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

until, as if on cue, Westley’s arms slid around my waist, and his lips nuzzled my neck. “Now, this is what I’m talking about.”

“Westley,” I whispered harshly, then broke free of him, but not before the now familiar tingle had rushed down my body and back up again. Not before the warmth had spread and settled deep into my belly.

As expected, my fiancé laughed at my embarrassment, then turned and walked into the second bedroom where twin beds had been set side by side under single windows. The walls, painted a creamy yellow, brought an added layer of warmth to the room. And, like all the other rooms, the baseboards and crown molding trimmed the room in off-white.

“Perfect for when our parents come to see us,” I said to Westley, whose gaze had turned to something I didn’t recognize in him. Not yet, anyway. Something that told me he saw beyond the blue bedspreads and the white throw pillows. Beyond the doily on the bedside table between the beds, the one serving as a resting place for a milk glass lamp.

Miss Justine joined us then. “Or for when you decide to expand your family,” she noted, having overheard me. “Although, that would mean getting rid of the beds.” She sighed then. “Oh, well. The two of us will have to shop for a crib and the other things you’ll need for a nursery, that’s all.”

A new heat rose in me, one Westley spotted immediately. His pensive look changed to an expectant one, one that made my heart pound, both in anticipation and in dread of things happening too fast.

“Goodness, child,” Miss Justine said as if the meaning behind her words only just then hit her. “No rush, of course.”

Westley stopped an hour outside of Bynum, pulling up next to a phone booth, which he darted into to call my parents. To let them know we were running late and that we’d explain more when we got there. “What did they say?” I asked when he returned to the car and nearly before he shut the door good. “Who’d you talk to?” My thumbnails hacked away at each other.

He chuckled as he drove back onto the highway. “What are you so nervous about?”

“Just—Westley—they’re going to be so upset when we tell them about moving. Who’d you talk to?”

“Your mother.”

I leaned my head against the seat, turned my head toward the window, and peered out to the sky that had already turned the color of dark-blue ink. I allowed my eyes to roam heavenward, straining to see stars whose light might have burst through already. Finding only a few and recognizing none, I looked back at Westley. “Did she sound upset?”

“About what, Ali? They don’t know anything yet.”

“But—I mean—did she wonder why we were running late?”

Westley squeezed his eyes shut, then opened them again. “Do you want a play-by-play?”

I reached over, ran my fingers into the curls of his hair, not wanting him to be angry with my insecurity and knowing the effect it had on him. “Please.”

“Be careful,” he said then, casting a sideways glance my way. “You know what that does to me.”

I leaned toward him, kissed his jaw, and said, “I’ll be careful if you just tell me.” My fingers left the curls that looped over his collar, then rested on his shoulder. A reminder that I was there, and I needed him. More than ever, I needed him.

“Well,” he drawled. “She started off by saying hello.”

“Cute.”

“Then I said, ‘Mrs. Middleton?’”

I could imagine my mother’s fear at hearing Westley’s voice. Sense her concern. “What’d she say?”

He gave a dramatic roll of his eyes before answering. “She said, Miss Worry Wart, ‘Did y’all get held up?’ To which I said yes and that we’d explain everything when we got there.” His eyes found me again, the whites of them more pronounced against the darkness surrounding us. “She also said, ‘Well, it sounds like y’all had a good time.’”

He grinned at me then and I slapped his shoulder. “Stop it,” I said, aware of the blush racing madly through me.

“So,” he said after several minutes of silence. Silence that held, I knew, the two of us remembering the night before. The way he’d held me. Kissed me. Drove me nearly to a place of torment without upsetting the apple cart and wishing for our wedding day to be over and our wedding night to begin. “How do you want to handle this?”

I took a deep breath as a billboard I recognized came into view. I pointed to it. “When we were little,” I said, my words veering away from his question, “my sister and I used to use these billboards to mark how much farther we were from home.”

Westley glanced toward the sign. “In what way?”

“There are five of them, all advertising the same motel on the other side of Bynum. The first one says ten miles and then the next one tells you that you’re getting closer … Anyway, Julie and I used to see that one back there and we’d both say, ‘One …’ and then we’d watch for the next one.”

“And I bet when you saw it you’d say, ‘Two …’”

I laughed. “Yes.” I studied the side of the road, whirring past us in deep shades of green. I blinked at the farmland beyond the fence posts strung together with barbed wire. The shadows of trees that loomed toward the horizon. And I waited for the next sign. “I guess,” I said, “we just tell them.”

I looked at Westley. “They’re going to be upset, Wes.”

He reached for my hand and I gladly gave it, happy for the warmth and the softness of it. With one wrap of his fingers I felt that everything in the universe—no matter how awful—would be all right. There was nothing we couldn’t get through as long as we held on to each other as we held on now. Even if only by our fingertips. “I know,” he said, then added, “I