Eventually, I escaped, only making it as far as my bedroom. I walked over to my bookshelf and glanced at my team photos and my red varsity letter adorned with golden pins. I felt like Ebenezer Scrooge from The Christmas Carol, glimpsing at life’s artifacts from inside a foggy dream. I picked up a picture from prom night, the one where the girls and I lined up on the bridge in my backyard, and I realized that I was never going back to Riverside. It didn’t matter if Austin went to another school because I didn’t want to be known as that girl. I thought back to the morning when I locked my keys in the car or the day when Austin spread those lies about me, and at the time, I thought nothing could be worse. But this was much worse, because everyone would find out what happened, and it would be a long time before anyone would forget.
Shortly, a knock came at the door. “I brought you something to eat,” my mother said as she entered with a plate of pasta salad and tall glass of ice water. She placed the food on my desk, and I offered a listless thanks.
She took a seat on my bed, patting the spot next to her. “I was hoping we could talk.”
“I’m fine, Mom,” I said, still standing.
She continued, “I know we’re not that close anymore, and you tend to confide in your father more than you do in me. But I wanted you to know that—as a woman—I understand how you feel.”
“How could you possibly know how I feel!” I contradicted, and then I let out the words that I had kept inside for weeks. “I feel dirty. And ruined. Because I was saving myself for marriage, and he took that away from me. You could never understand what I’m going through, Mom, so don’t come in here and think you can talk to me and make it all better.”
I expected her to leave; but instead, she remained. “Then I won’t talk. I’ll just listen.”
“You really want to hear this, Mom?” I questioned as I sat next to her. “Most of the time, I feel angry because I lost everything, and I can never ever have it back. I made a choice—one that few girls make, but in the end, it really doesn’t matter.”
“Yes, it does,” my mother said genuinely, “because you’re still pure in God’s eyes.” She reached over and held my hand. “And it matters to Him.”
Her words lifted some of “the yuck” from inside me, and she gathered me into a hug. I remained in my mother’s arm for longer than I could remember. Neither one of us pulled back as the tears slipped from my eyes.
“Oh, hi,” my mother said abruptly. I expected to hear the voice of my father next.
“Uh, hello, Mrs. Preston,” he returned, and I held on tighter. I wasn’t prepared to face him. I was riding an emotional rollercoaster, climbing with anger and falling with tears. “May I talk with Chloe?” he asked tenaciously.
“Sure,” my mother said, rising slowly. I reached for a pillow, hugging it for comfort. “Can I get you something to eat or drink?”
“No, thanks. I just had dinner.”
“Well, I should get going,” my mother returned, her voice travelling across the room “I have a sink full of dishes waiting for me.”
“Okay, see you later,” he said to my mother, and then he took her spot on the bed. “You should try to eat something.”
I obliged quickly, getting up and chucking my pillow across the room. I sat down at my desk and pushed pasta around the plate like a defiant two-year-old. “What do you want, Rob?” I asked coldly.
“I just wanted to see how things went earlier.”
“It went great. It was the highlight of my life.”
“Don’t act this way.”
“What way?”
“Like a—” He censored himself.
I turned toward him, looking at him for the first time in weeks, and I wish it didn’t hurt so much to see his face. “Like a what, Rob?”
“Listen, I didn’t come here to fight with you.”
“Then maybe you should just leave,” I suggested.
He sounded hurt. “I thought we promised to be friends.”
I held up my hand, the one with the ring on it. “Yeah, well, we made lots of promises that we’ll never keep.” I pulled at the ring, but I couldn’t get it past my knuckle. The damn Florida humidity made my fingers swell to epic proportions, so I eyed the ice water and dunked my fingers into the glass. Quickly, he was at my side; his hand grabbed my wrist and he yanked my fingers out of the icy water.
“You left me!” he pelted.
“You made it worse!”
He found a spot against the wall by my desk and folded his arms across his chest. “I wanted to help you. I just didn’t know what to do.”
I pushed out a deep breath, trying to avoid an all-out emotional explosion. I wanted to scream at the top of my lungs, yell so loud that my throat would burn afterward; but instead, I spoke calmly. “Just forget about it…forget about everything.”
“Everything, huh?” His voice faltered, and I watched him swipe a tear with the back of his hand. “So we’re just nothing now?”
“Yeah, I guess so.” I said, without crying. I left all my tears for him down at the river.
“This is your decision, Chloe.”
I was flabbergasted; the thought of him with Kendra fueled my next response. “Me? You made that decision.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Don’t play games with me, Rob?”
“Games?” he repeated. “You went to Kentucky without even telling me.”
“I had my reasons,” I said plainly.
“Yeah, and hurting me must have been one of them!” He left his post at the wall and started pacing around my room.
My eyes followed him, back and forth. “Well, you didn’t look like you were hurting last night…at your little pool party.”
“Last night? Why? What was I doing? Trying to act normal?” He paused. “When you left, I was stuck here. And I got questions from everyone. My mom would sit on the edge of my bed and ask me what happened, and even Riley looked at me like maybe I had done something wrong. Everyone thought you left because of me. Did you ever think about that? And I tried to be there for you, but I didn’t know what to say, and I still wonder if I’ll ever say the right thing to you again.”
“Listen, I saw her,” I blurted out.
“Who?”
“Kendra.”
“Yeah, so?”
“You went back to her, didn’t you?”
“No, of course not!” he exclaimed ardently. “Tom and Katie broke up a week ago, and Kendra and Tom are both going to school in Boston. He brought her.”
“Oh,” I murmured, and the world spun around so I could view it from a different perspective.
After a moment, he asked, “Why? Were you coming to see me last night?”
“Yeah.” I bit down on my lip. “I just wanted to say hi.”
“Hi,” he said softly. “So, did you run up at your grandmother’s house?”
“Yeah, it’s what I do when I’m upset.”
“I know,” he said gently and crossed my room. He tilted my blinds and looked into my backyard. “It turned out to be a nice day. Your dad’s outside skimming the leaves off the top of the pool, and you can tell Brad is giving him a hard time about something.”
I answered his musings. “Yeah, probably about the fact that we don’t have a screened-in pool, because if we did, then no one would have to skim off the ever-present layer of leaves.”
“That’s because you know the two of them so well.” He sat down on the window seat. “But do you ever watch two strangers and try to guess what they’re saying?”
“You mean, read their body language and facial expressions?”
He nodded, and as we talked, it started to feel easier, less strained. I wanted him to stay, so I got up and crossed the room slowly. I sat down across from him on the bench, but when our eyes met, they soon traveled elsewhere in the room.
“What would people say about us…if they saw us right now?” he asked.
“That we’re friends…probably.”
“And what
would we be discussing?”
“Books,” I paused, lifting my eyes up to his chest, reading Georgetown on his light grey T-shirt, and then I stared at my hands. “By the way, I’ll probably finish Steinbeck’s literary career by the end of the summer.”
“Really?” he returned.
I nodded.
“Any recommendations?”
I got up, removing two books from the shelf, and handed them to him. We chatted about books for a while, and then the conversation turned toward running and biking. We discussed our separate training regimens: he wanted to complete a half-Ironman in the fall, and I told him I was training for a marathon. We discussed music and movies, but when we reached a lull in the conversation, he glanced at the clock. “It’s getting late. I should probably get going.”
I nodded, and he stood up, placing a tentative kiss on my forehead. It was soft and warm, and somewhat familiar. It brought me back to a night in late April. It was the night I asked him to prom and the night I told him why we had never kissed. It was a lifetime ago when I was a different girl, and I knew then that the kiss belonged in my past, and those feelings were gone, completely lost with my innocence.
“Rob?”
He stood in my doorway. “Yeah?”
“I’m sorry about everything.”
“Yeah, me too, Chlo. Me too.”
After he left, I crossed the room and turned off the lights, returning to the window seat where we had talked for hours. The back porch light cast a dim glow around the pool area, and I watched him walk into view. He did not glance up at my window. He did not offer a wave or a smile. But still, my finger travelled across the warm glass, following him into the encroaching darkness.
-33-
A New Beginning
The case against Austin Walker consumed most of my summer, but by the end of it, he was charged with physical assault with the intent to do harm for what happened on the trail. The rape, however, was just his word against mine, and since there was no evidence to link him to the crime, he got away with it. Well, sort of. He ended up going back to Texas, taking Riverside’s chance of a repeat state championship with him.
As for me, I decided against returning to Riverside. I needed a fresh start—a genuine tabula rasa, and I transferred to Central High where Cynthia Westwood’s father was the principal. At least, there I’d have one friend, and one “C” was better than none.
With days separating summer from the start of another school year, I spent my evenings on the back porch with a book and a journal on my lap. My father usually slipped out with me, milling around the backyard. He had cancelled his speaking engagements and was using his time off to complete my mother’s honey-do list. My mother cut back on her hours at the library, and Brad hung around the house most evenings—and even his girlfriend Lisa joined us for family fun nights.
A puzzle had taken up permanent residence on the dining room table, since we were still sorting the infinite shades of blue that made up the sky. Some nights we opted for Monopoly; other times it was Scrabble. For years, the puzzles and games had been neatly stacked in the closet, collecting dust, but now, our family was on constant game-night mode.
My friends came back into my life slowly. Callie was first, since of the three of them, she was the most removed from the situation. Caitlyn felt exceedingly guilty, since if it weren’t for her, then Austin wouldn’t have been there in the first place. Then there was Courtney, whose house would always remind me of that night.
But in the end, Courtney was the most dedicated to me, visiting me every day, and as I started reading Steinbeck’s The Winter of Our Discontent, I heard the familiar squeak of the gate’s hinges. I lifted my head and smiled as Courtney took the seat next to me on the wicker bench. “I head back to the beach in the morning.”
I nodded and forced up a corner of my mouth.
Her voice grew softer, like when we were telling secrets in the back of the classroom. “Are you going to be okay without me?”
“Yeah,” I said quietly, knowing Courtney had helped me through some rough moments. I thought back to a few weeks ago when she removed a duct-taped shoebox from my closet and toted it through the woods. She lit a fervent blaze in her fireplace. And on a hot July night, we offered my painful past to the zealous fire. Then she sat beside me on the couch, and together, we watched the cackling blaze lick at the shoebox, eating away at the vile memories, until all that remained of my past were a pile of feathery ashes.
She put her hand on top of mine. “I’ll call you every day.”
“I know.” I lifted my eyes and found hers. “You’ve been a great friend.”
“You would have done the same for me.” I nodded, and she continued, “And I think you should come to the beach this week. It would be really good for you.”
“I’ll think about it,” I returned as my father sat down in a chair on my left. “Phew, I’m beat,” he said, wiping his brow.
“Why don’t you hire a pool guy, Mr. Preston?”
My father gave his standard response: “Because it costs money.”
I rolled my eyes and noticed a broad oak leaf floating toward the pool, then another, and another. There was a warm breeze, and my eyes watched the dance of more falling leaves like they were the fireworks on the Fourth of July. I did not ooh. I did not ah. Instead, I smiled inwardly at the senselessness of my father’s nightly chore. It was like making a bed that would be unmade later that night or polishing silver that would only tarnish over time.
Now, my life was like a list of chores, and each day was essentially the same; consequently, my parents knew my exact whereabouts at all times. Every morning, I went for a run, but never alone and never along the trail; instead, I took a left, weaving safely through my neighborhood, and sometimes, if I had the energy, into the next. In the afternoon, someone would lure me from the house with a movie, or a trip to the mall, or a stroll through a museum. The goal was always the same: to keep me busy. And each night, I returned home to the same end; following dinner and family time, I retreated to the porch, trying to waste the last few hours before bedtime.
As I sat on the porch, I sighed at the approaching night, knowing that my unpleasant past would seek me in my sleep, and in the background, beyond my thoughts, I heard my father’s low chuckle and Courtney’s soft giggle. Soon, my friend would leave for an evening of frivolous possibilities, and my father would retreat to his office to work on his latest manuscript. And I would remain, all alone, with only the written word to keep me company.
Then out of the corner of my eye, I noticed him coming through the woods. I had seen him less than a dozen times in the last month: every Sunday at church, a neighborhood barbecue, two trips to the movies with Courtney, a chance meeting at the mall, and a few visits on the back porch.
He opened the gate, and my eyes remained on him. His tight-fitting T-shirt evidenced a summer of fervent exercise. His shoulders seemed broader, and his arms seemed stronger; his body was much different from when it last held me. I thought back to our final goodbye, that last hug before the bike trip, but sadly, I couldn’t recall how it felt to be in his arms anymore; I could only remember how awful it was to be with Austin.
Slowly, he entered my backyard, and I noticed his walk, confident and fluid, completely unchanged. He received an immediate hello from my father, and Courtney rose to her feet and hugged him like he had been off at college for months. I lifted my eyes slowly and tried to smile. Yet my greeting went unnoticed, and I dropped my eyes to my lap, where my book and journal waited patiently for me.
He took the vacant chair on Courtney’s right and then leaned forward, placing Cannery Row on the table. My eyes remained on the book. Maybe I should have asked him if he liked the novel or if he needed another one from my collection; but instead, I said nothing.
“Rob, you should come to the beach this week,” Courtney decided. “And I asked Chloe to come too.”
“Yeah, what did she say?” he asked.
?
??She said, ‘I’ll think about it’”
“Then I wouldn’t hold my breath.”
I looked up at him, annoyed. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“What do you think it means?”
“I don’t know. That’s why I asked you.”
“Asked me what?”
I let out an exasperated huff. “Are you trying to irritate me?”
“Maybe?” He smiled.
“Some friend you are!” It was just a simple reply, but for some reason, it resonated in my head. The last few weeks had been enough to mend our broken friendship, yet nothing more.
He ran his fingers through his hair. “Sorry, Chlo.”
“Well, listen, I should get back inside,” my father said, his hand tapping my forearm lightly. “I have to work on my book.”
“What’s the title?” Rob asked.
“Preston’s Principles for the—” He paused to create a moment of suspense, and I filled in the blank. “College Student.”
My father offered a synopsis, “Yep, it’s a guide to making sound economic decisions during those first four years away from home.”
“I’m thinking it’ll take five,” Courtney added.
“Yeah, if you’re lucky,” Rob retorted.
My father departed as the banter ensued, and Courtney decided, “Well, I better get home and start packing.” She turned and held me tightly before she slipped into the woods; then Rob and I were completely alone.
“By the way,” he said, gesturing at the table. “Thanks for lending me the book.”
“Oh, you’re welcome,” I said plainly, searching for more words, but the moment passed, and we entered into a period of uncomfortable silence.
Rob ended it. “Do you have any plans for tonight?”
I shrugged a shoulder. “I was just going to read…maybe write.”
“Yeah, I get it. You just want to be alone?”
I pressed my lips together and shook my head.
He tilted his head toward the woods. “Do you want to hang out at my house?”
I shook my head again.
“You want to stay here then?”
Again I shook my head.
“You want to give me a hint?”
I let out a happy breath, almost a laugh, and nodded.
“You know I’m terrible at Charades, so can you use some words, Chlo?”
I shook my head one last time, stood up, and took my journal with me—not wanting my emotions to fall into the wrong hands. Then I curled my finger at him; and he rose from the chair and followed me into the woods.
“I feel like Lewis and Clark following Sacajawea into the unknown,” Rob declared.
I turned and offer a scrunched-up face.
“I’m surprised Disney hasn’t done a movie on her yet. I mean, they did Pocahontas and stretched that into a love story, but we all know it wasn’t. They couldn’t even speak the same language. And I think talking is important, don’t you?” He waited. “Obviously not, because you’re still ignoring me.”
I suppressed a laugh, and soon, he sidled up next to me. “So, if it’s not my house or your house, then where are we going?” I said nothing, figuring he probably knew the answer as we walked along the familiar path. When we reached our destination, I placed a palm on the base of the old oak tree.
“Our house,” he said with a smile. “It’s been a while, huh?”
“Four months,” I said, and then added, “to the day.”
He looked down at the ground. “Yeah, I should’ve known that.”
“It’s okay,” I returned as I started climbing up the tree. He followed me, and together, we settled into the quiet corner of the tree house. True, it had been four months since we ventured into our childhood home, the last time being the night of our first kiss, and like so many memories of our relationship, the months felt more like years.
He started the conversation, “It sure is hot up here.”
“Yeah, but it didn’t seem to bother us when we were kids.”
“That’s because kids don’t mind a little sweat.”
“Or dirt,” I shot back.
He tousled my curls. “Or knots in their hair.”
We both laughed, which felt nice, but the brief laughter was replaced by silence again.
“So,” I began, “you want to go somewhere else?”
“Nah, I like it up here.”
I drew my knees into my chest. “Yeah, me too.”
“Everything’s better up here.”
“Yeah,” I agreed. “It’s just us...”
“And our past,” he finished. “Some of the best moments of my life happened here.” He offered a half smile, and I reached out a hand, slowly, and placed it on his cheek. His skin felt like warm sandpaper, and I stared at him, witnessing a smile that I had missed greatly, the kind of smile that started in his mouth and spilled into his beautiful eyes. I kept my eyes fixed on him as his childlike dimples sunk deep into the stubbles of his handsome face, and it was like glimpsing at the boy inside the man.
I smiled back at him, knowing this was a small step in the right direction. Yet he started toward me, and reading desire in his eyes, the panic stirred inside me. I was not ready for intimacy, since I knew we could never start over again with simple kisses. So, before his lips met mine, I turned my head swiftly to the side.
“Great,” he muttered and fell back against the wall. “I feel like I’m six all over again.”
“I’m sorry, Rob.”
“Yeah, I know.” He gazed out the window.
“I’m just not ready yet,” I defended.
“Maybe you never will be.” He kept staring out the window. “You know I leave for school in a few weeks.”
“I know,” I returned softly as a tear crept down my cheek, falling into the crevice by my nose and remaining there until it dropped into my lap. A few more followed the same path.
“And if I leave while we’re just friends, then that’s probably all we’ll ever be. We won’t be able to rebuild our relationship, and when you’re ready to be with someone, I’ll be some 846 miles away from you. So, you’ll find someone here, and then I’ll find someone there. At holiday breaks, we’ll see each other, and it’ll hurt. A lot. But as time passes, we’ll forget about each other. And eventually, a whole day will pass, and you won’t think about me. Soon a week will pass. But then you’ll see something—a tree house, perhaps—and you’ll remember me.”
I faced the opposite wall and brushed more tears from my face. Then I returned my hands to my lap as he spoke again. “You’ll always be my first love, Chloe.” His hand rested on top of mine, briefly. “I hope you know how much I care about you and that I’m sorry I wasn’t a better boyfriend for you. Maybe if we had been older or together longer. Maybe a thousand other things that keep me up at night, but the truth is—”
“Are you trying to break up with me?”
“Actually,” he paused. “We can’t break up because we’re not even together anymore.”
“Oh.” I bit down on my lip. This was the exact moment where I had to speak, where our entire relationship depended on my response, but all I said was, “I don’t know what to say.”
He exhaled loudly. “That’s okay. You don’t have to say anything at all.” He leaned over and kissed my temple, speaking softly against my skin. “Goodnight, Chloe.” He left my side and crawled across the planked floors.
“Wait,” I shouted at his backside. “That’s it?”
He turned around and faced me, finding a seat against the opposite wall.
I spoke again. “I thought you loved me?”
“I do,” he said softly.
“Then why are you leaving me?”
“Because it hurts to stay.”
“That’s not a good enough reason.”
He spread out his hands, repeating my earlier line, “I don’t know what to say.”
I stared back at him, fuming. “You frustrate me! You know that! I came up here, ho
ping we could talk. Hoping this place would be like crawling into a time capsule, and we could go back to the way it used to be. But you know what? I can’t find my way back there anymore, and when I read my journal…” I reached over and picked it up. “It’s like reading a work of fiction because I don’t think it really happened to me.” I swiped more tears from my eyes. Then I opened my journal, flipping past my first few entries, and Rob returned to his normal spot next to me. “See, right here,” I said, placing my finger on the exact paragraph. “I wrote about our first kiss.” I turned the pages, naming off the events as I went. “And here’s prom…and the night on the beach…and my birthday…”
Then I stopped.
“Did you stop writing after that?” he asked.
“No,” I said sadly.
He reached over and turned the pages for me as I looked away. “And you wrote while you were in Kentucky?”
“Yeah.” I faced him again. “And when I got to my grandmother’s house, I wrote you a letter.” His eyes were on me, not the page. “Like an apology…for hurting you so much.”
“Hmm,” he said like he was censoring himself. Then his eyes returned to my journal and he turned the pages slowly. “And what about this?”
I glanced down, and then grabbed the journal. “Oh, that…that’s nothing.”
“Wait!” He yanked it back. “Is it a song?”
I tugged harder, revealing nothing.
“Let me read it,” he replied, his voice deep and demanding.
“No way,” I shot back, pulling back with all my might that even my arms started quivering.
“Okay. You win,” he said abruptly and let go of my journal. I, of course, demonstrated Newton’s Third Law of Motion and fell over.
This amused him, and inside his laughter, he decided, “Well, I didn’t want to read it anyway.”
“Gee, thanks.”
“Aw, it’s not like that. It’s just that if it’s a song, then you should sing it to me.”
“Yeah, right.”
“Why not, Chlo?”
“Because I’m scared. That’s why.”
“Of what?”
“A million things, actually.”
He paused. “Do you know what scares me more than anything?”
“What?”
“Living the rest of my life without you in it.”
“Then why were you going to leave me?”
“Because I knew you would stop me.” He continued, “I knew you would never let me walk away without a good fight.”
I looked down, suppressing a smile. “So who won?”
“Well, you won because you got me to stay, and you also won our little game of tug of war.” He laughed, and I offered a playful “grrr” before he continued, “But I intend to win the next round.”
“What next round?”
He smiled and scooted into the corner, resting his hands behind his head. “Because I am not leaving this tree house,” he said, jabbing a finger into the planked floor, “until you sing that song to me.”
“What if you need to go to the bathroom?”
“Well.” He spread his hands to the sides and did a quick glance-around. “I can always go in the woods.”
“Yeah, great.” I rolled my eyes and tried again. “What if you get hungry?”
He pulled a protein bar from his pocket. “Then I’ll eat this.”
I stared back at him, wondering if he had a response to everything, and then his eyes narrowed into slits. “And you won’t win a staring contest either.”
“Is that so?”
“Yeah, it is.” He put on his accomplished mean face, and I felt a tickle inside my belly. Eventually, I caved in, laughing.
He smiled. “Just sing your song to me.”
“No!”
“Aw, c’mon. You said you wanted to go back in time, so just pretend you’re playing that little guitar of yours, and you won’t be afraid anymore.” He leaned over, nudging me with his shoulder. “Plus, I’ve always been your biggest fan.”
“Yeah, my only fan,” I retorted.
“Well, if I’m your only fan, then I guess you wrote the song for me.”
He was right, actually. I wrote it for him and about him, and the song was what brought me home to him. Still, I felt terribly afraid, since it would be easier, and much safer, to keep my love for him hidden inside my journal than to express it with my song. And as I grappled with my reservations, I realized fear was definitely love’s greatest enemy, and at that moment, I had to determine if “fear” or “love” had a greater hold of my heart.
“So?” he asked.
I relented quickly with a smile. “Okay, you won, Rob.” Or should I say “love” did? Then taking one last breath, I sang my song for him:
-Auburn Eyes-
I see the past in your eyes
Tender touches with long goodbyes
Friends without secrets or lies
Hid their love in dim disguise
Splash in the waters of our youth
Climb that tree to tell the truth
Cross the woods in the dark
Open the gate into my heart
With you I know, with you I see
A life without uncertainty
For my past, my present, my future lies
Hidden inside those auburn eyes
I saw heaven in your eyes
Caught a glimpse of paradise
More than ever I realize
A love like ours never dies
Open your eyes
(And see me)
Open your mind
(And know me)
Open your arms
(And hold me)
Open your heart
(And love me)
Open your eyes [spoken]
And see the future through my eyes
The two of us, you’ll recognize
Man and wife with joyful cries
Sharing vows under azure skies
Splash in the waters of our youth
Climb that tree to tell the truth
Cross the woods in the dark
Open the gate into my heart
With you I know, with you I see
A life without uncertainty
For my past, my present, my future lies
Hidden inside those auburn eyes
My past, my present, my future lies
Hidden inside your auburn eyes
…Auburn eyes…
…Auburn eyes…
As I finished the final chorus, holding the last note until it dissolved into the warm night air, Rob placed a soft kiss on my cheek. It must have been his lips against my skin, or perhaps, it was his scent so close to me again that without thinking, I found his eager mouth. The kiss was soft and warm and lingering, and we remained close to each other for a long moment, completely still like lovers chiseled eternally in stone.
Rob pulled away from me. “We should take it slow, okay?”
I nodded, feeling relieved.
“And just remember,” he started as his hand searched for mine, the right one, the one that displayed the ring of his ancestors, and very slowly, he traced the golden heart, and then the crown. My eyes remained on our hands as he added, “We have the rest of our lives...”
The End