You're the Reason - J. Nathan Page 0,68

I physically couldn’t hold out any longer, this one held so much more. It held promises and assurances for our future together.

Sophia pulled back and stared into my eyes. “I love you. You’re the reason so many good things have happened in my life.”

The warmth of knowing I was thoroughly and completely loved by this amazing woman swept over me, and regardless of the circumstances that brought us together, I knew with much certainty that Sophia was my happily ever after.

It hadn’t taken long after meeting her that I came to my senses and realized my happiness depended on her happiness—depended on making her wishes come true. That’s when I knew I was too far gone to ever recover unscathed. And as much as I wanted to believe I was the reason for all the good things that happened in her life, I knew she would’ve done them without me. She was a fighter. And she’d been right. She didn’t back down from any challenge.

And whether we were getting tattoos, riding in hot air balloons, skydiving, surfing, or I was helping her dye her hair blond (for that one month junior year until I couldn’t take looking at her as a blonde any longer), I was the lucky guy who got to be by her side as she carried out every last wish on her bucket list. And that made me so fucking happy.

There was only one thing left to do—besides marry her. I needed to get her started on a new list that included me and all our future adventures. Because there wasn’t a doubt in my mind, it was going to be one hell of a ride.

The End

Enjoy a Sample of For Finlay

Finlay

“Hey, sweetheart. Why don’t you bring me a little something over here?”

I sucked back what I really wanted to say to the big oaf wearing only his shoulder pads and football pants as I crossed the locker room filled with college football players in all stages of dress. I plastered on my ‘I could give a damn’ face and maneuvered around the players, careful not to get too close to what they didn’t bother covering up with me in the room. I extended a water bottle to the idiot.

A smug smile slipped across his face. “I didn’t say I wanted water.”

The room exploded with cackles and hoots of laughter.

I stifled my annoyance as I pulled back my shoulders and turned away from him like it didn’t faze me.

“Hey. Where you going, sweetheart?” he drawled.

I caught the sky-blue eyes of the quarterback seated on the stool in front of his locker lacing up his cleats. He looked surprised I’d held my tongue. Hell, I was surprised I’d held it when all I really wanted to do was tell the offensive lineman I’d come to hate—the one who’d been razzing me since I’d begun with the team a week before—where to stick his jock strap.

My eyes flashed away, seeking out my spot in the corner of the room where I waited for someone who actually needed a drink to signal me over.

Coach Burns burst into the crowded locker room rattling off the game plan for the start of their first closed scrimmage of the season. Fall semester began in a couple weeks. Football players and team staff started early, hence my presence on campus during the last few weeks of summer.

I looked out at the football players, all primed with black paint under their eyes for a battle against a local college. They sat focused on the coach’s words like football was life. Like it meant anything in the grand scheme of things.

I inhaled a deep breath. I could do it. I could be there. A hundred miles from home. Starting college at a school I never planned to attend. One I never even considered attending. It was never my dream. It had always been his.

* * *

Cole ran across our backyard. He was taller and leaner than most of the ten-year-old boys in town, owing his athletic build to football. He played every day whether he had practice or not. And on days when he had no one to play with, in other words when I wasn’t around or didn’t feel like it, he threw into a tire swing our dad hung from an old oak tree in the backyard.

I pulled back my arm and tossed Cole the ball. Though a little wobbly, he reached over his head, nabbed the off-center pass, and tucked it against his