Seeing Isabelle prance around in that low-cut t-shirt and mini shorts did a number on my head, but not as much as my dick. Especially when she kissed me. The kiss wasn’t as earth-shattering as I had hoped it would be because she was holding back. Almost as if she was shy. Still, it meant everything. But I needed more.

I had fooled around with a few girls while in Texas. Nothing beyond kissing and hand jobs, but enough to feel some kind of release. We were under close observation at the academy, making it impossible to sneak in any booze or weed. I needed a way to release all the fucked up emotions going through my sixteen-year-old head. I was so angry with my father for taking Isabelle away from me that the admissions counselor enrolled me in some pretty intensive therapy.

The therapist talked to me about everything—things my parents had never mentioned, including the normalcy of beating off when I felt sexual tension. It seemed to happen a lot whenever I thought about Isabelle. When jerking myself off wasn’t enough, I messed around with a few cute girls that didn’t mean anything. What we did was simply a way to relieve the relentless want I felt for Isabelle. I’d sometimes close my eyes and imagine it was her stroking me.

Once we were reunited that summer, the girl I asked to be my girlfriend was a ghost of the Isabelle I once knew. She was suddenly a real head-turner—not in the traditional way of beauty but because her looks were so striking—and she carried herself with a new kind of confidence. Hearing her say she’d be mine made me the happiest teenager on the planet. She was there for me the way she had always been on the nights when my old man’s hits were too much to handle. The nights I was sure no one else in the world gave a shit whether I lived or died. The nights I had given up hope and decided there was nothing worth living for. She was worth living for.

That first night at camp, when our groups gathered around the campfire, I performed with the song I had worked all winter on perfecting. The words were incredibly raw, making it painful to sing in front of the small group. My fingers trembled when I strummed the first couple of chords on the guitar and my stutter reappeared with the first lyrics.

“I s-stare a-at…”

My stomach lurched. I was scared as shit I’d be rejected by the kids at camp the same way I’d been outcast in kindergarten. I didn't know if they’d notice since I was playing something original, so I laughed it off and started over. Ever since my father hauled me away the summer before, my stutter had returned whenever I tried to sing.

But then I fixed my eyes on Isabelle. She was watching me with the kind of reassuring look I often dreamt about after I was sent to live in Texas. It embraced me with a calming confidence, and finally the melody flowed from me, as smooth as silk.

By the time I finished, my heart was racing and I couldn’t get my lungs to do their job. I expected Belle to be crying like she had before when she knew I had written her a song, but there was hunger in her beautiful eyes as she whooped and cheered for me, louder than all the rest. Her reaction surprised me in unexpected ways, delighted me in others.

That night we full-on made out for the first time. I snuck over to her cabin after curfew to find her waiting outside, leaned up against a tree. She grabbed my shirt and pulled me close before I had a chance to say anything. Our lips pressed together, and I finally understood the meaning of “heaven on earth.”

At first it was an awkward and desperate mashing of teeth and sloppy tongues. Then I realized she had never been kissed that way. I slowed the pace, taking my time teaching her how to be soft and gentle. She learned to mimic my actions, and before long we were lost in our own private paradise of tender touches and meaningful kisses.

I’ll never forget the first time she slipped her thin fingers underneath my shirt and hummed into my mouth. Her touch was as hot as fire, but as soothing as anything I had ever felt. My dick had never been so hard, but asking her to do something about it felt like an asshole move, especially when she was just learning how to French kiss. She wasn’t like any other girl, she was my Belle. And she deserved as much tenderness as I could provide.

I honestly could’ve stood there kissing her against that tree all night long, but the sudden appearance of flashlights cutting through the dark sent us on our separate ways. We knew we had to be smart about breaking curfew or our summer could get cut short again, though I would’ve liked to have seen my father try to separate us a second time.

For two and a half glorious months, we were inseparable. Around others, we were either holding hands or she was on my lap. When alone, I tested the boundaries of how far she was willing to go. We were limited in what we could do with the constant threat of getting caught, and Isabelle refused to lie in the grass where she was sure there were insects that wanted to hide in her hair.

It was almost comical how we fumbled through our urges, wanting to please our bodies without really knowing how. The first time she let me touch her tits under her bra, I spewed in my shorts. It was a little humiliating, and I stuttered out a response. She shut me up with a deep kiss. The next time we were alone, she reached inside my shorts and relieved my aching hard-on with her fingers. I loved that she was becoming brave enough to touch me that way, even though it was over my briefs. Eventually I gathered the courage to touch her over her panties, experimenting with different strokes of my fingers until she cried out and jerked against my hand. Before too long we were comfortable enough that we were touching each other beyond our underwear, proving pleasure in the most intimate ways. I was soon addicted to her touch and the way I could make her shudder with mine.

The guys gave me endless shit about ditching them for a piece of ass, but I didn’t care. At least they were beyond giving her shit. A couple of them had even started talking to her like she was one of the rich kids. It wasn’t just the fact that we had been together for so long. She had made it clear to everyone that she was done being pushed around. She was no longer an easy target.

Things were a little awkward that summer when I first ran into Brooke. My parents hadn’t even flown me home for the holidays, so I hadn’t seen her all school year. She had changed so much that I had wondered if her father had paid for her to have plastic surgery done to her nose and lips. Although she was suddenly hot as hell, I wasn’t interested. That didn’t seem to faze her in the slightest.

The first time she was able to catch me alone was when Isabelle was in private lessons. I was onto Brooke’s game before she even opened her mouth. The way her eyes ate me up and she sucked on her fingertip, it was clear she was interested in sex.

“Did they have you riding bulls down in Texas? You’ve really changed, Roman. Everyone missed you…although not nearly as much as I missed you.”

When she flung her arms around my neck and pushed her hard tits into my chest, I wanted to throw her to the ground. Instead I patted her on the back the same way I hugged my grandmother.

“I missed the gang,” I told her, trying to pull back.

“Please tell me your dad is letting you come back to New York next year. I couldn’t stand another year without you around! Who would take me to formal?”

“Even if I came back, I’m not taking you to formal.” I peeled her fingers off my neck and made a point of looking her in the eye. “Isabelle’s my girlfriend now.”

“What?” she squawked, scrunching her nose. “Are you fucking with me?”

“No, I’m not. And if you can’t stop being a total bitch to her, I can’t hang with you anymore.”

She backed away, her face flushing a dark red. “Your dad sent you away for helping that trailer trash! She has nothing to offer you, Roman! I mean look at her! The way she dresses now—she’s clearly become a major slut!”

I had every intention of slapping her for what she said about my girl, but the wisdom of my advisor from the academy had been etched into me. No matter how angry you may get, don’t ever strike a woman.

I looked up to Holden in a way I had never looked up to anyone before. The former professional quarterback had started the academy because he had a rough go when he was a teenager. He knew better than anyone that sometimes tough circumstances brought out the worst in a person, but didn’t necessarily mean it would change who they would become. I respected the guy enough that I was considering asking my old man to send me back there another year. The guys I had become friends with at the academy were rough around the edges, but they hadn’t judged me even after they discovered I was the son of a millionaire, and I knew they wouldn’t dream of judging Isabelle.

I was officially done with Brooke. I thought I had made it clear that afternoon when I didn’t say anything more and walked away.

As Isabelle’s sixteenth birthday neared, I debated whether or not to give her the present I had saved for by working weekend jobs at the academy. It wasn’t worth a lot of money, but I wanted her to have something from me so she remembered I was hers when we were apart. Most of all, I was afraid by giving her something she’d become upset like she had the first summer we spent together when she walked into the lake.

By then I knew her parents had died when she was younger, and I suspected their deaths had something to do with the reason why she didn’t celebrate her birthday. But I didn’t push her to explain. She hadn’t pushed me about anything, and I wanted to believe she’d tell me when she was ready.

Then her birthday arrived and I spent the entire day trying not to make it obvious that I was both nervous and excited. By sound off that night I had made myself physically ill, thinking she’d see the present as stupid. When I didn’t start the solos out as usual, I think I surprised myself more than everyone that gave me puzzled expressions, including Isabelle.

“I didn’t think you’d be up for meeting tonight,” she whispered when we met behind her cabin after lights out. “You’ve been acting strange all day.”

I threaded my fingers with hers and suggested we go for a little walk. Her present felt like a load of bricks in my pocket. At the time it didn’t occur to me that it was a totally boneheaded idea to take her down by the lake. I was eager to get her somewhere alone where we wouldn’t have to whisper and worry about getting caught.

The counselors never checked on the lake after dark. The older kids sometimes went skinny dipping, but that night we had the wide beach to ourselves. The moon hid beneath dark clouds, giving us just the right amount of light. I could still see her eyes shining with adoration whenever she looked at me. I could still see the features of her beautiful face that had thinned out and taken on the sharp lines of a grown woman. Whenever I looked at her that summer, whether in the moonlight or covered in sweat after a day of hiking, all I could see was love.

We settled on a giant boulder at the edge of the beach. For the longest time we made out before she leaned back against me, safe in my arms as we watched the dark clouds flicker through the sky. Everything we had gone through rolled through my thoughts as I prepared myself for what I was about to say.

“Can you do me a favor?” I finally asked.

“Depends on what kind of favor you’re asking,” she replied with a little giggle. But when she twisted in my arms to look up at me, her big brown eyes shone with lust.

The way she looked at me made my dick hard. I groaned when she started kissing my neck and reached for the waistband on my shorts. “Hold on. I don’t mean that. I mean…you can if you want, but there’s something I want to say to you first.”

She leaned back, her lips bright and slightly swollen from our kisses as she waited for me to continue.

“I…um…you know…thought maybe we could…ah…do something that would give this day a…um…special meaning.”

Her fingers slid into my boxers and she giggled. “Are you sure you’re the same guy who writes those deep songs? You don’t have to be nervous around me, Roman. If you want to go all the way, you just have to ask.”

My eyes bulged from my head. “No! I mean…hell yeah, I want to do that. I mean when you’re ready. But that’s not what I was asking. I just thought that, since you don’t like to celebrate your birthday and everything—”

“Oh.” She withdrew her hand with a cold expression. “I was hoping you forgot.”

“How could I forget the day my girl came into the world?” When I reached out to bring her back into my arms, she started to climb back down the boulder. My windpipe crushed with desperation. I couldn’t lose her. I yelled out, “Belle, wait! I l—lo—ve you!”

It was too dark to see her expression from that far away, but I could hear her sharp intake of breath. She spun her head around, causing her dark hair to twirl around her neck, and pinned me down with her big brown eyes. My heart practically leapt from my chest with the way she made me feel under her beautiful gaze. She looked…pale.

“It’s true,” I said softly. “I think I might have loved you since the first time I looked into your eyes.”

When she merely stood there, unmoving, I couldn’t fucking breathe. I was worried she hated me for whatever reason. Maybe I shouldn’t have picked her birthday to finally tell her how I felt. I simply wanted her to have a different reason to celebrate this day.

Then, finally, she crawled back up to me, and my breaths slipped back out my throat. I wrapped my hand around hers and gently squeezed. I wanted to think that she loved me, but it didn’t really matter. I was sure that I loved her enough for the both of us.