I smiled to myself, loving that I affected him in that way. “Right, let’s go.” The past few days of school weren’t actually as horrible as I thought they were going to be. Brady avoided me at all costs, and Lane told me that he didn’t act different to him on the field. Lane and I also made sure to keep our distance, because our relationship wasn’t something we were ready to have judged. I really hoped we were able to keep in that way.
***
“Do you believe in heaven?”
I threw another huge stone into ‘our’ lake, and looked over at my best friend. “Of course, don’t you?”
Lane shrugged which made me feel uneasy. Even though his dad didn’t go to church, Lane and his mom always met my father and me every Sunday at nine o’clock for mass.
“Sometimes, I don’t know what to think.”
Grabbing his hand, I pulled him up on the bank and pointed up to the sky. “Look around us. Look at everything that was created for us. How could you not believe?”
As he looked around at the crystal blue lake and the lush green grass, he started to smile. “You’re a good person, Jessa Mayes.” And then he looked over at me, with the most vibrant green eyes I’d ever seen. “Promise you’ll stay in my life forever. That you’ll always make me a good man.”
I couldn’t’ help the giggle that came out of my mouth, and soon my whole body was being hurled through the air, and before I even knew what was happening, we both went face first into the fishy, lake water. “Lane!” I yelled and only ended up with more water in my mouth.
We laughed and played in that lake the rest of the day, and just before he dropped me off at my back porch, I leaned over and whispered in his ear that I’d be with him forever.”
Chapter Ten
Despite having one of the best volleyball season to date during my high school career, I couldn’t get my mind off Lane. Having him back in my life was like a freaking freight train. One minute I didn’t think I was going to survive my senior year, but then it was like a light switched turned on inside of him and my old Lane was back. Well, a more handsome, grown-up, making-out version of my old best friend.
“Penny for your thought?” Kami peered over her shoulder with a questioning look, and I knew there was no way I was going to keep this a new ‘thing’ a secret very long. Even if we were in a very public locker room.
“Just thinking about what I’m going to wear to the game tonight,” I smiled and started to pull my knee-pads down around my calves.
Kami wasn’t buying it. She knew me all too well. “Right, well I have to tell you that you’re handling this break-up with Brady very well. Except, I’m sure you’ve heard the big rumor that your doing so well because of some other guy?” Her raised eyebrows were a sign she was on to me.
Rolling my eyes, I packed up my gear and threw my duffle bag over my shoulder. “Since when do you buy into gossip?” I asked and started to walk out of the locker room.
“Jessa Dawn Mayes, you get your perfect little ass over here and tell me everything that’s going on with you. Because the past few days I haven’t been able to figure it out.” Her hands on her hips and her pointed look did me in. There was no way I was going to get out of this.
“Fine, but you better not say a single word to anyone. Understand?” After she promised to give me her brand new coach purse that her father had just bought her if she did, I broke down at told her everything. “Say something.” I finally glanced over at her, and the smile that was spread across her face was the last thing I was planning on seeing.
“You guys are like what everyone else in the world hopes and prays they’ll find!” She squealed and embraced me in a tight hug. “Your soul mates.”
“I love you Kami, I really do.” I also knew that if there was one person who could keep my secret, it was that girl.
***
Later that night, Lane proved to be quite the football player. I knew he was built, and I knew he was always fast, but our team was damn lucky to have that guy back in town.
“You did great,” I said and smiled at him while he slid into the front of my truck.
“I do everything better when you’re involved.” He grinned back at me and leaned over to give me a quick kiss. I wasn’t sure if we should chance it in the school parking lot, and I knew he could feel my hesitation because soon he was pulling back and gave me a knowing smile. “It’s okay, I know what this could do to you here.”
I sighed and hated that we couldn’t be open about our new relationship, or whatever it was. “I’m sorry. Just give it some time, and we’ll figure everything out.”
We were both quiet when few of his teammates and my friends ran by my truck, hit it hard with their hands. “Are you guys heading out to the lake?”
Lane looked over at me to confirm if we were heading to the big kager that had gotten postponed. I shook my head quickly, reminding him that I didn’t need to get benched this far out in the season.
“I’ll be out there in a while. See you assholes soon.” Lane shifted uncomfortably in his seat, and I knew he thought I’d be upset with him. But the truth was, he really could go and I wouldn’t have been even an ounce angry.
Except, after his buddies walked off, he turned and looked over at me. “I’m not going; I would rather just stay home with you, if that’s okay? I thought maybe we could watch a movie?”
“You don’t have to do that, Lane. Go to the party, it’ll be fun.”
“Look at me.” His tone and expression was serious, and I knew I needed to be excited he wanted to be with me instead of partying. “I just got you back. There’s nowhere else I’m going to be than with you.”
Reaching over, I interlaced my hand with his and we made our way home.
Chapter Eleven
“The Shining? Really?”
Lane walked over to the DVD player and let out a huge laugh. “Do you remember the first time we watched this? You were so scared that I thought you were going to pee your pants when he pushed his face through the door.”
“Oh, be quiet. I’ve never peed my pants.”
Lane stopped and turned around quickly. “Oh really? I seem to remember a different story.”
Totally embarrassed, I hid my face in my hands and hated how much he knew about me. “Fine, but I was eight years old!” And then I remembered what he’d done for me, and how he’d saved me from probably earning a nickname in elementary school, one that inevitably involved something to do with pee pants.
“I’m not playing tether ball with you,” Lane gave me one of ‘those’ looks and started to walk away.
“Lane, come on. One game, and I’ll even go easy on you.”
I knew that would get his attention. If there was one thing about Lane, it was that he was one of the most competitive people I’d ever known. “Easy on me, huh? I’d beat you anytime of the day. Even in a stupid sport like tetherball. If you can call this thing a sport.”
“Yes!” I said excitedly and ran over to the lone pole with a very old, rugged ball attached to it.
Lane grumbled all the way over to our new game, and looked over his shoulders at all of his friends who were playing a game of tag football. “You owe me big, Mayes.”
I snickered when he grabbed the ball and gave it a good smack. We played a very intense game for the next few minutes, and soon it was down to a tie breaker. “Okay, I’m going to hit this ball as hard as I can, and then I’m going to make you wish you never suggested we pay this stupid game,”
“Bring it on,” I said with a huge smile and was ready for whatever came my way. Except, I wasn’t ready and soon Lane’s arm shot off like a rocket and the tetherball was flying too fast at my face that I thought I saw my life flash before me. Bending down quickly, I dodged the ball but that only meant that it was now wildly out of control.
“Oh, shit!” Lane
yelled, and just as he went to move out of the way, the ball hit him so hard in the face that it knocked him down to the ground, burying his face into the soft, wet dirt.
I couldn’t help it. I laughed, and laughed, and soon I could feel the urge to go to the bathroom. I’d never in my life peed my pants, but there was no stopping what was about to happen. It was just too dang funny.
“Jessa! You about knocked my head off. Whoa, what’s wrong?” I knew Lane could tell that something had happened, because if my squeezed together legs weren’t enough, the tears rolling down my cheeks were. “What happened?”
When he looked down and noticed what had happened, he had a panicked look cross his face. “Come over here.” Pulling on my arm, I found us both standing at a little puddle of water, just under our merry-go-round. “Just go with me, okay? It’s going to be fine.”
Lane grabbed me and threw us both on the ground, rolling us around in the wet sand and small mud puddle. Soon, both of our shirts and pants were covered with mud, and my oopps was now covered. “There,” he said and stood us both up.
At our school is was majorly against to rules to play in any kind of water, and we both got calls home that day after lunch. But he’d done the nicest thing for me, and at that moment, I knew that Lane Rhyer would always be one of the greatest things in my life.
“You were always so good to me. Well, except when I showed you my boobs. I thought you hated them.”
Lane pushed play on our movie and grabbed a huge bowl of popcorn, placing it on the coffee table in front of us. “You know that’s ridiculous. That was the best moment of my life, like I said.”
I laughed and grabbed a handful of popcorn. “Well, you sure showed it in a funny way.”
Lane turned toward me and looked a bit more serious. “I guess I could see them again, and try to react a little better this time?”
Before I could reply with some witty comment, his look told me he was dead serious. “Okay,” I said with my most sure voice, and knew I wanted things with Lane that I had never felt with anyone else. Especially with Brady. Lifting up my t-shirt slowly, I reached behind my back and unclasped my bra. When the cool air hit my nipples, Lane’s expression almost mirrored that of when the first time I did the same thing.
“Gorgeous,” he whispered and pulled me over to his lap. Our mouth met with such force that it felt like my chest was going to explode. His rough stubble on his face brushed against my skin, but it only made me want more.
Lane broke our kiss and I was about to pull my shirt over my head when he touched my hands and shook his head slowly. “Jessa, I wasn’t sure what to expect when I moved back here. I’m not going to lie when I say that I wasn’t excited to see you again, or that maybe, just maybe we’d be able to work out what’d happened the past four years, but I never expected us to go all the way. I know how much saving yourself until your married means to you. I don’t want to jeopardize that.”
My heart strings were pulled so tight at that moment. The way he was looking at me, the sweet words he was saying, and the fact that I could tell he was one-hundred percent truthful did crazy things to my mind. “I love you,” I said so quietly that I wasn’t sure if he’d even heard me. And then I wondered what the hell I was doing? Why would I just blurt those three words out to him?
Instead of running for the hills and calling it quits, Lane smiled so brightly and brought my lips back to his that I wasn’t really sure what was going on. “I love you, so much. You have no idea how this makes me feel.”
We didn’t have sex that night, or any for the next nine months while living in the same house. For some miraculous reason, we were able to keep our love a secret from our parents, or so we thought, until it was time to graduate. When we finally sat our parents down in the kitchen to tell them our plan of attending K-State together that next fall, they already knew why. They’d known for months that we were secretly an item, but they also knew that they hadn’t seen either one of us happier than we were when we were together. Lane may have left my life for four years, but the minute I had him back, it was like he’d been there all along. It was like I’d brought him back home.
The End
Thank you so much for taking the time to read Bringing You Back. This was a sweet and simple story that I wanted to write about the power of young love. I hope you enjoyed it! Please check out my other books on Amazon now.
Blackhill Ranch
Those Red High Heels
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Katherine May Author
@Ktmaybooks
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