitting here. Recalling good days made me less homesick, but it also kept breaking my heart.
All of a sudden, movement in the corner of my eye caught my attention. I turned to see Dixie standing several feet away. She’d been sitting. I hadn’t noticed. But she was leaving now. I should let her go. It was best for both of us. The right thing to do. But I couldn’t. Not here and not right now. Not when some of my best memories came from this place. Here, I felt weak, my soul longing for what it couldn’t have. I got out of my truck and walked to her. She stopped, didn’t move, her gaze locked on me. The moonshine seemed to draw a bright halo around her, as if she didn’t belong to the night.
“You come here often?” I asked. It was something I wondered about often. We had so many memories here. Did Dixie think of me when she came to the lake?
“Yes, sometimes . . . some times more than others.”
She didn’t have to explain that to me. After this morning with Steel, I imagined she needed to be alone, much like I did now.
“You did the right thing,” I told her.
“I know,” she replied, not needing my approval. “But it was the hardest thing to do.”
“I wasn’t being condescending. If you’re out here worried about the shape you found him in earlier, drunk in the middle of town . . . he’ll be okay.”
She gazed back to the water, her eyes no longer on mine. “He hates me now, maybe he always will, but he said today he might thank me in the future. I don’t think he meant it, but I’ll hope and pray that’s the case. Have to hold on to that.”
Steel told me I was a selfish bastard and that he wished I would’ve stayed gone. He didn’t want my opinion or any other moral horseshit. He said that Dixie was free now, and that I might as well go take her since that’s what I’d wanted all along. I’d called Brent and let him take over. Steel was drunk, and sober or drunk, he didn’t want me there.
“I’m leaving,” she said, her eyes back on me, a determined gleam in them. “In August, I’m going to Clemson.”
She was starting over. Getting away. That would be good for her. She’d make new friends and there would be other guys. She might even fall in love again. My heart felt like someone was squeezing it by hand at the mere idea of her loving someone else. But I had to let her go. “You’ll like it there. Beautiful campus. It was one of the colleges I visited.”
“I can start a new life,” she said, nodding firmly, with determination in her voice. A life where I was no longer in it, unable to hurt her anymore.
We make certain choices in life because we have to. Others are made on a whim. And the rest, if we’re fortunate enough, we think those through, taking our time to decide. I’m not sure which one of these scenarios made me close the distance between us, bring our bodies a breath away from one another, and cup her face in my hands. That face I’d never forget. The one I saw every night when I closed my eyes and stayed with me throughout the day. I thought of nothing else as I lowered my mouth to hers, capturing it with a kiss. I’d longed for this moment for what seemed like forever. I wanted her in my arms again, her body pressed against mine like this, and with a desperate moan, our kiss quickly escalated to a burning frenzy.
Her hands slid under my shirt, soft palms caressing my skin. I could hear my own voice in my head telling myself this had to stop, but no part of my body was listening. I couldn’t force myself to do it even if I wanted to. She was leaving, moving on and I’d soon become a memory for her. That was all I knew. Maybe this was desperation, a futile echo of two people who’d loved each other deeply and were forced to let it all go. Nothing mattered to me in this moment—the past, present or future—because right now, with the moonlight playing on her face, a heavenly host surrounding this place where we’d spent so many carefree nights in the arms of the other, there was nothing but Dixie and me. If I had to choose a long life or this one last embrace with her, I’d choose this moment time and time again.
Dixie Monroe
THE ACHE I felt for Asher to touch more of me battled with the trembling from being in his arms again. I couldn’t get close enough. His hands moved down my arms and squeezed my waist, Asher’s tongue sliding over mine as every nerve in my body came alive. My hands gripped his back, desperate to get closer and make sure there wasn’t any space between us, not an inch.
Asher grabbed my bottom and jerked me up against him. His hardness pressed into my stomach. I could feel the throb of his erection, my panties dampening even more. He lifted me gently, up and down, his pelvis rubbing against me. Asher’s fingers bit into the flesh where my shorts had ridden up. I made noises I didn’t know I was making, moving a hand to the front of his jeans to feel his bulge in my hand, the thickness of him in my palm causing him to lower me and my feet to touch the ground again. Terrified that this was over, that whatever control he had lost had come back, I began to open my mouth. But before I could say anything, Asher grabbed my shirt and ripped it over my head, his dark, hungry gaze locked on every inch of my body. “Take off your shorts,” he demanded, discarding his own shirt, and already working the buttons of his jeans.
He watched me as I lowered my shorts. They fell on the grass beneath our feet, his eyes following their descent. “Panties, too,” he ordered and I quickly tugged them to the ground. We stood there naked, Asher’s eyes devouring my flesh.