Wherever It Leads (45 page)

“T
urn here.” I point to my right and Fenton pilots his car onto my parents’ street. “I’ve never been so grateful for window tint before.”

Lining both sides of the street as we get closer are media trucks. Reporters stand on the sidewalks, along with some neighbors, old acquaintances, and other busybodies wanting to get a glimpse at Brady.

I send a quick text to my father and watch as almost immediately the garage door pulls open. “Dad opened the door. Just pull in the second bay.”

As the car slows, people try to peer in and see who we are. Brady is already home, but they apparently don’t know that.

I glance at Fenton to see his jaw pulsing. “Are you okay?” I ask.

“Yeah.”

“I don’t quite believe you.”

“I’m just nervous.”

“About what?” I laugh. “Seeing my family?”

“Uh, yeah,” he says, hitting the driveway. “This isn’t a normal ‘meeting the family’. I was your brother’s employer. Your brother went missing. Are you sure your father isn’t going to try to slice my throat?”

“I’m sure, babe.”

The car stops inside the garage and the door closes swiftly behind us. We wait to open the doors until it hits the ground.

“It’ll be fine,” I whisper before opening my door. I’m at the front of the car before Fenton gets out, his hands shoving in his pockets. “Relax.”

“I’m trying.”

I pull a hand out of his pocket and lace my fingers through his. We take the couple of steps into the house. My entire family is in the kitchen, crock pots and cookie sheets lining every available spot.

“Geez, Mom. You weren’t kidding,” I laugh, taking a quick inventory of the dishes. “Did you make everything you have a recipe for?”

“Just about,” she laughs, whirling around and coming towards me. She takes a stutter step when she sees Fenton, but recovers quickly, pulling me in for a quick hug. “How are you, sweetheart?”

“Good,” I say. “This is Fenton. Fent, this is my mother.”

Mom wipes her hands on her apron and starts to stick her hand out to shake, then tosses it in the air and brings him into a hug. He looks at me over her head, patting her awkwardly on the back.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you,” she says, her eyes brimming with tears. “I mean that. I want to thank you—”

“Ah, Mrs. Calloway—”

“Don’t you dare call me that!” she grins. “Call me Mom or Andrea or something but there will be no formalities. You are family.”

His boyish smile slips across his face as he looks at my mother. My heart bursts with happiness, all of my people together. Finally.

“Andrea,” Fenton tries again, this time with a smile, “it’s not necessary to thank me for anything.”

“The hell it isn’t!” my father booms, rounding the corner. He extends a hand and Fenton takes it. “We can never thank you enough for what you’ve done.”

“I . . .”

“A damn hero. That’s what you are,” my father boasts, seeing me for the first time. “Hi, Brynne Girl.”

“Hi, Daddy,” I blush.

“Your brother filled us in.” He looks back to Fenton. “And I couldn’t be more proud to welcome you into our family.”

“What?” Fenton’s eyes go wide and he looks at me.

“Daddy, we’re just seeing each other. We didn’t get married overnight!”

“And I know what kind of girl you are and I know what kind of man he is,” he says, his hand going around my mother’s waist in a move that now means more to me because I know what that feels like, what it means. “So I know there’s no way he’ll let you go and vice versa. It’s a matter of time.”

“Well, let’s have a summer wedding,” Presley exclaims, coming in from the back porch, Brady on her heels. “Because the summery dresses are prettier as bridesmaid gowns.”

“Will you shut up?” I laugh.

Brady grins a shit-eating grin. “How are you, Fenton?”

“Good, my man.” He shakes my brother’s hand, his posture relaxing tenfold. “How ya feel?”

“Not bad. Kinda sore where the AK hit me in the face, but otherwise, I’m all right. How are you? I heard about Mandla. I’m sorry. Truly.”

“Don’t be,” Fenton says, eyeing me out of the corner of his eye. “I think everything’s going to work out just fine. Just the way it should. You know, like we discussed.”

“With the rudo,” Brady grins, looking at me.

“I’m starving,” Presley whines to my mother, saving me from embarrassment, and heading into the kitchen. “Can I have a taste of that artichoke stuff we made earlier?”

“Absolutely, doll.”

We all trickle into the kitchen, my father behind me and Fenton and Brady taking up the rear. They’re talking like old friends, the ease in the room better than I ever imagined. I exchange a small smile with my mother who I know feels the same thing.

“The world works in mysterious ways, doesn’t it?” Mom whispers, handing a plate to Pres.

I watch my father, brother, and my love discuss some baseball statistic, filling Brady in on the homerun race. My cup overflows.

“It sure does, Mom. It sure does.”

Fenton

2 weeks later

T
he water ripples, swirls, trickles past the boat as we drift in a nameless harbor in a nameless country. I’m sure they have names. I’m even more sure Ivan, the captain, told me what they were . . . and I’m one-hundred percent confident that I don’t give a damn what they are.

The cool drink, some fruity concoction that tastes like rum and strawberries that Brynne proudly whipped up in the galley, melts in my hand. The sun warms my skin, an occasional bird calling out the only sound other than some pop band my girl has playing over the speakers. All in all, it’s perfect. And it would be perfect without the drink, without the bird, without the music. It would be beautiful without any of it, as long as Brynne was around.

She rearranged my life. I don’t know how, but that twinkle in her eye I saw the first time I saw her lock screen was a calling to my soul and I didn’t even know it. She changed everything, making things clear, bringing things full circle.

Someone told me once that love blurs things and I get that now. It makes things that were once important not so much anymore. It makes things that might’ve been on the back burner now the most important thing in the world. It reinvigorates you, puts passion back into your work. It refills your tank, pours fuel into your reserves and with it, you realize how many holes you had draining it.

She’s that for me.

Brynne Calloway is the love of my life.

She comes around the corner, a drink matching mine in her hand, a tiny pink bikini tied around her. It covers basically nothing and I know she’s wearing it just to rile me up. It works.

I’m getting better about it, but I can’t help it. I pull my sunglasses off my nose and peer up at her.

“How’s your drink?” she grins.

“Did you walk around the entire boat like that?”

“Like what?” She looks down at herself, running a finger dampened with the sweat from the glass down her stomach. “Like this?”

“Yes, like this.” I pull her onto my lap, catching her lips with mine. I remind her she’s mine, that regardless of how much she taunts me, plays with me, regardless of who she lets see her in a fucking string bikini, at the end of the day, and every hour in between, she’s my girl.

“I like it when you’re all pissy,” she giggles, bringing the glass to her lips. She toys with the straw with her tongue, making my cock harden.

“You’re going to get fucked.”

“What’s new?” she sighs, but ends it with a laugh. “How much more do I have to do to get you to lay me out right here again?”

“Well, being that lunch is just about to be served, that’s not happening. No one is seeing what’s left of you behind that scrap of fabric.”

She sweeps her lips against mine and settles back against me. We watch the boat float along the waves, the beach of the island just in sight.

“It’s been a great couple of weeks,” she breathes. “I’m so glad I came with you.”

“I wouldn’t have come without you.” I kiss her shoulder, her skin hot against my mouth. She smells all vanilla-y and I want to lick her, suck her, eat her like a fucking dessert. “And you’ll never come without me again.”

She laughs at my innuendo. “They always said you know when you know, you know?” she grins.

“What? You lost me.”

“People. They say that. That when you meet The One, you know it.”

“I knew it when I saw you.”

“Did you?”

I nod, kissing her shoulder again. “I didn’t know I knew it, but I did. I know it now.”

She laughs, the sound music to my ears. It always will be. It’s the sound of fulfilling my goal, of making her happy. It’s all I want, really, at the end of the day.

“I knew it, too. Maybe not that first day. That day I just wanted to fuck you.”

“Language, Brynne.”

“Yes, it’s language,” she winks. “But in Vegas, I knew. You were just so kind and smart and sexy.”

“You just want me for my body, don’t you?”

Her fingers dip down my chest and over my abs. I flex them under her touch, just so she sees how ripped I am. I didn’t do a hundred pushups this morning for nothing.

“No, not just for your body. But it doesn’t hurt.” She settles against me again, her hair draping over my shoulder. I draw little obscure pictures on her stomach and listen to her little breaths. “How long are we staying at sea?”

“As long as you want.”

“When do you have to go back to work? You said a couple of weeks when we left.”

I shrug. “I hired Duke full time at Nzou. He can handle most of the shit. I check in every morning while you’re asleep. So as long as nothing catastrophic happens, I could stay here forever.”

“I don’t know about forever.”

“I could stay wherever you are forever.”

“Now that I could do,” she grins. She locks her hand with mine and rests them on her stomach. We feel the anchor being pulled up and we will be starting our departure for the next island. “Where do we go now?”

“Such a loaded question.”

“I know,” she laughs nervously. “You can take that to mean either thing—where are we going in this boat or, you know, where are we going in life?”

I think about it before responding. I know what I want to say, to the last part of that specifically. I want to go into the rest of my life with her by my side. I can’t see it any other way. I won’t have it any other way.

I wait until she almost gets antsy before answering. “You got one thing right.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s where
we
are going in life.” I watch her face light up and it makes me stupidly happy. “Me and you, Brynne. Wherever one of us goes, the other has to go too.”

She kisses me gently, her hand playing in my hair. “I was hoping you’d say that.”

Her eyes shine almost as brightly as the smile on her face. I take a deep breath before tossing my next words into the world. “I’d like to try that.”

Her brows pull together. “Try what?”

“Try . . . forever.”

“Fent!” She scrambles into a sitting position, a hand clutching her heart. “Are you serious?”

I nod slowly. I hope this is a good reaction, but I can’t tell. My hand shakes slightly as I brush a strand of hair out of her face. “I’m completely serious. I know we haven’t known each other a long time and you’ve been pissed for a lot of what we have—”