Page 144 of Dear Future Husband

I want to live. It was a new anthem my body, my mind, my heart and soul sang to with renewed vigor. I can’t explain the experience I had after I accepted Liam’s hand and leapt from the car. All I knew was my mind hadn’t been so dark or quiet those hours I rested. And the company that was with me understood the hopeful song my being sang to.

I want to live.

I want to live.

I want to live.

If I listened long enough, I wasn’t alone in my singing.If anything, I knew without a doubt that I would never be alone again in this life I vowed to love—to live.

After a long while of recovering my home, I found myself drifting closer to where Trey was hard at work. He was so focused on his area. He didn’t speak to me. But I noticed the subtle glances at me from afar.

When I looked back at him, he didn’t immediately tear his gaze from mine. Instead, he smiled. I smiled back. Then we returned to work.

At some point in the next day, when the sun had already grown bright in the sky, breaking through the windows, I watched him.

Trey’s lips were tight as he concentrated on wiping down a countertop layered in dust. I studied those lips. The lips I had kissed and the lips that kissed my—my everything. I had seen that body that ripples and swells against the confines of his clothing. Trey Turner, in all his glory, had seen every single inch of me, had worshipped and caressed every bit of my skin.

The skin that was now on fire as both my worlds collided before me, leaving me breathless.

“Mayhem?”

My focus tore up from his grinning lips as I looked at him. I couldn’t help the twitch of a smile at the corner of my mouth as my eyes met his.

I really, really liked that nickname.

“Trey,” I answered.

His smile grew a smidge more. “Are you okay?”

I nodded. “I’m a little hungry,” I admitted, and his small grin grew into a full smirk.

“I have some snacks out in the car,” he offered.

“Pop tarts?”

“Of course.”

We silently dined on pop tarts after that. Smiling when we made eye contact, but we didn’t talk again, not until later that night. When we both stepped back from our work and admired the clean home before us.

It was like I never left. Like Mom and Liam could walk back in through the front door at any moment. The cherry on top was the candle Trey salvaged from a storage closet and lit with a lighter he found.

It smelt of soft flowers, tart oranges and a little like… hope.

“May,” he said, and I turned to him.

I was no longer dressed in his hoodie. Earlier I spilled water all down the front of it when I was readying to mop. I changed myself into a lightweight pair of shorts and a soft, blue, cotton tank. Then I braided my hair back into a long rope down my back.

“Yes, Trey.”

He wore jeans and a fitted navy-blue tee, his tan skin a beautiful color against the fabric. He took a step toward me, and my breath caught.

“Are you okay?” he asked me again.

He was nervous.

TheTrey Turner was nervously talking to me, but he knew me, every bit of me. He had read my journal. My beautiful journal I safely stowed in my old bedroom, waiting for the moment I was ready to gift it back to the man who stood in front of me. My blush became scorching as I recalled him claiming that journal was his.

ThatIwas his.