Total pages in book: 116
Estimated words: 111089 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 555(@200wpm)___ 444(@250wpm)___ 370(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 111089 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 555(@200wpm)___ 444(@250wpm)___ 370(@300wpm)
Surely, we had assured everyone of what they already knew.
That I was just a bad kid.
Trouble.
We were the town’s most infamous couple, but as was Wyachet’s way, it was all just talk and rumors. James hadn’t experienced any inquiry from the school. After all, what could they do now that I wasn’t his student anymore? For all they knew, nothing happened until after school. For all they knew, we were just student and teacher those two semesters at Wyachet High. And the only one who could have sought to destroy us clearly had no intention of doing that, something I understood once James had revealed to me how he’d managed to keep Sheila from talking.
I grabbed James’s cheeks and turned him toward me so he’d kiss me on the mouth. We shamelessly displayed our feelings in front of at least one scandalized 12 Stone member.
“Is there someone we’re trying to piss off?” he whispered as I pulled away.
“Mr. Warner, you know me too well.”
His cheeks turned red as I winked at Samantha What’s-Her-Face.
No, I wasn’t going to feel ashamed of us ever again.
JAMES
We finished our shopping run for dinner and headed back to my place.
Kyle caught me up about the latest between Tex and his new boyfriend, Perry. I’d been nervous about suggesting the camping trip, but Tex’s eagerness about Kyle getting out had assured me I’d made the right call. It was time for us to start giving Tex his space again.
He didn’t need Kyle, not the way he had right after he got out of the hospital, and he was ready to get back to his own life and let Kyle get back to his.
When we returned to my place, we got right to work, in that natural rhythm we’d developed, working together on dinner while also noting anything we might have still needed to pack before we left for Lake Harwell in the morning. We didn’t have much time before our guests began arriving, though.
Ben and his boyfriend—or as Kyle called him, his “summer fling” Malcolm—arrived with Taryn. They worked together to situate Matthew in a high chair before the doorbell rang, and Kyle answered it, returning with Kendra. They laughed together as she came in with a homemade Bundt cake.
“I’m really glad you were able to make it,” he said, taking the cake from her and setting it on the counter.
As she turned her smile on me, it reminded me that I was wrong to have ever thought any of the real friends I’d made in Wyachet would have doubted my feelings for Kyle. In fact, none of our friends had made a fuss. No one asked the inappropriate questions I’d run through my mind before we began parading around town shamelessly after graduation.
I was surprised, and yet not. I couldn’t imagine anyone seeing us together missing that magic I felt whenever I looked into his eyes or felt his electric touch. They must have known it was special.
Or…perhaps broaching the subject was more awkward than I imagined.
We added a few leafs to my new dining-room table. We’d need a lot more space to accommodate everyone, since I’d also invited the build crew. By the time everyone arrived, we were seated arm to arm, barely managing to fit everyone in.
I sat right at Kyle’s side, our legs pressed up against one another’s, just as they had been at the bookstore café that special night. He caught up with Ben and Taryn about their college plans before DJ managed to get a minute with Kyle.
“How are you liking it over at the Safe Support Network?” DJ asked him.
At the encouragement of Kyle’s therapist, whom he’d made so much progress with, he’d taken up some hours over the summer to volunteer at the domestic-violence center in downtown Wyachet.
“I’m really enjoying it,” Kyle told DJ. “I’m trying to steal as many hours as I can manage now that Tex is feeling better.”
“Just make sure you keep Saturdays free,” Maya piped up.
“Of course! I wouldn’t miss a Saturday.”
“Wait, wait,” Taryn said, pulling her attention away from Matthew, whose face was practically covered in mashed carrots. “Don’t we need to be toasting James’s divorce getting finalized last week?”
Kyle turned to me, unable to hold back a grin. I was sure I must have been smiling ten times as wide.
The pain, the hurt, the trauma. It had all finally come to an end.
Kyle and I shared a private knowledge of just what that had all meant to me, not only that I had filed, but that I’d taken my life and my mind back for good.
Until it had truly happened, I hadn’t realized how much it’d been weighing on me, how much Sheila and those horrible memories haunted my life.
“I don’t like the idea of drinking to the end of something,” Kendra chimed in. “I say we drink to the beginning. To James and Kyle.”