When Cicadas Cry (13 page)

“You think they liked me?”

I find his stare. It’s getting dark all around us now, but I can still see that beautiful sea in his eyes. “I think they loved you,” I say.

“Your sister’s cool.”

I nod. “She’s a lot like my grandmother—the one that taught us about the bamboo plants.”

“Yeah,” he says, as if he’s remembering. “I can see that. And I bet your sister has one of those love plants, too.”

I laugh. “She does. But hers isn’t so much a love plant. It has ten stalks and means completion.”

“Aah,” he says, tilting his head back slightly. “That sounds fitting. But that has to be one hell of a big plant.”

“It is,” I agree. “It takes up, like, her whole desk upstairs.”

He chuckles a little at that. “Come here,” he says then, pulling me closer.

I fall into his chest. He’s warm, and he smells like his cologne. I love his smell.

“So, this is where you grew up?” he asks.

“Yeah,” I say. “There’s a park not too far from here where I spent a lot of my summers. In fact, I got my first broken arm when I fell off the monkey bars there.”

“Your first?”

I nod. “Yeah, I broke it again in junior high in a softball game. And don’t ask me how. I was sliding one second, and then the next, I felt this sharp pain, and all of a sudden, it was Broken Arm Número Dos.” I hold out two fingers.

“Wow,” he exclaims. “You really are tough.”

I just laugh into his chest.

“Which one?” he asks.

“My right.” I hold up my right arm, and he takes it and trails soft kisses from my elbow to my wrist. The feel of his lips on my skin sends a rush of heat to my face. I try to hide it by burying my face deeper into the muscles in his chest.

“And my high school is about a mile down the road,” I say, after his last kiss to my arm.

“Do you think you would have noticed me in high school?” he asks.

I look up at him and into his eyes. “I don’t know how I couldn’t have.”

“Even if I would have just been a sophomore when you were a senior...”

“I still would have noticed you.”

“We could have been high school sweethearts,” he says.

“We would have been,” I say, laughin’ softly to myself. “I really didn’t have a high school sweetheart.”

“Really?”

“Nope,” I confirm.

“That surprises me.”

“Well, you’ve never met the boys in my high school.”

“Touché,” he says.

He runs the inside of his hand gently along the length of my arm. The contrast of my skin and his rougher skin works to soothe me somehow.

“Well, I didn’t have a high school sweetheart, either,” he says, squeezing me closer. “I had too many knuckleheads in my life advisin’ me against it.”

“Nooo,” I say, sarcastically.

“I know it’s hard to believe,” he says. I can feel the laugh tunneling through his chest, even before it leaves his lips.

Then, he grows quiet, and I just try to soak up everything about this night, including the way my dad laughed at his jokes and how my mom smiled at him. They see what I see, too. And what I see is only the beginning of how much I feel for this boy.

“Ashley?”

“Hmm?” I peek up at him, not wanting to lift my face from his chest.

“This is one of my new favorite moments.”

I smile wide. “Rem?”

“Yeah?”

“I’m happy you’re here.”

I hear him breathe in and then out, and I feel his chest rise and fall as he does it. “Me too,” he says. “Me too.”

And with that, I nuzzle deeper into his muscles and feel his arms wrap tighter around me. In this moment, I can’t remember what it’s like to hurt. It feels so far away now. Now, everything just seems so happy and so full of life and love and possibility. I want to hold onto this feeling for dear life. I don’t ever want to feel what it’s like to lose it. I don’t ever want to feel what it’s like to lose Remington Jude. I’m falling for him. I know that I am.

I’m falling for Remington Jude.

Chapter Twenty

Past

Ashley

“R
emington.” I sing his name because I think he secretly likes when I do it.

“What, baby?”

I come up behind him and throw my arms around his neck. “Don’t work today,” I whisper into his ear. “Stay home and play with me.” I kiss his clean-shaven cheek and squeeze his shoulders tighter.

He swings around in his chair, and I fall into his lap. “We can take a walk along the river or go to your grandpa’s farm...or build a bonfire and invite the whole town over.”

He cringes at that last one, and it makes me laugh. “Or...,” I say, “we can just snuggle on the couch all day and watch old movies.”

“I think...” he says, standing up and taking me with him. I playfully squeal and throw my arms around his neck as he slides one arm under my legs and one behind my back and carries me toward the living room.

He lies me down onto the couch and kisses my forehead. “I think that last one’s my favorite,” he says, falling gently on top of me. His mouth hovers over mine. I can feel his warm breaths tenderly hit my lips one by one. “I love you, Ashley Westcott.”

My smile starts to fade. Something in me stings at my heart a little. I haven’t heard those words in a long time. But I look into his eyes, and I see him; I see the man who is familiar, who is sexy, who is love, who is mine.

“I...” I place a hand on either side of his suntanned face. “I love you, too, Remington Jude.”

At my words, his lips edge up.

“I should have said that a long time ago, shouldn’t I have?” he asks.

I can’t help but smile. “I wouldn’t have believed you a day sooner.”

He looks at me with this longing that I don’t think I’ll ever get enough of. It makes me feel as if I’m the only girl in the world for him.

“And,” he says, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a little, silver key, “I want you to have this.”

“What?” I ask, taking it into my hand.

“It’s my spare key.”

“To here? To your house?”

He just nods, and I feel my smile growing wider.

“You know, Ashley Westcott,” he says, in a low, rasping voice. The way he says my name makes me take notice. “I realize there was probably a chance—before we ever met—that our paths were never gonna cross in this life.” He shrugs his shoulders a little. “You know, maybe it was some choice we made or didn’t make that caused a road to fork a different way or somethin’, and we missed each other by just an inch. We’d never know it, of course, and we’d go on livin’ our lives in blissful ignorance, never knowin’ what we missed out on. ...I don’t know, maybe we’d each marry different people and have a couple kids. And maybe we’d grow old with the people we married.” He pauses and lowers his eyes before finding mine again. “But I know, if that were the case—if I never would have crossed paths with you—I never would have known love. Because as far as I’m concerned, there’s only one definition of it out there...and I’m convinced it’s lyin’ right here next to me.”

He says his last word, and then he leans in and presses his lips to mine. “Did you know that?” he asks, pulling away from my lips and trailing tender kisses down my neck.

I can’t even form a word. There are tears in my eyes, as if they’re literally welling up from somewhere deep inside my soul, and his kisses are making me melt into a pool of sweet dizziness under his body. And with one last kiss onto my collarbone, he wraps his arms around me and pulls me close. I feel so safe as he holds me in this happy silence. And before long, I hear him hum a soft tune near my ear. I recognize it. It’s the song we first danced to. It’s the song we were listening to when I think we both knew we were in for a long ride. I squeeze the key into the palm of my hand, and then I nuzzle my cheek deep into his chest, and I breathe him in. I love this man. And I know, in this moment and without a doubt, I was right about this place and in coming here. To me, Ava was the fork in the road. This place has both healed my soul and stolen my heart. Thank God for this small town. And thank God that Remington Jude calls it home.

Chapter Twenty-One

Present

Rem

“H
ey, Jack,” I mumble. My mind feels distracted, like it’s somewhere else entirely.

“Hey, Rem! Pull up a seat.” He says the words way too cheerfully.

I throw my jacket over an old wooden chair across from him. And right before I take a seat, I steal a quick glance around the little bar, checkin’ to see who’s here. “Thanks for meetin’ me here,” I say.

“No problem. So, what’s up?”

I lean into the table. There’s no one in the bar except Old Man Seeger, who can’t even hear, but I don’t take any chances. “Well, you know how we joked about her writing a book one day?”

Jack’s quiet for a second. Then he cocks his head to one side. “Uh, yeah?”

“Well...” I draw out the word.

He doesn’t move. He just narrows an eye at me. “Wait, what are you sayin’?”

I can feel a long, drawn-out breath drag across my lips, as he stares back at me. “I’m sayin’ she wrote a book.”

“Ashley?”

“Yeah,” I say.

“About you?”

“Well, not exactly. But it’s a little too familiar, if you know what I mean.” I look around the bar again before my eyes settle back on him.

“Wow.” He says the word like it’s all still settin’ in. Then he leans back until both of the chair’s front legs are off the floor. “Wow,” he says again.

I sit back in my own chair and just watch him shake his head.

“It’s you, you know?” he says.

I shrug my shoulders and open my mouth to counter that statement, but nothin’ comes out.

“Well...?” he asks.

“Well, what?”

“Well, what’d she say?”

I rub the back of my neck. “I don’t know. What do you mean?”

“I mean, what does she say about you?”

“I don’t know. I just read a few chapters. The book was in my mailbox last night when I got home.” I don’t tell him I stopped readin’ it because it was hittin’ too close to home. I don’t tell him that I got scared; I leave that part out.

Jack stares up at the little bar’s ceiling as if it’s the most interesting thing in the world. “Wow,” he exclaims again, still shakin’ his head. He does that for a little while longer, until his eyes eventually settle back on mine. “You’ve gotta finish that book.”

I push out some air I think I had been holdin’ hostage in my lungs.

“Seriously, what are you doin’ here?” he asks. “Go finish it.”

“I just... Well, so what?”

He looks at me with both corners of his mouth turned down at the ends. “What? What do mean,
so what
?”

“So what if she wrote it?” I ask. “So what if it sounds familiar? So what?”

“So what?” He gives me this look as if I just spoke a bunch of gibberish. Then, he rests the chair’s legs back onto the floor and leans in over the table. “It’s your life, dude. If it’s real in the beginnin’, the end’s gotta be real too, right? Or at least, it’s gotta be what she wants to be real. Right?” Now, he scoots his chair even closer and rests his elbows on the table. “Don’t you wanna know what she thinks? Don’t you wanna know the ending? I mean, she just up and left. Just like that. Aren’t you curious to know why?”

I sit there and think about what he’s sayin’ for a minute. Then I slowly shake my head. “No,” I say.

“Come on, man. You gotta read it.” He swipes his hand at me and sits back in his chair.

“I don’t wanna know.”

“But it’s your life, dude.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“Is it?” he asks. He takes a long drag of his beer and then sets it back down onto the table.

I let out an audible sigh, mostly because I don’t know what to say next. It sounds crazy, but maybe he’s got a point. What if the book is meant to be a message? But what? What could it possibly say that would change anything?

I shake my head. “No,” I say.

“What? What do you mean
no
?

“No, I’m not readin’ it.”

He looks at me as if he wants to ask me
why
, but he never does.

“Who says I have to read the damn thing?” I ask.

His elbows are back on the table. “Dude, let me put it to you like this.” He rests a finger on his chin. “See, it’s like somebody just gave you a time machine and a crystal ball, and you’re not even tempted to look into either one of ‘em? ...At all?”

I shake my head. “I’d rather not see it all played out again, and I’d rather not know how it ends right now, either. I’ll figure it out eventually anyway.”

Jack sucks in a long, deep breath before crossin’ his arms over his chest. “Fair enough.” He seems to have conceded. “Okay. You don’t have to read the book. But you can’t keep this whole, damn town from readin’ it. And you know once they catch wind of it, they’ll want to get their hands on it quicker than flies to shit.”

This time, I’m the one restin’ my elbows on the table. I put my hands to my mouth, and I sit there, playin’ it all out it in my head. Then, finally, I press my back against the back of the chair, and I shrug. “Let them read it.” I try to say it with as much indifference as I can, even though just the thought of the entire, damn town knowin’ the whole story scares the hell out of me.

“So, you’re okay with them knowin’ how your story went...how it ends?”

A burnin’ starts to burrow through my chest. It sits heavy on my lungs, and then it takes over my throat and makes it hard to breathe. “As far as I’m concerned, the Rem and Ashley story ended the moment she left,” I say.

And at that, I get up, grab my jacket and head for the door before the burnin’ can hit my eyes, too. But just before I can get my hand on the screen door’s frame, I hear Jack’s voice loud and clear behind me—though I wish I hadn’t.

“And as far as she’s concerned?”

I stop.

“And it ended that same moment—as far as she’s concerned?” he says again, a little less rushed this time.

I pretend to ignore his last words, and I storm out of the bar. Jack knows not to push me on this. It’s the only thing that makes me break.