Page 140 of Legacy Next Door
I’d never looked forward to anything the way I looked forward to Friday.
Friday afternoon, I blew out of the training facility after the last practice of the week, and threw my bag into the passenger seat of the used truck I’d bought with my first paycheck.
It was nothing flashy, just a solid vehicle of my own that ran. The drive to Ridge Cross took hours, most of it flat highway through farmland that all looked the same in the dark, and bythe time the campus exit came up, my shoulders were locked tight from gripping the wheel.
I pulled onto the main road past the athletic complex and the old brick dorms, the sun dipping low enough to turn the rooftops orange. My phone sat in the cupholder with my last text still open:Almost there.
Karter had replied to my text message with a single red heart.
An hour ago my brain had been running through every worst-case scenario: the long summer, the distance, whether Karter would wake up and realize I wasn’t worth the drive. Then my truck’s headlights swept across the front steps of his new building to find Karter sitting right there on the concrete, wearing the gray hoodie from the night I finally came back to The Ice House. And suddenly, every stupid thought bled out of me before I pulled into park.
Karter stood up as I killed the ignition. I didn’t think. I was out of the truck and crossing the grass before he made it down the steps, and then he was right there and my hands were on him and his mouth was under mine. I kissed him hard, putting all the frustration of weeks of texts and too many nights alone into the way I gripped the back of his neck and held him there.
He made a sound against my lips, something caught between a laugh and a breath, and his fingers twisted into the front of my jacket and pulled me closer. I kissed him until my lungs burned. Then I kissed him again.
“You’re still mine,” I whispered the words against his mouth.
Karter’s lips curved into a smirk. “Should think so. You drove all the way here just to kiss me.”
“Maybe I drove all the way here for the pizza.”
“The dining hall doesn’t serve pizza on Fridays.”
“Then yes, I drove here just for you.” I pulled back just far enough to look at him, the nearby overhead streetlight catching the gleam in his eyes. “Maybe I’ve been counting down the days.”
Karter’s smirk flickered. The fingers twisted in my jacket tightened, and he didn’t bother playing it cool. “I missed you so much,” he said, quieter now, the joke stripped out of it.
“Same.” I kissed him again, quick and hard, then let my forehead rest against his.
I breathed him in before we even made it through the door. Neither of us spoke as we moved through the dorm hallway, past the bulletin boards and the closed doors with whiteboards scrawled full of inside jokes I didn’t know.
Karter’s single room was at the end of the hall. The door clicked shut behind us, and I pulled him close and pressed my palm flat against his chest, right over his heart. The steady beat of it pushed back against my hand, and for the first time in months, there was no lock between us, no thin wall, no bus ride or hotel checkout or goodbye hanging over our heads.
“Home,” I said.
Karter covered my hand with his, lacing his fingers through mine, his thumb brushing across my knuckles.
“Yeah,” Karter replied softly, his eyes locking onto mine. “You are.”
THE END...
