Chapter Four

Kevin

Mattie’s lips tasted of heaven just as I remembered. A thousand dark and lonely nights I had thought of this happening again. Thought about what it would be like to hold her in my arms again. Grieved for the loss. Cursed and pleaded with a dozen different Gods for this moment.

Sighing, I wrapped my free arm around her waist and pulled her in tight. My Mattie, I thought as we kissed. This will never work, I realized with regret. But that didn’t stop me from soaking up all of the sweetness known as Mattie James.

She moved to get closer and I my knee started to give way.

Cursing under my breath, I shifted to regain my balance. A not so subtle reminder of just how she deserved more. What was I thinking? There was no future for us. And the one thing I knew to the depths of my being. Mattie deserved everything she ever wanted. And a busted up Marine with no future was not on that list.

Mattie backed off, her eyes as big as a frightened doe’s. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

I laughed desperately trying to hide how much she had touched me. “That’s okay. I’m used to being attacked by women. I’ve just got to learn to set this third leg better.”

Her face turned crimson, “I’m sorry,” she said again. “I don’t know…”

“Mattie,” I said as I gently rubbed her arm. “I was teasing. You did what I didn’t have the courage to do. I was too afraid. But it needed to happen. We had to know.”

She smiled slightly, “And what did we discover?”

I laughed. “We discovered, that you are still the sexiest woman to ever live.”

She blushed again, looking down at her shoes for a second before she could look up at me again.

“And,” I continued. “It seems to me, that you might feel the same way about me.”

A small smile fought to break out, but she didn’t deny it. My heart raced as I looked down into that angelic face that I had always loved. The sweet smell of her jasmine perfume held me under a spell, her spell.

“But…” I began as a heaviness filled me.

“But?” she asked as a cloud passed behind her eyes. A look of doubt and fear.

 “But,” I continued. “We are headed in two different directions. You, graduation, home to Nebraska. Me, I don’t know. If I get kicked out of the Corps. I have no idea what I’m going to do. No idea where I will go.”

She frowned. “Who said anything about forever. We aren’t kids anymore.”

I frowned as my heart broke. “Mattie, you are a forever type girl. You always have been. You deserve the best. Me, I was born under a wandering star. There is something deep down inside of me that needs to find something. I don’t know what. God, I wish I knew what I was looking for. But I don’t and I think I can only find it on the road.”

Mattie looked at me for a long minute. Studying me like a prized bull at the county fair. Judging, weighing, critiquing. Then, as if she had come up with a final result, she leaned forward and said, “No.”

Taken aback, I asked what she meant.

She shook her head. “I’m not letting you break up with me before we are even together. Even if we aren’t together that way. I won’t let you walk out of my life. Not this time. No word. No goodbye. Always wondering where you are or if you’re okay. No, not this time.”

My eyebrows shot up as I tried to figure out what she was saying. Seeing my confusion. She patted my arm and shook her head as if she were explaining things to a dunce.

“This time, If we part ways. It will be as friends. This hotness between us can be put to the side. But I will not lose my friend again. With no idea where you are or what you are doing.”

I continued to stare at her, unable to figure out how this could ever work.

She smiled at me and said, “Kevin, I don’t understand the ex-boyfriend rules. I never have. All I know is that I don’t ever want to be afraid of giving you a hug. I want you to be able to talk to me without having to worry about scaring me away. In other words friends.”

I stared down at her as I tried to process all the ramifications. She was right. The thought of losing my friend again was terrifying. I had lost too many friends over this last year. I couldn’t lose Mattie as well.

Sighing, I nodded my head. “Okay, then, friends it is. But, I’ve got to tell you. It’s not going to be easy. I keep remembering the bluffs at home and the back of my pick-up.”

She blushed and said, “Oh, so romantic.”

“Hey, to me it was the most romantic thing in this world. You, me, the stars. Both of us locked in our own little world.”

She stared up at me, her eyes searching, thinking, wondering. At last, she slipped her arm into mine and said, “You’re right. It was.”

My soul settled and something felt as if it had clicked into place. As if I had finally gotten some type of closure. The future might be unknown. But now I knew, Mattie didn’t hate me. Mattie didn’t hate the us we had been.

.o0o.

Mattie

I had broken the first rule of Ex-boyfriends. Friends. It was a proven fact that exes could not be friends. But maybe we were the exception. Even with this sexual tension still hanging over us like a wave threatening to bury the two of us.

One kiss and it was back. That mutual need. That shared desire. I had seen it in his eyes. Tasted it on his lips. Felt it with his embrace. A demand for more. A burning hunger inside both of us. A hunger that threatened our hearts.

How were we supposed to act? How could I not dream of him at night? The memories of our times together. It would haunt me, I just knew it.

But what choice did I have? I had seen it in his eyes. The terror at the thought of being forced into something he wasn’t ready for. I knew Kevin, he’d be worried about hurting me. Scared of me expecting too much. He thought that if we slept together, I would demand forever.

I wouldn’t have. But he would know that was what I wanted and would feel obligated to give it to me.

If I hadn’t acted, he’d have run and I would never see him again. And that was not going to happen.

As we slowly made our way back to the house, I was careful to match my stride to his. My arm wrapped around his, hugging it close. It was important that I set the boundaries of this new friendship. Touching was allowed. It might tear me apart, but it also fed a soulful need.

“So, this friends thing,” he said. “What are the rules? I assume this means no sex. Right?”

I laughed and shrugged my shoulders. “I don’t know. Does it?”

He stopped for a second to stare into my eyes, then slowly shook his head. “It has to. Or else I’ll end up breaking your heart which will just kill me.”

See, I knew it.

“What about the whole friends with benefits concept,” I asked, unwilling to give up on the need rushing through my body.

He studied me for a long moment then sighed heavily. “You know that would never work. I think that only works with two people who were never in love.”

“Yeah, right,” I said, trying to hide my disappointment as my insides turned over while I silently cursed all that I had just lost. But he was right. This thing between us could not be solved with a quick fling. There was too much history. Too much pain.

“Why don’t we just take it slow,” I said. “See what happens. No rules. No expectations. You know. Friends.”

He laughed and started for the door again.

“Hey,” I said, catching up to him. “I could be the one to break your heart.”

“Oh, that’s a given,” he said with a small smile that pulled at my heart.

Seeing the flash of pain behind his eyes I pulled him to a stop and stepped around him, up onto the step so I could look directly into his eyes.

“Why did you leave without saying goodbye. Back in school,” I asked him. The question that had been burning a hole in my soul all these years.

He stared back for a second then quickly looked down and shrugged his shoulders.

“Why?” I demanded.

“Do you want the truth?” he asked.

I nodded as I braced myself for what was to come.

“For lots of reasons. I was mad at you. I mean, really pissed off. You dumped me for just thinking about doing something.”

“I didn’t dump you …”

“It sure seemed that way from my end,” he said with a raised eyebrows. “Telling me it was over, pretty much means that you dumped me.”

“I didn’t break-up with you because you visited a recruiter.”

“Then why?” he asked, obviously confused.

I sighed heavily. “Because I could see it coming to an end. I’d go off to college. You going off into the service. It was all going to come to a terrible, chaotic end and it scared me. Every day I expected you to end it. To tell me you wanted something else. Something more. That I wasn’t enough.”

“Mattie, it was never you.”

I grimaced and slowly nodded. “I know that now. It took me a couple of years to figure it out. But I finally came to realize we were just two people going in different directions.”

He stared at me for a long minute, then sighed heavily and said, “The reason I didn’t say goodbye was because I knew that if I talked to you I’d change my mind. I’d stay. Then I’d be stuck in that dumb town. Hating life.”

“Hating me,” I added under my breath. If he had stayed, that was what would have happened. I would always have been the person who stopped him from chasing his dream of seeing the world.

A sudden epiphany hit me, Kevin had never asked me to change my dreams. Never demanded that I not go to college. Never asked me to change what I wanted. He’d always understood how important it was to me.

As we went back inside, my mind tumbled with a thousand different regrets.