Year 28 - J.L. Mac Page 0,58

I sniff away my tears and inhale deeply, cataloguing the scent of his body wash, bayou salt grass and the unique scent of our young love. With as much courage as I can come up with I bite my lip and pull away from him. Everything in me immediately laments the loss of his warmth, the feel of his touch, the promise of life together that is now changed.

“No, Sylas. You ditched me first, and you did it in secret,” I mumble weakly, nearly catatonic, then turn my back on him and leave our favorite place, promising myself I’ll never come back to the old magnolia on the hidden bayou.

I drive from one side of our parish to the other and back home again. By the time I put my car in park the sun has disappeared beyond the horizon leaving only purple, pink and orange phantoms lingering in the sky. I fully expect my momma to already be informed of our breakup. Audrey would have called right away if only to warn Momma. I climb the front steps of the house and tiredly drag myself inside. My eyes are puffy and swollen, my heart is aching, and I just blew my weekly allowance of gas money on driving around hoping the ache would disappear with every mile of blacktop my tires ate up. It didn’t work. My heart feels bulky, too big for my chest and heavy. The minute the screen door slaps closed against the doorframe, momma appears from around the corner leading to the kitchen wearing a concerned expression.

“Honey,” she clicks her tongue and her eyes crinkle at the edges.

“Momma, I don’t wanna talk,” I mutter tearfully. Her lips turn down at the edges and a wrinkle of worry deepens between her brows but to her credit she doesn’t chase me upstairs demanding I unload my grief on her. That would be typical of Momma. She doesn’t know how not to meddle.

In truth, a small voice in the back of my mind whispers soothingly that I won’t need Momma’s counsel, that this is a dumb hiccup and Sy and I will get over this somehow. If there is one certainty about my relationship with Sylas is that god knows we are stuck with each other. Will this work out? Can this be fixed? Can I still go to college with him off traipsing the world as a Marine? Will the military change him so much so that what we have will be gone completely? Will it make him mean? Will the lighthearted guy I know be turned into a cruel man? And why in the hell did he think it was wise to deceive me? Can I forgive this?

Questions I don’t have the answers to whirl through my mind as I slip into my bedroom and collapse into my bed. With my tear-streaked face pressed into my pillows I cry fully, uninhibited. I had to watch the road while I was driving and the idea of scrutinizing eyes watching me at intersections kept my tears to a minimum but now I let them free.

I was so sure of my future with Sylas. So terribly, painfully, naively sure of the life I saw laid out in my mind’s eye and this is definitely not what I saw. I saw us both going to school and getting degrees of our choice and landing a nice job and we’d marry and have a couple kids that would have his eyes and my hair and we’d take our children to the bayou for picnics and we would be stupid-in-love and live happily ever after.

How stupid of me.

Chapter 17

Raegan

“But you are coming back, right?”

“Yes, Bethany, of course.” I nod my head in front of the camera showing my face on the video call. “I’ll be back in, hmm,” I pause looking up in thought.

“A month… a year… never,” Sy mumbles around a sandwich as comes up behind me, showcasing washboard abs before bending at the waist to enter the frame of the video call. “Hey there,” he says in that rich, low voice of his. I roll my eyes. Bethany’s eyes bulge unnaturally and she visibly swallows hard, her neck working like a crane coaxing dinner down its gullet. I can’t say I am surprised at her reaction when Sylas is clad only in a flimsy pair of boxer shorts that do little to contain his manhood while he uses that voice and gifts her one of his rakish smirks. I shift