Spring Secrets - Allie Boniface Page 0,6
to...I don’t know. What do they say there? Snog?”
Max burst into laughter.
“Is that the wrong word?”
Now Max was holding her stomach. In a minute she’d end up rolling on the floor of the pub.
“Stop laughing. You know what I mean.”
Finally Max took a breath. “Sienna, I can’t tell you what you do. Sex with the right guy is amazing. I can tell you that first-hand. It takes your relationship to a whole new level. But I don’t think you should be looking to jump into the bed of the first guy that comes along just because you want some experience snogging.”
But the more Sienna thought about it, the more it made sense. She and Jason were over. She’d stayed chaste for him, not for her. In fact, there were plenty of nights when she’d come close to asking him to change his mind. Lose my virginity. She’d add it to her list. Put it on the bottom, just in case she didn’t get to it. She didn’t have to make it a priority. But if the right guy did come along, she wasn’t about to cling to an old vow any longer.
Maybe the right guy already has. And maybe he owns a gym right downtown.
Sienna took a long sip of wine and let Max laugh.
LONG AFTER NIGHTFALL, Dash climbed into his pickup truck and headed for home. On impulse, he swung down Red Barn Road, passing a few of the old historic homes on the edge of town. Several had been redone in the last couple of years by Mac and Damian, and the workmanship was obvious. Just before the road curved up and over the mountain, he stopped.
There it was, a small white church with a simple sign out front: Valley Presbyterian Church. All Are Welcome Here. Empty parking lot. A single streetlamp that cast more shadows than light on its grounds. The property was neatly kept, the paint fresh, the pine trees around the church still trimmed with red bows from the holidays. It was probably one of those places that filled to capacity on Christmas Eve, with a choir singing at the top of their lungs and kids in their Sunday best running up and down the aisles.
“If I stepped inside, I’d probably get struck by lightning. Set the whole thing on fire.” Dash did a U-turn in the parking lot. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been to church.
In another five minutes, he was in another world on the south side of Whispering Pines, where one-story homes alternated with rundown trailers and empty lots. The mansions of Red Barn Road could’ve belonged to Rodeo Drive, for as far away as they seemed now. Most of the town lived from paycheck to paycheck, making the bills when they could and scrambling when they couldn’t. On Cornwall Road, he pulled up to the last house on the block, a dingy white ranch with black shutters. He parked in front of the garage and headed up the crumbling brick steps.
One twist of the key, a creaky push of the door, and he was home. Dash tried his best to keep the place clean, but it didn’t seem to matter since he was the only one living there. He grabbed a beer from the fridge and collapsed onto the couch. Eighteen months since he’d come back to Whispering Pines. Thirteen months since his mother had died of a stroke. Those five months before she died had been some of the best of his life, though he hadn’t realized it then. Now the house echoed with silence. Probably should put it on the market and use the money to beef up the gym. But somehow he couldn’t bear to sell the only place he’d ever called home.
He finished his beer and walked to the bigger of two bedrooms at the back of the house. The smaller one he hadn’t touched, and it remained a sewing room with pencil marks on one wall that measured his height from first to twelfth grade. He’d had to make the marks himself when he outgrew Ma at fourteen. On impulse, he flipped the light switch, illuminating piles of fabric, yarn, rubber bins filled with supplies, and a large crucifix on the wall. Dash stared at it for a long moment. Ma had attended St. Mary’s Catholic Church in town, but he’d stopped going with her sometime back in elementary school. For the first time, he wondered how different his life might have been if