“Yes,” I murmured. When I had first agreed to the interview, I hadn’t envisioned having to relive some of the darkest times of Brayden’s and my relationship. It was even harder knowing that it would be documented in a magazine for everyone to read the sordid details. I guess in the end, our breakup didn’t come from anything salacious like I caught him having an orgy. To some it might not even seem like that big of a deal. But for me, it was life altering.
“Lily?” Giovanni asked.
I jumped. “Yes?”
He smiled. “From those early days together, what is the most romantic thing Brayden did for you that truly cemented your feelings for him?”
Glancing over at Brayden, I found that he was giving me a concerned look. I knew he wasn’t thrilled about having to dig up the past either. I smiled reassuringly at him. “I know some people will think that this was a planned response, but the truth is the most romantic thing he ever did for me was write me a song.”
“Ah,” Giovanni replied, scribbling something down. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe that song was the first of Runaway Train’s hits.”
“You are right. It was the first song of ours to ever be played on the radio. Our first Billboard hit,” Brayden replied.
Giovanni smiled. “And it’s all because of Lily.”
Bobbing his head, Brayden said, “You got that right.”
“So where did you first play it for her?”
Brayden glanced over at me with a sheepish grin. “I guess you could say it was a very acoustic performance.”
LILY
THE PAST
I bolted upright in my bed out of a dead sleep. Just when I thought I had been imagining things, something scratched against my window, and it wasn’t a branch caused by the wind. With my heart beating wildly in my chest, I threw back the covers, poised to run down the hall to my parents’ bedroom for help. But then a hushed voice outside stopped me.
Brayden’s voice.
For a minute, I thought I might just be imagining things. After our first date last Friday night, we had been pretty much inseparable for the next few days, so it made sense I would think I was hearing his voice. Not to mention the fact, that he had taken me to the preseason bonfire at the school earlier tonight.
Just when I had discredited it as my imagination working overtime, I heard, “Lily!”
Sprinting over to the window, I peered out. He stood on the lawn, his guitar slung over his back. “What in the…?” I muttered, as he beckoned me with his hand. Glancing over my shoulder, I groaned as I read the time on the digital clock. It was three in the morning.
My curfew was eleven o’clock during the week, and I was pretty sure that didn’t include a lawn rendezvous in the middle of the night. After hurrying out of my bedroom, I then crept down the hall, silently willing the creaky, old floorboards not to rat me out. Once I got to the backdoor, I entered the code for the alarm before heading outside. The moment I opened the door, the gentle strings of guitar music floated back to me. I ran across the steps of the deck and peered down at Brayden where he stood strumming his guitar.
“What are you doing?” I hissed.
A beaming smile lit up his face. “I just wrote a song.”
“Um, that’s wonderful, but couldn’t you have waited until the morning to tell me?”
“It is the morning.”
“I meant like when I wasn’t asleep.”
Brayden shook his head. “After I dropped you off tonight, I couldn’t go to sleep. My mind kept spinning and spinning, and then I would hear this melody in my head. And when I finally got up and started writing down the words, it wouldn’t stop. It felt like I was on a roller coaster or something. Then when I finished, I just had to come over here and tell you.”
Glancing over my shoulder, I nibbled anxiously on my bottom lip. “That’s really cool, Brayden, but you’re going to get me in trouble.”
“I don’t care,” he replied, with a chuckle.
My mouth dropped open in shock at his attitude. “Well, I do! And you should too. If I get grounded, I won’t be seeing you until after graduation.”
Taking a step forward, Brayden said, “Don’t you get it, Lily? I’ve never written anything in my entire life. Hell, I could barely string the right sentences together to write the essays for my English classes.” He stared determinedly up at me. “But then you came into my life just when everything had gone to shit, and I thought I could never be happy again without football. But I’m fucking happier than I’ve ever been. And when you chose me, it changed everything.”
“Oh Brayden,” I murmured, my heartbeat accelerating wildly at his words. For a moment, I had to resist the urge to pinch myself. Could it truly be possible a handsome guy with a beautiful heart was on my lawn in the middle of the night to sing a song he wrote just for me? Surely, I would wake up in a minute and find out it had all been just a dream.
“Want me to sing it for you?”
At that point, I didn’t care if my parents caught me and grounded me for the rest of my natural born life. I needed desperately to be serenaded. “Oh yes, please.”
Brayden grinned. His talented fingers began working over the strings of the guitar. A melancholy melody floated up to me, one I knew came straight from Brayden’s previous suffering.
Disappointments twisted and crippled me with rage.
Darkness held me bound like a prisoner in a cage.
Sadness wrecked me and brought me to my knees.
Suffering had me begging “Oh lord, help me please."
There was no reason to go on
Until there was you
Winking up at me, Brayden switched chords, and the sound of the sound changed to one more hopeful.
You drove away all the dark clouds with your smile.
You made life once again seem worthwhile.
You gave me a reason to go on.
A purpose to escape the twilight for the dawn.
Your love has the power to transcend and transform.
You’re my Lily of the Valley, my savior from the storm.
Nothing really mattered in my life until there was you
When he finished strumming the last chords, I couldn’t hold myself back any longer. I raced over to the deck gate. I flung it open and pounded down the stairs. The moment my bare feet hit the grass, I began to run. I couldn’t wait to get to him. I had to touch him to know that he was really real. Tears blinded my eyes as I threw myself into his arms.
His guitar screeched between us. He chuckled against my ear. “I guess that means you like it.
“Oh my God, I love it!” I cried, before leaning back so I could smother his face with kisses.
“I’m glad to hear it,” he murmured, in between me kissing him.
“This is the most romantic thing a guy has ever done for me,” I gushed.
He grinned. “Now you’re going to make it hard for me to ever top this.”
I laughed. “I don’t know how you could.” Tilting my head at him, I asked, “Did I really do all those things like you wrote in the song?”
“You sure as hell did, babe. Every. Single. Word.”
When I reached to pinch his arm, he gave me a funny look. “What was that for?”
“I wanted to make sure you were real.”
“Why don’t you kiss me again and see just how real I am?”
“Okay,” I murmured. Just as I leaned in to bring my lips to his, the flood-lights came on all around the house. With a squeal, I jumped away from Brayden and glanced up at the deck. My dad stared down at us with his arms crossed over his chest. My mother stood behind him. While she wanted to look stern, I could see she was trying hard not to smile.
Brayden threw up one of his hands to my parents. “Good evening, Mr. and Mrs. Gregson.”
My dad grunted. “All right, the shows over. Lily, get your ass up here and get in bed. Brayden, get your ass to your own home and go to bed.”
“I’m sorry for waking you up, Mr. Gregson
. I didn’t mean to cause any problems by coming over here. Lily didn’t know I was coming, so please don’t punish her for my mistake,” Brayden pleaded.
My dad huffed out a breath. “I’ll take that into consideration.”
“Thank you, sir.” He started backing away from me, and then he stopped. In a flash, he was back at my side to plant a chaste kiss on my lips. “Goodnight, Lily.”
“Goodnight,” I called, as he started running around the side of the house. Ducking my head, I walked over to the stairs. I went up them a lot slower than I had come down them. When I got to the top, I dared to peek at my parents.
With his arms still crossed firmly over his chest, my dad’s jaw clenched and unclenched. “I’m sorry, Daddy. He just wanted to sing me a song he wrote. I promise we weren’t doing anything wrong.”
“Excuse me that I might misinterpret the situation after seeing you two with your hands all over each other.”
“Paul,” my mother cautioned.
“What?” he demanded.
“They didn’t have their hands all over each other. They were just hugging.”
His brows shot up. “Whose side are you on, Marie?”
She smiled. “I’m not taking sides. I’m just stating facts.”
He muttered something under his breath before he eyed me contemptuously. “I should ground you for this. Not only were you out past your curfew, but your boyfriend woke me up out of a dead sleep.”
“I’m sorry, Daddy,” I said again.
“Fine then. Get in the house.”
“Yes, sir.”
When I started past him, he reached out for my arm. “You could smooth things over by giving me a goodnight kiss,” he said, with a wink.
I grinned and reached up to kiss the salt and pepper stubble on his cheek. “Goodnight, Daddy. Goodnight, Mama.”
My mother reached in to kiss my cheek. “Goodnight, sweetheart. Your Brayden sure does have a romantic side, doesn’t he?”
Before I could reply, my father groaned. “You’re killing me here, Marie. Don’t encourage her.”
She waved her hand dismissively at him. “I seem to remember someone else being awfully romantic when he was Brayden’s age.”
“Hey, I’m still romantic,” he argued.
“Of course you are.”
As my parents bantered flirtatiously at each other, I headed back into the house. I didn’t know how I was going to go to sleep. I was still so wound up. Brayden had written a song just for me. He’d come to my house in the middle of the night because he had to sing it to me. It still was unbelievable.
Until There Was You—the song that started it all for the two of us.
LILY
PRESENT DAY
“How impressive that you wrote your first song when you were just sixteen,” Giovanni remarked.
Brayden nodded. “Looking back, it’s not the strongest one I’ve written musically or lyrically, but I wouldn’t change a thing about it. The song represents such a time of rebirth in my life.”
With a smile, I said, “I like it just the way it is.”
Brayden chuckled. “I’m sure you do since it’s singing your praises.”
“You got that right.”
Giovanni grinned at the two of us. “So that was the most romantic thing Brayden did. I’m curious to find out what was the most romantic thing Lily ever did.”
Tilting my head, I replied, “Hmm, I’m interested to hear his answer for this one, too.”
“I’m surprised you even have to ask. I would think it would be a given.”
“Being the mother of your three children?”
He laughed. “Okay, I guess you need to think a little more superficially than our kids.”
“Is it sitting at home in our garage with its own custom-made covering, and no one is allowed to get too close to it?"
“Bingo!” Brayden replied, his eyes wide with amusement.
“Hmm, let me guess? It’s a car,” Giovanni said.
Brayden winked at me. “It isn’t just a car. You can’t call a ‘68 Challenger just a car. It was my pride and joy until Lily came along, but she managed to make it special, too.”
Giovanni’s brows creased in confusion. “Is that where the most romantic thing comes in?”
Brayden held up a hand. “Hang on. To understand why the Challenger is the most romantic thing, we have to give you a little backstory with the car and with us.”
Feeling warmth flood my cheeks, I said, “I don’t know how much I can actually say about us and your car that is appropriate.”
“While you’re giving him the just the basics of the story, I’ll be remembering all the good details…or maybe I should say the naughty details?”
“You’re impossible,” I muttered.
Brayden merely grinned. “But you love me.”
“Yeah, I do.”
LILY
THE PAST
Friday night after the last football game of the season found me in the back seat of Brayden’s car. All four windows were fogged up from the heavy breathing of our exertions. The top to my cheerleading uniform lay crumpled in the floorboard along with Brayden’s shirt. The rough denim of his jeans chafed against my thighs as his hips worked against mine. The friction caused more and more moisture to grow between my legs.
It had been two months since he had serenaded me in the middle of the night. We’d been an exclusive couple ever since. Any free time I had after school and work was spent with him. If I wasn’t with him, I was on the phone with him. Friday nights I usually went solo to cheer at the football games while Brayden went to Atlanta to play with his band. I’d usually join him on Saturday nights. There was nothing I loved more than to listen to him sing. Of course, I loved it the most when we were alone, and he would sing into my ear.
That’s what had originally led to tonight’s make-out session. Something about his voice did things to me, made me squirm with an ache between my legs. After kissing in the front seat for a few minutes, Brayden had climbed over the backseat and beckoned me to join him. While we might have moved fast with our initial attraction and becoming a couple, we hadn’t gone full speed with the sex stuff. I was glad that Brayden was being patient with me and taking things slow. At the same time, the more I felt for him, the more I wanted to eventually give him my virginity.
As his hand drew down one of the straps of my bra, he jerked his lips from mine. His warm brown eyes questioned if I was okay with this next step. I bobbed my head, causing a lazy smile to drag across his lips. One of his hands delved beneath me to find the clasp of my sports bra. Grunting, his fingers worked to unhook it. After a few minutes, he blew out a breath of frustration. “Dammit, I can’t do it.”
I giggled. “Big bad Brayden can’t get a little bra undone,” I teased.
“I think they’re really made to keep guys out.”
“Here. Let me.” Pushing him off me, I sat up. As my arms reached around my back, I caught Brayden’s intense gaze. Even though we were in the dark, I couldn’t help feeling a little shy. I’d never let a guy see my breasts before. I’d never really wanted to until Brayden. He had been so good not to pressure me into anything. Although he was dying to lose his virginity, he wanted me to be ready. While I wanted everything with him, I was still nervous. Once the clasp came free, I hesitated, keeping the loose fabric of the bra pressed against my chest.
Brayden’s hand came to tenderly cup my cheek. “Baby, if this is too fast, we’ll stop.”
With a shake of my head, I slowly slid the bra down to my lap. “God, you’re beautiful,” he said, before the hand that had cupped my cheek came to my bare breast. As he cupped and kneaded it, his lips found mine. Once again he pushed me back down onto the leather seat. He feathered kisses down my chin and neck, which caused me to shiver.
When his lips closed over my nipple, I gasped. His head jerked up in alarm. I grinned down at him. “It’s okay. It felt good.”
“Let me see if I can make it even better,” he
replied.
This time his tongue flicked back and forth across my hardened nipple, teasing it and me. The ache between my legs began to grow. He sucked at it again before pulling away to blow air across the tip. “Mmm, very good,” I murmured.
As he moved to the next breast, I opened my legs wider, letting him ease deeper between them. We both moaned when he began to rub the hardened bulge in his jeans against my center. Sensing I needed more, one of Brayden’s hands slid underneath my cheerleading skirt. When his fingers grazed against the cheerleading bloomers I wore over my panties, my hips bucked against him. “Please, Brayden,” I said, breathlessly.
He released my nipple with a pop. “You okay with under?”
We’d been playing the over the shirt and panties feel up the last few times we had made out. But I knew I was ready for more. I wanted him to make me come with his fingers the same way I had learned to. His hand slid beneath the elastic band of my bloomers. I sucked in a breath at the feel of his hand cupping me. As he stroked me, I arched my hips in time. Although it felt good, it still wasn’t enough.
I tugged at the strands of his dark hair. As if he knew what I wanted, Brayden pushed one finger inside me. “Mmm,” I murmured, closing my eyes to the sensation. After swirling one finger inside to tease and test me, Brayden slipped in another. Once again, my hips rose involuntarily.
“Oh, Lily, you feel so fucking good,” Brayden groaned against my neck. He continued rubbing his erection against my thigh as he pumped his fingers furiously in and out of me. As I started to climb higher and higher, I grabbed his shoulders, my fingers molding into the flesh. Although I was embarrassed, I couldn’t stop the pants and noises I was making—it felt too good. When his thumb pressed against my clit, I cried out, convulsing against his fingers. I clung even tighter to him as the waves rolled through me.
When I could breathe normally again, Brayden had removed his hand from my panties. Hazily, I watched as he slid his fingers into his mouth. “Mmm, baby, you taste good. I can’t wait to put my tongue inside you.”