Dust by Eva Everson (epub e reader .TXT) 📕

he didn’t stop me. That was it? The thing he couldn’t keep away from me forever? “Westley,” I breathed out his name as though it were a prayer. “Live all the way over here? Away from Mama and Daddy?” Since the night of our engagement, I’d imagined my life as a young married woman. I’d work each weekday at the shop, stopping by my parents’—my childhood home—for a brief visit on some afternoons, then heading to our home, once we had one, to cook dinner. Which was, of course, something I hardly knew how to do. I could learn to do, yes. But leaving Bynum? Abandoning my preconceived notions of what happily-ever-after looked like?

His hand slid up my throat, cupping my jaw, his fingers pressing into the back of my scalp. “Ali,” he said simply, his eyes never leaving mine. “I can make so much more money here. We’ll have a house like the one behind us. Like Paul and DiAnn’s. And we can drive over here on weekends.” He cast a glance toward the lake, then back to me. “Go boating. Eat out. Sit around bonfires all the time. Whenever you want. Go back to Bynum for visits. Whenever you want.”

I couldn’t think. Not with him so close. Not with his fingers massaging me and his eyes and lips nearly pleading. I couldn’t— “This is something you really want …”

“For you, Ali. For us. For our future and the future of our children. Odenville is a wonderful place. Paul and Heather and I used to hang out there all the time when we were kids. At DiAnn’s grandmother’s. And, I know that you’ll love it. In fact, I promise that you will.”

I would love it. That went without saying. The one place I swore I never wanted to even visit in my whole life was the peat-filled wetlands of the Okefenokee Swamp, but that would be paradise as long as the boat ride included Westley. Still, there were so many questions. “How long have you known?”

“DiAnn called me this past week. After I’d asked you to come here, so I don’t want you to think—She’d visited her grandmother and …” His voice trailed away in anticipation of my next question.

“Is that where you went this afternoon? To see her grandmother?”

Despite the night’s drape around us, I noticed when his face darkened. “No. I told you where I went. But we are supposed to stop in Odenville tomorrow on our way back to Bynum. To see Miss Justine. And to look around a bit.”

I tried to conjure it up, to recall the town we’d passed through before arriving in Baxter. Charming, yes. With more buildings than I was accustomed to. A wide main street lined with imposing houses on either side, fat columns holding up balconies secured by elaborate wrought iron railings. Would we live in a house like that? For certain my mother would be over the moon at that thought, but my father … what would he say?

I knew the answer—without question, he’d just want his little girl to be happy.

“Ali?” Westley whispered my name as his hand slid down my sleeve, sending a warm chill down the length of my legs. He tucked it then beneath the opening of my coat until his fingers found the tender flesh of my waist, moving only as far as my father would approve. Whether I wanted him to or not, Westley was sticking to the promise he’d given Daddy. And, if he could be trusted with me now, in this moment where every fiber of my being wanted him as surely as every fiber of his being wanted me, then I knew he could be trusted to take care of me once we married. Once we lived away from all I’d ever known my whole life. Once I’d been dropped into the period of a giant question mark.

“Yes,” I said then, forcing a strength I was nearly uncertain of into my voice. “Westley, I’ll go anywhere you want me to go and I promise you, I’ll be happy there.” My arms slid around his neck until he squeezed my body against him—an awkward imprisonment, but beyond anything I ever wanted to be released from. “As long as I’m with you,” I moaned. “Oh, God, Westley. I love you so much.”

We loaded up the car, said good-bye to Paul and DiAnn around eleven thirty the next morning, then pointed the car, top down, toward Odenville, Georgia—a place I reckoned I’d soon enough call home. Westley held my hand during the half-hour drive, smiled at me occasionally, but said little.

“Mind if I turn on the radio?” I asked when we were halfway there.

“Not a bit,” he said.

I leaned over, fiddled with the dial until I heard a song I recognized. I smiled at Westley, my hair whipping around my face. “‘Dust in the Wind,’” I said. “I love this song.”

“Kansas. I saw them in concert once,” he said.

“Did you?”

“Yep.”

And then we drew quiet, listening to the haunting melody, both of us growing pensive by the lyrics. “Do you think that’s true?” I asked him when the song had faded to a commercial for a local plumbing company.

“Do I think what’s true?”

“That all we are is dust in the wind?”

“For dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.”

I feigned a cough. “What?”

“It’s from the Book of Genesis.”

I turned toward him, shifting completely. “I know that. I just—I never heard you quote a single verse of Scripture.”

Westley threw back his head and laughed. “You think I don’t listen when I’m in church?”

I shrugged. “I mean … nothing personal or anything, Westley, but you don’t strike me as the type.”

He grew sober. “The type to what?”

“You know … think about things like dust to dust. Mr. Daredevil and all that.”

Westley raised his chin. “We’re almost in town.”

The car slowed and I turned to face the front. “I need to do something with my hair,” I said. “Before I meet DiAnn’s grandmother.”

“You look