Say It's Forever
Автор
Brittany Carter
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562K
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Josie returns to the small Arkansas town she once fled, pulled back by a father running out of time and memories she never truly buried. She hopes for closure, not chaos, but home still breathes in secrets and sideways glances. Old whispers linger in the woods, hidden truths linger in locked pages, and every road leads back to the boy she tried to forget. Boone is still there, all heat and history, stirring feelings that never learned how to fade. As past and present tangle tighter, Josie realizes some hometown stories refuse to stay buried. Can love survive when the truth changes everything?
1: Chapter 1
JOSIE
SOME TIME AGO
A humid gust of wind slapped my tear-streaked face, stinging my eyes. I squinted against the beaming sun and stalked through the wooded area behind my house.
I kept going, even after the screams of my parents faded, trying to get away from the madness I called home. Too soon, I reached the end of our property and the beginning of the Crosses’.
I knew I wasn’t supposed to cross the property line. My dad hammered it into my head like some Bigfoot or deadly disease was waiting for me the second I stepped onto Cross land.
But I knew nothing would happen because I had crossed over several times—only woods, birds, and silence.
When I couldn’t walk anymore, I lay on the ground, not caring about the sticks and dirt that clung to my body. I’m not sure how long I lay on the forest floor, wishing the sky would take me prisoner, but I finally drifted to sleep.
My lower backache woke me, and I instantly got to my feet. The sun was lower than before, but through the haziness of sleep, I felt something else out there.
Pressing the palms of my hands to my eyes, I rubbed until the world cleared. That’s when I saw something in the tree several yards away.
I trudged closer, trying to get the sticks out of my hair. Someone’s leg swung from what looked like a makeshift treehouse. It was small and looked like a kid had built it.
Standing awkwardly and looking up for a moment, I cleared my throat.
A guy popped his head up and leaned forward to gaze down at me. It took my groggy mind a moment to realize it wasn’t just any guy. It was Boone Cross.
Oh no.
He’d left the summer before, after he was suspended for fighting, to move in with his mom. Every female specimen in our school cried for weeks—or was that just me?—when he moved away.
His family owned this land. I wondered if he would get mad or tell my dad I was there.
He blinked a few times, a sexy-as-hell bedroom look on his face, but when he focused on me, he straightened. A look of fear crossed his face. What was he scared of? Me?
“It’s rude to interrupt someone while they’re sleepin’,” he said, his Southern drawl heavy. His blond hair was cut short, giving everyone the extreme pleasure of seeing his too-blue eyes. “Hello? You there?”
I narrowed my eyes. “Well, maybe you shouldn’t be sleepin’ in the middle of the woods.”
“This is my treehouse, and you’re on my property, sweetheart.” He gestured toward the sign on the tree behind my head—Private Property.
“I’m sorry. I—”
“You shouldn’t be here,” he said, a confused look on his face. “You really shouldn’t be here.”
I’d never said more than two words to Boone. Not that I hadn’t tried. Every time I neared him at school, he ran in the other direction.
I was beginning to think I repulsed him.
“Why?” I blurted out. “You can’t stand to be around me?”
I shouldn’t have been so mad, but I couldn’t help it. He hadn’t given two cents about me during school; I don’t know why I thought it’d be different this time.
Boone shook his head and closed his eyes. “You’ve never been more wrong, Josie.”
I’d never heard my name sound so perfect. “Then what is it?”
“You’re just not supposed to be here,” he said, his eyes still cast downward. I wanted to ask him why he kept saying it.
I knew he wouldn’t repeat it when he shook his head and smiled at the ground. Something in his face told me he didn’t care that I wasn’t supposed to be there anymore.
“You want me to leave?” I finally asked into the silence.
Boone looked up at me, and his eyes smiled for him. “You’re adorable,” he whispered, taking me in with his eyes.
My face felt like fire. “I’m not adorable. Adorable is what you call your baby sister.”
Boone swung both legs down before dropping to the ground. For someone so tall, he was oddly graceful.
Oh, golly. He was walking toward me. He’d grown a few inches. What was he? Six-two?
His gray T-shirt was wrinkled but fit tight around his biceps, showing me he hadn’t lost any of that muscle we all swooned over. “Someone doesn’t want to be my baby sister, huh? Do you have ill intentions toward me, Josie Sawyer?”
“No,” I said. “I just don’t want to be called adorable. I’m not adorable.”
His blue eyes twinkled when he smiled. “Why don’t you come up to my treehouse with me?” Where had this come from? Hadn’t he just told me I shouldn’t be here? I was right. I guess he didn’t care anymore?
I crossed my arms over my chest, hoping he wouldn’t notice how my arms shook. I’d never talked to him for this long, and I suddenly felt underdressed. The tank top didn’t leave much to the imagination, and the cheer shorts didn’t help.
“I don’t want to come up to your treehouse.”
“Liar,” he said.
“Didn’t you just tell me to leave? That I wasn’t welcome on Cross property?”
Those too-blue eyes locked with mine. “I said you shouldn’t be here, not that I didn’t want you to be.”
My breath caught. Everything I was about to say drifted off into the air. The irrational part of me wanted to believe that and stay, while the other part wanted to run for the hills. “I’m leavin’.”
Boone reached forward, wrapped his arm around my legs, and threw me over his shoulder. I swatted at his back. “Let me go! Right now!”
Boone stopped as if pondering the idea but then shook his head. “Nah, I don’t think I will.” He clung to my thighs, his large fingers digging into my skin as he hauled both of us up the small makeshift ladder and onto the platform.
I jerked away from him and glanced around. The treehouse was only a large platform with a short wooden guardrail surrounding it. “What the hell?” I yelled. “You don’t just force someone!”
He rolled his eyes, slid out of his shoes, and leaned back to look at me. “You can’t force the willing. You wanted me to. I could see it in your eyes.”
“Really? I think you need to go to the eye doctor.”
“Whatever helps you sleep at night.”
We sat silently for several minutes while I tried to avoid his gaze. I felt it on me—everywhere. But I was too chickenshit to look at him.
“So,” I said shakily, “you moving back?”
There was a long pause. “Yes.”
My eyes lifted upward to see a smug smile on his face. “You missed me?” he asked.
Heat burned my cheeks. He was on the other side of the treehouse but felt much closer. “Just asking. What were you doin’ out here?”
“I’m guessing the same thing as you,” he said.
I snorted. “Doubt it. You tryin’ to get away from World War Three?”
Boone didn’t answer, but he watched me closely. Why had I even said that? He didn’t care about my personal life, and I didn’t want everyone to know.
“Do you remember the first time we met?” he asked out of nowhere.
I glanced over at him, bringing my knees up to my chest. His lips lifted in a small smile.
We had never officially met. I’d known him since elementary school, but we’d never really hung around the same people.
I shook my head. “I don’t think so.”
“It was here.” He gestured toward the treehouse. “I was ten, so you would have been eight. You were playing hide-and-seek by yourself.”
He laughed, and I felt it in my stomach. It was low, raw, and poured over my skin like silk.
“I was not.”
“You were too,” he said, sitting up. “I asked you if you wanted to play in my treehouse with me. And you said you didn’t need a boy to play with.”
I fought back a smile. “I don’t remember that.”
Boone dragged himself closer to me, resting his hand about three inches from mine. “That’s not the best part.”
His scent attacked my every rational thought. It was woodsy and male. Something hard to duplicate. So warm.
“Oh yeah? What’s the best part?” I asked.
“I tried to kiss you, and you hit me in the nose.”
What? Something tickled the back of my mind, and I vaguely remembered something.
“Remember?” he whispered, his voice closer this time.
“Sort of.” I laughed. “That’s what you get, perv.”
Boone sat beside me now, his shoulder shaking as he laughed. It felt oddly normal.
“Do you think you would hit me now?” he asked, his voice dropping an octave.
Did he ask that? Oh, God.
Something heavy lit a fire low in my belly. There had been months when I dreamed about his lips, about him kissing me like there was no tomorrow.
I turned my gaze to his. “Yes,” I lied.
I knew he knew it was a lie. I wanted him to kiss me more than I wanted my parents to stop fighting—more than I had ever wanted anything.
“Liar,” he whispered.
My breath was ragged. He wasn’t making any sudden moves, and my fingers yearned to touch that face—those lips. “I’m not.”
He grinned. I liked that about him. He knew what I wanted, no matter how hard I tried to hide it. It was like he knew more about me than I’d ever realized.
He’d made his way in front of me. His eyes showed hesitation and fear, but I had no idea why.
It was the look a child gets when he’s about to do something he isn’t supposed to. I didn’t understand why he wasn’t supposed to.
“What if this time I let you make the move? Nothing happens if you don’t go for it.”
Now that was a stupid idea. My shyness and the fear of messing things up would not get him a kiss. “I don’t think—”
Sliding backward until his back hit the tree, he grabbed my hands and guided me on top of him. My fingers clenched at the hardness of his chest. His shirt was on, but I could see the smoothness from the low V-neck.
“Use me, Raven.”
Raven? The force of my heart jackhammering in my chest drowned out everything else. I was straddling Boone Cross in a treehouse in the middle of the woods, and he was waiting for me to make a move.
“Take your time,” he whispered.
Everything I’d felt for other guys before that moment was history. There wasn’t anyone but him. The feeling of his hardness beneath me. The way his hands kept still on my waist, never dipping too low or lifting too high. Just a heavy presence that warmed and calmed me.
It was so different from what I was used to, yet everything I’d always hoped for.
“I hardly know you,” I whispered.
Boone shut his eyes, but a lazy grin spread across his face. “You feel it, though, right? The connection?”
I did, but I didn’t answer. Instead, I ran my hand up his chest to his cheek, where the scruff brushed my fingers. His eyes lifted, the bright blue orbs daring me to look away.
I couldn’t, because I’d never seen anything so damn beautiful.
Boone turned his cheek to kiss my palm, keeping his eyes on me. Warmth enveloped me, and a pathetic moan escaped my lips.
His chest vibrated beneath my palms. “You’d better bend down here and kiss me before I break all of my rules and do it myself.”
All of his rules? Did he have rules about all girls or just me?
I didn’t get a chance to ask.
His fingers snaked behind my neck, dragging me down to meet his waiting lips. The rush of adrenaline suffocated me. There wasn’t anything better than this.
“You taste so good,” he mumbled against me, swiping his tongue along my lower lip for entrance. I opened my mouth wider, welcoming the experienced pace of his tongue.
Everything was warm, hard, addicting. The way his fingers pressed against my neck and sides. The way he pushed upward against my rocking hips in the most foreign but unforgettable rhythm ever created.
His deep groans masked my soft moans, and I was liquid in his hands. I’d never been kissed like that, and by someone I’d fawned over for years.
When I finally pulled away, he rested his forehead against mine and laced his fingers around my neck. “You’re my little slice of Heaven, Raven.”
I was too exhausted from wanting to ask why he called me Raven and was too shaky to move. I lay there in his arms all night long.
