Read Online 44 Book Five by Jools Sinclair - Free Book Online

camping a lot when we were kids back home,” he said. “He loves astronomy. He taught us all about the stars and planets and black holes. He made each of us learn about one of the constellations and then we had to teach the others for the next time we were out.”
    “That’s so cool,” I said.
    “So your dad wasn’t around at all when you were growing up?”
    I had told Ty about our dad, about how he had left when I was a baby.
    “Nope,” I said. “Never knew him at all. He just left.”
    “Left?” Ty repeated. “What an ass.”
    “Kate never talks about him. She packed away all his pictures. All she’s really told me was that he broke Mom’s heart and did some bad things. That’s it.”
    “Wow,” Ty said. “That must be hard.”
    I nodded and let my head fall onto his shoulder.
    “You asked me once about my religion,” he said. “This is it. The stars and planets, the trees. The river. This is where I’m happiest, where I can breathe. Where everything makes sense to me. Where I get my answers.”
    I understood what Ty was saying, because most of the time, I felt the same way. Being out in nature, out on the river all day, reached me in ways nothing else could. It helped balance things, make them right. I lost my darkness when I was in nature. 
    “I know what you mean,” I said. “I feel like that too, sometimes anyway.”
    “I know. I can tell that you get this. I find that pretty amazing especially since you almost drowned in a lake.”
    “Well, technically I did drown.”
    He kissed me again and I melted into him. We kissed for a long time under those stars, that sky, his hand caressing my hair and then dropping down to my waist and pulling me into him.
    The wind rushed through the junipers and an owl hooted in the distance.
    We sat for a moment longer quietly soaking in the night. I looked back up at the stars, trying to shake off the emotions that were pooling inside.
    “It’s late,” he said.
    He helped me down from the truck and closed the back of the bed. He put his lips on my mouth again, the cool empty land vast around us.
    “I had a great time, Ty,” I said when he dropped me off back home. “I loved looking at the stars with you. It was…” I paused, searching for the right word. “Magical.”
    He nodded, but I could tell he was troubled about something, that something was on his mind. I closed the door over and the truck’s light went out and we sat quiet for a moment.
    “I know when you give your heart to someone it’s not a small thing,” he said. “It’s the biggest thing. The hardest thing, to love someone like that, to give them everything you have. Everything that matters.”
    I nodded.
    “And I know that you are sensitive and see worlds around you that I can’t see. I know that you’re unsure of us in that way.”
    “I’m not unsure of you.”
    “And I know that you still love Jesse, and that you feel like you’ll betray him if you’re with me.”
    “It’s not exactly like—”
    “Listen, Abby,” he said. “I’m here. I’m alive. And I’m crazy mad in love with you. I think about you on the river, I think about you before I fall asleep. When I wake up. When I’m out looking at the stars. When I shouldn’t be thinking about you, I’m thinking about you. And all I want is to be with you. For us to be together. That’s all I can think about. It burns inside sometimes.”
    I didn’t know what to say.
    “But I can’t settle,” he said. “I can’t have just a part of you. I want, I need, all of you. I’ll wait for you forever if I really have a chance. If you’re really able to move on. But if you gave your heart to him and you can’t take it back, you need to let me know so I can find a way to release this, this… hold you have on me.”
    I inhaled as I sat there, lost in his words. There was so much to say, so much I needed to tell him. That I did love him, that I never wanted him to release me. All these thoughts flew through my head,