Page 1 of Dear Future Husband (The Dearly Written #1)

Maybelle

Dear Future Husband,

I stared at those three words. Words I’d written a hundred times.

Words I cherished and words I cried to. Pulling my blanket up over my shoulders, I glanced at my bedroom windows.

Bruise-colored evening light stained the blinds.

I twisted back to the book spread out on my lap as I clicked my pen once, then twice.

Sucking in, holding and then letting out a deep breath, I put my pen to the paper.

The only time I ever truly feel alive is when I imagine escaping. Running away from the pain, the memories, and the fears. It makes sense that running away is why I often have this dream.

I’ve told you about this dream before.

A vivid dream that is full of so many conflicting wants. A dream that’s always so intense. Intense enough that I can feel the sand beneath my bare feet threaten to rub my skin raw. But I don’t let up my efforts—I relish in the feeling.

In this dream, I am racing, flying down a beach bathed in morning light, away from the past, the dark corners of the world. The salty sea air is a welcome aroma to my senses and a delight as it combs through my curly hair, whipping and tangling as I press forward.

The dream is always on a beach, and it always leads to a fork in the road. A choice.

Growing up, when I found myself faced with the choice of one way or the other, I often let my gaze dance to the path on my left. The one that would lead me to you.

I mean—at least—I think it’s you.

My being feels drawn to the path where you stand. I hesitate, looking out at you while you watch me from where the waves brush up on land. Then I turn my attention to the right.

That way is empty, a clear path to the end that lures me away. Through the years, I’ve veered left, running with all my might. My breathing is labored. My heart is scarred. I’m weary with a soul-deep exhaustion, but you are the fantasy I chased after.

As I’ve gotten older, the image of what I believe is you on that beach has blurred.

It’s becoming more of an illusion than a hopeful dream.

And the lonely, short path to my right is one I find myself often stepping toward.

I never get far enough to see what the other path offers; I usually wake before I can.

Finding myself in my small bed alone, trapped, stuck, tangled up in the confines of my comforter and sheets—

Just as I did now.

“Maybelle! You up? We gotta go.”

I rolled to the right. My blue alarm clock stood smugly on my nightstand. It looked down on me with a disdainful time face that informed me just how late I was to start another day.

“Maybelle,” the familiar holler of my name rushed out from some place down the hall. “If you aren’t out here and ready to go in the next five minutes, I’m leaving your ass to walk to school!”

Lovely.

“Go ahead,” I drawled back as I accepted defeat and buried myself back under my bedcovers.

As much as I wished I could skip, Mom wouldn’t let me miss the last days of school—no matter how pointless attendance was.

Peeking out from under my bedsheets, I rubbed a hand over my sleep-riddled eyes.

I shifted to look at the nightstand to my left.

The journal I fell asleep writing in sat atop the table surface.

It didn’t look down on me condescendingly like the alarm clock.

It smiled at me, giving me the motivation I needed to keep breathing.

Today marked the last official Monday and week of our high school careers—mine and my brother’s.

Today’s spectacle was the rally. It was a whole ordeal—one that Liam, my twin brother, the student body president, and varsity football captain, was in charge of. And currently the one threatening me with the shame of walking the five miles to school alone.

Jerk.

It may have taken every drop of my diminishing motivation to pour myself out of bed, but I picked up a pair of jeans from my bedroom floor and slipped on my favorite, fitted grey shirt.

“T-minus two minutes!” Liam shouted from what I guessed was the kitchen. Which meant he was on the move, nearing the exit, my abandonment and impending long walk to the school.

I didn’t bother answering him as I brushed my teeth. Sliding a pair of strappy sandals on, I tied my long curls into a loose knot on top of my head. Then I stumbled out the door behind Liam, with about thirty seconds of his patience to spare.

Regaining my balance, I approached our short driveway and the tiny family car we shared with our mom.

“We aren’t taking the car today. Mom needs it to get to work,” Liam said as he swung his backpack over an arm. He adjusted his football jersey, so it laid straight on his bulky shoulders.

“Did you order a ride, or were you planning on walking to school with me?” I asked, bending over to fix the strap of my sandal that meandered off the back of my heel in my rush out of the house.

“No, Trey’s on his way to pick us up.”

I paused, mid-rise; palms suddenly sweaty in the sixty-degree, shady morning breeze. My mind warred with wanting to be frustrated that I’d been rushed despite our ride not having arrived yet. But I was too preoccupied with the nerves that were now tightening and twisting in my chest.

Trey Turner.

Star running-back on the football team, the senior heartthrob—and my brother’s best friend. Those two had been two peas in a pod since sophomore year when my family moved to San Francisco.

While Liam was the star quarterback of the team, Trey was the first-string running-back and, of course, best in the state of California.

Both boys shared the responsibility of being co-captains of the team.

And when Liam ran for and won student body president, Trey was his devoted vice president.

Now, Trey and Liam would continue their rule together in college, since they both just signed to play for the D1 football team of Southern Desert University this fall.

Except, I didn’t just know Trey Turner for being my brother’s best friend. I knew him for the way my heart threatened to combust in his general vicinity.

“Oh, okay,” I barely uttered before the honk of a black, topless Jeep flying up the road peeled through the morning air.

The vehicle pulled to a stop before us. The front doors missing from the hinges gave me an undisturbed view of Trey dressed in black pants and proudly wearing his football jersey. The scene was enough to shove my heart up into my throat.

“Hey, Triple Threat! Thanks again for the ride. I owe you one,” Liam shouted over the stereo music as he easily slid into the front passenger seat.

“Anytime, but you do owe me.” Trey grinned as he turned the volume of the speakers down enough for me to better hear the roaring of nervous energy in my head.

Neither boy acknowledged me as I quietly—not so gracefully—climbed into the back seat of the driver’s side and buckled my belt.

“Name it,” Liam said as the Jeep lurched forward, and we made our way to Harbor High.

Now, I knew my brother was a decently good-looking kid. He had tight, blonde curls like me that bounced over his forehead in the wind. A tanned, muscular physique from football and long days of surfing in the sun. Then sapphire blue eyes and a strong white smile.

But while my brother was handsome, his best friend was in a league of his own. I may have been a little biased, seeing as I was comparing him to my brother... But there was no exaggeration in saying that Trey Turner was a seriously blessed young man.

As the Jeep hurried down the road, the wind tousled Trey’s light caramel brown hair, knocking soft waves into his forest green eyes. His eyes were framed by dark, long lashes any girl would sell her soul for. His smile was a weapon. Dimples flashed as if he knew just how lethal they were.

This boy would never understand the horrors of an ugly, awkward teen phase.

It took every bit of my very limited amount of “coolness” and self-respect not to drool at the rear-view mirror that gave me an unperturbed view of those green eyes.

That is, until…

“I need you to set me up with Tracey Carter. The cute cheerleader you said is in your physics class.”

I suddenly found the black screen of my powered off phone very mesmerizing.

“Trey, no,” Liam rejected bluntly, shaking his head of honeycomb curls.

Betrayal etched itself into the lines of Trey’s usually unblemished face. “And why the hell not?” he demanded.

His focus wasn’t entirely on the road before us, which had me tugging on the seat belt across my chest, double-checking to make sure it was still doing its very vital job.

Liam’s jersey twisted with him as he faced his best friend. “Trey and Tracey, for one, sounds so stupid together. And two, I was with Tracey over the weekend—if you catch my drift.”

The dancing of my brother’s brows caused the betrayal blanketing Trey’s face to mold into something akin to disappointment and faint amusement.

“Of course you were,” he huffed.

Liam chuckled, slapping his large, football-throwing hand on Trey’s muscled shoulder. “What about that one girl that was doing my homework this last semester? Alyssa something?”

Trey side-eyed him. “You mean Olivia?”

Liam, the sweet boy, seemed to be using a lot of brain power before he finally responded, “Oh, yeah, Olivia. Why don’t you hit her up? Bet you’d be making all her high school fantasies come true.”

Trey scoffed, while I swallowed down the bile burning the back of my throat.

“Hey, May, are you alright back there?” Liam called back to me. My head was mushed into the back of Trey’s seat as I wondered just how fatal it would be to throw myself out of a moving vehicle. Not at all doubting whether it would be worth it or not, though.

“Oh, hey, Maybelle. I didn’t see you get in the car,” Trey cheerfully greeted.

I responded to both boys by keeping my face pancaked against the back of the seat.

Refusing to allow them to witness just how red my skin burned from the mere mention of my name on Trey Turner’s tongue, I lifted one hand with a meager thumbs up.

I considered if it would be more effective to casually open the back door and roll myself out or to leap out the open car roof.

Both options sounded worthy of the moment.

The boys accepted this response, and Liam led a discussion of how he “scored” the best this year with the girls. Then how much better college women would be. Plus a lot of other stuff I dissociated from to preserve the dwindling respect I had left for my twin brother.

Thankfully, it wasn’t long before we pulled into the student parking lot. The band was outside, blasting the school anthem. An archway of balloons crowned the gymnasium double doors, and all the seniors filtered through.

Trey blasted his radio speakers as he sped into his assigned parking spot, a signal to all the students loitering in the lot that The Kings had arrived.

I wanted nothing to do with the approaching crowd of teens. So, in an effort to escape the car and the general area before we could be surrounded, I moved to grab my bag. Then I launched myself at the door handle.

Except, as I leapt for the door, it simultaneously flung open. Before I knew it or could save myself from the catastrophe, I went barrelling out of the lifted Jeep, free-falling to the asphalt. But instead of breaking my face on the street—I was caught in a couple of big, brawny arms.

“Christ, May, are you alright?” Trey asked, as his solid arms cinched in around my waist.

The raging curse storm of horrid language that threatened to spew from my mouth was just ridiculous. I worked to recover my balance, but the face-full of Trey freaking Turner’s massive chest had me bumbling over myself.

I shifted a look back to the Jeep. My balance was offset by my stupid left foot that somehow trapped itself between the bottom sill and chair. I slowly twisted back to face him, thinking about how I often forgot how tall Trey was until I randomly found myself in his arms.

Which…this would be a first.

I held two handfuls of his jersey on either side of his lower back. My skin was on fire. I knew every bit of my face scorched a deep red as I stared up at him through my lashes.

“My—my foot… It’s stuck,” I murmured. My biceps flexed under Trey’s grip as he steadied me and peered over my shoulder to see that my foot was, indeed, stuck.

How? Why? What all-powerful being had it out for me today to put me in such a humiliating predicament?

Trey looked back at me, seeming a little surprised. But he quickly replaced the fleeting look with an easy smile and two irresistible dimples.

“I’m sorry. That was my fault. I wanted to be nice and grab your door, but I probably should’ve given you a heads up. Here, hold my hand. I’ll get your foot.”

I obeyed, holding to Trey’s calloused hand while he smoothly slipped my foot out from the crevice between the back door sill and chair.

“There you go, Mayhem.”

I reclaimed my balance and picked up my over-the-shoulder bag that had fallen to the road. Before my “fight or flight” could kick in and send me running, I paused, just for a moment. I quirked a curious brow at my handsome knight in shining football jersey.

“Mayhem?”

I witnessed a new side of Trey that morning, one I didn’t know existed. One that blushed, one that looked a little unsure of himself.

He chuckled, recovering from the moment with a flawless, teasing smile pulling at his lips. It had my knees going weak.

Ignoring my previous doubts, I realised the universe was actually smiling on me today. Because Trey Turner leaned in close and spoke so low, it made my skin pebble with goosebumps .

“Mayhem, because you’re kind of a mess, but a really cute mess.” And then, as if he hadn’t just all but destroyed me with that comment alone, he had the audacity to top it all off with a wink.

I was Jello. Melting Jello. Actually—more like juice. Seeping, dripping, sticky juice that was puddling and evaporating in the now bright California sun.

Say something witty, flirty. Be hot. Think sexy. Say thank you. For the love of God, at least smile… Nope. I spun on my heels and raced away; stone-faced.

I could never look him in the eyes again. I would need to move to Antarctica or bury myself in a six feet deep hole. Anything to never subject that boy to my awkwardness ever again.

“Maybelle!” Liam shouted over the crowd that now gathered around the two boys.

I heard him, but I refused to look back. He continued to holler after me, anyway. “Trey is taking us home after the rally, so meet back here!”

Perfect. Just perfect.