“If I ever get married,” she twirled a few locks of hair around, “I want to wear them too.”
I stepped closer and bent down, touching my nose to her. “What do you mean if?”
“I don’t know. If.”
“Juliet, the day I met you, I knew I was gonna marry you.”
Her mouth fell open. “What?”
My fingers grazed her chin, tipping her head back. I swallowed hard. “I need some time to get my life sorted. Graduate. Find a job so I can take care of you the way you deserve. But yeah, then we’re getting married.”
She placed her hand on her hip and tilted her head. “That sounds more like a statement than a question.”
My lips quirked at the challenge in her voice. “I’m not ready to ask you, yet.”
She went up on tiptoes and slipped an arm around my neck, threading her fingers into my hair. “You don’t need to take care of me. We’ll take care of each other.”
I didn’t have a chance to respond. She leaned in and kissed me. Slow and soft.
That sweet kiss saved me, because I had no words.
“Where are we going to live?” she whispered when she backed away.
“Near wherever you’re going to college, I guess.”
“You’re not going to college?”
I snorted. “Not likely.”
“Your grades are even better than mine. You should. If you could go anywhere and do anything, what would you want to do?”
“Something outdoors maybe. Or a pilot.”
“You don’t like being caged in.”
“Nope. Hate it. Hate not having any damn control over my life.”
She wrapped her arms around me and pressed her cheek to my chest, squeezing me tight. “We will one day, Roman. I promise.”
Christ, I couldn’t breathe. I liked the sound of we. I’d never been part of a we before. I slipped my arms around her and hugged her back. “I like cars. Fixing them and stuff.”
She gave me a curious look.
“One of the foster families I lived with when I was younger. They fostered a bunch of kids and owned a garage. Used to race cars on the weekends. Something always needed fixing at their house. I used to hang out in the garage and help out after school.”
“That must have been fun.”
Fun wasn’t quite the right word. “They expected their foster kids to work. For free. To earn our keep. I guess what the state paid them wasn’t enough.”
“Oh. I’m sorry.”
“It’s all right. The husband was cool. He taught me how to do the easier stuff. Oil changes. Tire rotations. That kept me busy. But I’d also help him on the bigger jobs so I could learn.”
“That was smart.”
“I guess.” I glanced down at my hands, turning them over. “I like solving problems. Fixing stuff that’s broken.”
“You’re good at it.” She squeezed my arm. “You fixed me.”
“You’re not broken.”
Her gaze skipped away from mine, sparking a desire to seek and destroy anyone who hurt her.
“Everyone’s a little broken, don’t you think?” she said softly. “But when I’m around you, I feel whole.”
Relief crashed over me with the force of a ten-foot wave. In a few words, she summed up all the feelings I couldn’t name whenever we were together. “I feel the same way.”
She took my hand and we started walking. More than any other day I didn’t want to say goodbye to her.
As if she’d heard my thought she pointed at an old, Victorian house on the edge of the park. It was pink, yellow, and white. Gaudy as hell, but somehow still pretty. “I wish we lived there. You and me.”
“Oh yeah?”
She nodded and bounced on her toes as she walked, dragging me along faster. “The park would be our backyard and it would be close to school, so when it snowed we wouldn’t have to ride the bus.”
“You mean right now?”
“Right now,” she confirmed. Her cheeks turned that pretty shade of pink again. “I’d like to fall asleep next to you every night and wake up with you every morning.”
I stopped, dropping our bags on the ground with a thud. I yanked her against me. “I think of you every night when I go to bed, wishing you were next to me.”
She smiled up at me. “I do the same.”
My hands slid down to her waist. It didn’t matter that we were in a public park in the middle of the afternoon. I wanted to strip her down and finish what we started in the photo lab.
“Roman?” she whispered. “We need to get going.”
Damn, she was right. I grazed her cheek with my knuckles and gave her one last kiss. “You’ve given me a lot of memories to replay when I fall asleep tonight.” I’d also probably have to get up a few times and rub one out, but I couldn’t say that to her. My hands ached to cup her breasts again. To touch her without anything in between us. “Juliet, was that okay before? Are you okay?”