She shifts her gaze to me, and I can tell she’s looking for confirmation that everything is okay. I nod, assuring her.

“Well, have a good night,” she tells us. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

Pike takes my hand, and we walk outside, the humid August air already damp on my arms. He clutches me like he’s going to lose me as we walk to his truck and retrieve his duffel bag and a little package. I laugh, seeing mud still all over his door and the tires.

Walking to the room, I pass the five I doled out to “Tyler” and his ladies, and I can hear music, chatter, and laughing from inside several of them. We pass another room with curtains drawn, but light from the TV pierces the fabric.

Up the sidewalk, one of the regulars, Peter, walks to the Coke machine with a sword strapped to his naked back and wearing his usual black leather pants.

“What the hell is that?” Pike mumbles to me, looking at him.

“That’s Peter,” I say, admiring the black hair that drapes damn-near down to his waist. “He’s here every weekend, LARPing.”

Pike pinches his brows together and looks at me.

“Live Action Role Playing,” I explain. “Sometimes he brings a beautiful Elvish princess and they get kinky. You can hear it through the walls.”

He snorts as we reach our room, and he unlocks the door. I step inside and walk over to the night stand, turning on the lamp as he shuts and locks the door.

“Can I take you home tomorrow?” he asks. “I’m anxious.”

I peer up at him. “Anxious for what?”

He just quirks a smile. “Everything, I guess.”

He tosses a little box at me, and I reach up, catching it.

“What’s this?” I ask.

“Open it.”

I walk to the sink and face the mirror, tearing off the tape. Ripping open the box, I dig out three cassette tapes, and immediately start grinning.

“I found some 80’s music for you I can stand,” he says, coming up behind me as I inspect the new additions to my collection.

“AC/DC,” I read the labels. “Metallica…Beastie Boys.”

I look up at him, and he dips down kissing me. I close my eyes, feeling like I’m dizzy. I wonder how much trouble he went through to find these. I hope it was a lot.

I flick his tongue with mine, the kiss turning heated and strong, and I reach around, clasping the back of his neck, not letting him go.

He sucks in air through his teeth, and I can feel him harden through his jeans.

“Baby, I’ve been all over fucking Virginia,” he pants. “I need a shower.”

“We’ll take one after,” I say, reminiscing about our kitchen table foray two months ago when he wanted a shower first then, too.

I drop the tapes to the counter and press my back into him, moaning.

He kisses me and pulls back just a hair to look into my eyes. “There hasn’t been anyone else since you left,” he tells me.

I blink up at him. “I know. I can’t say the same, though.”

His face falls, and his jaw tenses.

I pin him with regretful eyes. “I missed you, so I had a few drinks on the Fourth of July and had a little tryst with the desk corner in room 108,” I tell him. “It was pretty hot.”

He breaks into a laugh, his body shaking behind me.

I actually didn’t do that, but I felt tempted a few times. When I close my eyes, though, I only see him, and it felt pathetic to masturbate to a guy whom I thought didn’t want me.

So, I’ve been chaste, and now I’m ready to go wild.

Turning me around, he picks me up, and I wrap my legs around his waist as he carries me to the bed. Letting me fall back, he pulls his shirt over his head and stares down at me as he unfastens his belt.

All of sudden, though, a very loud and fast pounding hits the wall behind our bed, and shrill moans and whimpers pierce the walls. We both stop and listen as Peter and his princess go at it in the next room, banging their headboard against ours and sending it bobbing back and forth.

His eyes go wide. “Oh, they are loud.”

Yup.

Then he looks down at me, an air of mischief in his eyes. “We can take ’em.” And then he grabs the back of my knees, yanking me down to the end of the bed, and I squeal as he comes down on top of me.

Jordan

One Year Later

“I’ll learn on my own if you stop micro-managing me!” I scold, trying to push Pike’s hands off my handles.

He sits behind me on my new four-wheeler and revs the gas, vaulting us up out of the ravine and out of the mud. I gasp, leaning back into him and my stomach dropping to my feet as I clutch his forearms to steady myself. I laugh.

“Well, if you’d wear the helmet…” he says.

“But I can’t see in the helmet.”

We’re mudding. It’s not like we’re cruising at thirty-five miles an hour out here. I don’t need a helmet for this. And plus, I’m just learning how to use the quad today. He’ll be lucky if I top out at twelve miles an hour.

But if I won’t wear the helmet, then he won’t let me drive it alone until I’ve been given proper instruction. Hence, the driver’s ed lesson.

We race across the bank, mud splattering all over my new red ATV, my boots, and jeans. I also feel a few drops of something cold periodically land on my hair, held out of my face with a baseball hat, and on my shirt.

My finals just ended this week, and I’ve had lack-of-sleep headaches non-stop, but I feel so much better today. I’m glad he surprised me with this. A day of him, fun, and fresh air is all I needed.

He’s been so great through my bad moods the past couple weeks as I study, making me snacks and doing well to not distract me while I get work done.

Although he did come into the library—my old bedroom—and tempt me with a quickie here and there under the guise that I needed a study break.

Yeah, okay.

I smile, remembering him walking in while my nose was buried in a book, pulling off his shirt, and telling me he’s going to get a shower, but I know what he really wants, because he knows the sight of him in only jeans is my frickin’ porn. I didn’t put up a fight. I never do. I want him just as much as he wants me.

But now finals are over and so are classes until next fall, and I’m all his.

His truck is parked ahead, and his ATV still sits on the attached trailer, clean and shining just like new.

He pulls to a stop and turns off the motor, burying his lips in my neck and kissing me.

“I have a present for you,” he teases.

I turn my head, grazing my lips over his cheek. “You already gave me my present.” I run my fingers over the handles of my new four-wheeler and also remembering the orgasm I got at six a.m. this morning. It’s been a very good birthday so far.

“The four-wheeler was just an excuse to get myself one, really,” he explains.

I nibble his jaw. “So, what is it then? More antiques for my collection?”

“Cassette tapes aren’t antiques, Jordan,” he states firmly.

I laugh. “You’re right, you’re right. They’re considered classics. Like cars over thirty years old. Like you!” I chirp. “You’re a classic.”

He clamps his hand over my mouth, stifling my laughter and shaking his head. He’s not offended by my running joke. I only tease him about his age, because he still thinks it’s an issue, and I’m trying to lighten the mood.

And to a few people around town, it is strange. But they mean nothing to us. Cole, my sister, and Shel have all come around, albeit Cole a little slower than the others, but they’re all that matters.

I bite at his fingers on my mouth, playing, but suddenly, he holds up a small, black leather box in front of me, and I stop.

My face falls, and I’m no longer laughing.

Lowering his hand from my face, he remains silent as I stare at the case, a million different thoughts running through my head right now, but I can barely hear them, because the pulse in my ears is deafening.

Oh, my God. It’s not a…ring, is it? I mean, we haven’t talked about this.

I always hoped it would come to this, but Pike doesn’t take big steps without a little help. I had no idea…

Slowly reaching out, I take the box out of his hand and open it, my mouth going as dry as a desert when I see the diamond ring inside.

Tears sting my eyes, and my mouth falls open.

It’s a rose. Like the ones on the birthday cake he got me last year and the flowers I planted around the house this spring. A large diamond sits in the middle of platinum petals, adorned with little stones themselves, and it’s unlike anything I’ve ever seen. Beautiful and special and completely me.

He wants to marry me?

I let out a little sob, overwhelmed. “Are you kidding me right now?” I snap. “I’m covered in mud!”

He’s doing this now? When there were hundreds of dinners and breakfasts in bed this past year when I was pretty and clean?

His chest shakes with a laugh behind me and he wraps his arms around my waist. “You’re beautiful.”

I rub my thumb over the large stone. It’s real. All this is real.

“I’ve been planning this for a long time,” he says. “You think I’d know what I wanted to do or say, but I can’t think right now.” His breath falls across my hair as he whispers. “I guess I should’ve gotten down on one knee, huh?”

“No, don’t let go of me.” My voice shakes.

I swallow the hard lump in my throat and pull the ring out, setting the box down and trying it on. The cool band slides on perfectly, and I take his hand, putting it on the handle again with mine on top of it.

His finger doesn’t yet have a ring as I entwine our hands.

But it will.

My heart swells like it’s too much for my chest to hold, and I’m speechless. He certainly surprised me. I can’t believe he did this without giving me one clue what he was up to.

I stare at our hands together, leaning back into him and even more excited now for everything that’s to come. I think part of me—a small part—was still waiting for him. It was always in the back of my mind, that fear that he might still see me as too young or not ready for this or him, but he has to know…