Monica Murphy - Four Years Later

He’s smiling at me, his gaze soft, his hair a bit of a mess, as if he’s run his fingers through it again and again. Leaning down, he presses a tender kiss to my lips, then pulls away. “Congrats, Chels. I’m so proud of you.”

“Thanks.” I grin, so happy I feel like I’m going to burst. I still can’t believe he’s mine and that we’re together. That this beautiful, sweet, funny, irritating, sexy man loves me as much as I love him. “Are you ready to get out of here?”

He raises his brows. “Are you?”

“Definitely. It’s so hot.” I nod, glancing around at everyone else starting to leave the field. “We’re all dying to get out of here.”

“I have a gift for you first.” He holds up a bouquet of pink roses, the same shade as the one he gave me oh so long ago, and my heart melts. He thrusts them toward me and I take the bouquet, the clear wrapping crinkling in my hands as I bring the flowers up to my nose and breathe deep their familiar fragrance. “They always remind me of, well … you know.” He’s smiling so big and my love for him nearly overwhelms me.

“I love them,” I whisper, tears threatening, really meaning that I love him. He’s so sweet to me, so good. I remember how I once was, all tangled up in knots over everything and nothing. Worried that I was doing the wrong thing, needing to be a good girl, accomplishing my work, my assignments, desperate to keep everything under control but not really happy.

Not really living.

Owen has untangled all my knots. Smoothed them out and made me see there’s more to life than order and control and being good and seeking approval. There’s beauty and pain and love and sex and happiness and anger. And it’s okay to have all of that, to feel all of that. He makes me feel.

And I know I’m loved.

“Where to now?” he asks, his gaze warming when I unzip my graduation gown and shrug out of it, then drape it over my arm. I’m wearing a pale yellow sundress, and his eyes zero in on the little straps that tie on each of my shoulders. I can only think he’s imagining untying those bows and slowly peeling the dress off of me.

I’m imagining the same thing.

“I don’t know,” I say as he slips his arm around my shoulders and we start walking across the field toward the campus, where his car is parked.

“Feels kind of good to say that. Don’t you think?” He plays with the bow on my shoulder, his finger tracing the loop of fabric, and I shiver.

“Feels good to say what?” He’s distracting me. I can hardly focus when he touches me like that, even in a crowd of hundreds of people, like right now, because we’re surrounded completely.

Somehow, it still feels as though it’s just me and him.

“That you don’t know. We don’t know what we’re really doing next, do we? The entire summer is open for us to do whatever we want.” He smiles down at me, the sight of it making me a little dizzy, and I suddenly stop, causing him to stop, too. People brush past us, some of them grumbling irritably since we’re standing right in the middle of everyone’s path, but I don’t care.

I don’t think Owen cares either.

“I’d rather not know what I’m doing with you, Owen, than have everything plotted out for the rest of my life with someone else.” I mean it. He’s the only one I want. The only one I need.

“I feel the same, Chels. Exactly the same.” His voice is as soft as his touch upon my face, his fingers drifting across my cheek, and I close my eyes, in that moment so completely lost in him …

That I’m also co m pletely found.