The image hit him like a kick in the gut, and his throat closed up for a moment. Was that the future she envisioned? Maybe she’d just put into very blunt words the only things she needed to be relaxed and happy. “If you want,” he said lamely, then turned away and gritted his teeth in a cringe of frustration. Fuck, f**k, f**k!
He could ask her to marry him—and she could laugh in his face and say her words had been a joke. Maybe it was a preposterous, old-fashioned idea. They’d only today made the decision to give their relationship a try. To think a woman like her…
The warmth of her hand left his, and he drew a quick breath. Had he just let something momentous slip right through his fingers? No matter how he tried to wrestle his thoughts into something coherent, he couldn’t. She’d released his hand to turn the radio up a little.
“Are you a metal fan like my brother?” she asked.
It took him a moment to switch gears. Here he was contemplating forever with her, and now she was talking about music.
“I’m more a classic metal fan. Sabbath, Maiden, AC/DC.”
“I can handle that,” she said. “You and my dad have some common ground after all—he’s a huge Led Zeppelin fan, anyway. Hey…take a right up ahead. I’ll show you where everyone used to go to make out.” Despite her teasing tone and the pinch she gave his arm, he couldn’t shake the feeling he’d just majorly f**ked up.
A few miles down that dark highway, she guided him through a maze of back roads that finally turned to dirt—Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Friday the 13th-type shit. Trees towered on either side of them, blocking out the black sky, and he began to pray they didn’t meet another vehicle, because this road wouldn’t give them much room to pass. He wondered if he’d hear dueling banjos if he cracked the window open. “Jesus,” he said as they crept past a falling-in farmhouse that must have been there since the turn of the century—last century.
“Is this your first time riding dirties, city boy?” she teased. “You grow up here, that’s all there is to do sometimes. Not to be confused with ‘riding dirty’, of course.”
“It would seem that stopping to make out anywhere around here is only inviting an ax murderer to chop your head off.”
“Well…just wait.” She lapsed into silence and watched the landscape creep by. It was intermittently flat and moonlit, then choked with foliage. “I’ve always wanted to go into a place like that,” she said as they passed yet another abandoned, decrepit old house, lonely in the moonlight. “Not sure why.”
“It would be pretty cool. Until f**kin’ Jason shows up with a machete.”
“It’s all fun and games until someone gets decapitated.”
“Right?”
Another bumpy, dusty mile later, the road widened and the trees thinned out until a spectacular lake came into view, calm and glassy in the still wind. “Wow,” he said, trying not to look so he didn’t drive off the road.
“Pretty, isn’t it? Keep going… See that turn-off up there? Take that. There’s a great view up on that hill.”
It was deserted, so apparently it wasn’t the prime make-out spot anymore. He brought the car to a stop, and Gabby popped open her door and bounded out. Ian followed, taking in the scenery, the pale roadway the light of the moon made across the surface of the water. Out here, far removed from the lights and noise of civilization, there was no sound but the symphony of frogs and crickets and the gentle lapping of the water on the shore.
“I haven’t been here in so long,” she said, walking around to slide up on the hood of her car. He took his place beside her. “And don’t worry,” she went on, nudging his arm with her elbow, “it was never to make out. I had this one friend who was eternally convinced her boyfriend was cheating on her, and we had to drive by here every other night to check if he was here.”
Okay, so maybe he had felt a pang of jealousy at the thought of her here with some other dude. He could admit it. Laughing at being called on it, he wrapped an arm around her shoulders and hugged her closer to his side. “Yeah? Well, maybe we should change that.”
“Ooh, I could go for that.”
Her breath caressed his mouth a half second before her lips did, warm and softer than the light breeze. So sweet. She sighed and melted into his kiss, and he could hardly take it—but then she gasped and jerked away.
Moonlight sparked in her deep green eyes. “I’ve always wanted to make out here to Mazzy Star’s ‘Fade Into You’. I’ve got it on my phone!” She leaped excitedly off the hood and ran for the door while he laughed and shook his head.
“Whatever you want, baby.” He admired the scenery while she synced the phone to her car, and then the dreamy strains filled the air, adding to the music of the night.
Grinning, she rejoined him, whispered, “Perfect,” and put her lips back to his. All at once, he was swept away…by her, by the song, by the beauty around them, and every ounce of restraint he possessed stretched to the breaking point with the need to tear through her walls, take her, make her his…wipe out every bad memory of what her ex had done to her. Replace them all with good. But he didn’t know if he could give her the kind of good she deserved. The absolute best of everything. How could he do that when he had nothing?
She broke away from him and stared up into his eyes, her fingers stroking the back of his neck. “You haven’t shared much.”
He lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “Nothing much to share.”
“What’s one thing you would want to pass on to our baby?”
From himself? God, he couldn’t think of anything. A lump lodged in his throat, and he could hardly breathe around it. Or maybe it was the sight of her, damn near ethereal in the moonlight, looking at him as if she wanted all the secrets of his soul laid out before her.
He hoped their baby was an exact replica of her. Not so much of him.
“I don’t know about passing anything on,” he said. “I’d rather build something brand-new. New traditions. New things that maybe he or she would want to pass on someday.”
“I like that,” she said softly; then her mouth curved in a smile. “You have your love of baseball, if nothing else, though.”
“Oh yeah. Definitely that. This kid will be a Rangers fan for sure.”
“Then we’ll be all right.” Her lips sought his again, and it was pure magic. Her long hair slid through his fingers like silk as he pulled her closer, ever closer. Here, surrounded by nothing but nature and moonlight and an almost miraculously apt song, he really could pretend they were the only two people in the world. And he liked it.
Hours later, at Ian’s apartment, Gabby snuggled closer to him on the bed. Already, she’d draped one arm and one leg over him, and it didn’t feel close enough. It wasn’t like her to fall so hard so fast, but it also wasn’t like her to be in denial for so long. It was happening. His steady heartbeat beneath her ear could become the rhythm of her life, and the variables and unknowns didn’t seem to matter as much when she was right here.
Light from the TV flickered in the dark room, and he chuckled at whatever was happening onscreen. Despite her extended nap, she was nearly dozing. When he pulled her closer to slide a kiss across her forehead, though, she couldn’t resist tilting her face up to get the full impact of that mouth.