Waves - Book #2 [completed]

16 ~ Hiraeth

It was our last day of everything before my life took a complete one-eighty.

I swallow the rock-sized lump in my throat and hope that my tongue stops feeling like it's made out of lead soon. Honestly, I don't know where this memory snippet came from. It's only Christmas and my birthday is still two months away, but all kinds of memories have been haunting me ever since Mason brought Samir up the other week.

I feel anger rising in my veins. I'm not angry at the memory taking up space in my heart because I don't ever want them to fade. I'm angry that Mason seems to have some kind of weird power over me, eliciting these strong feelings and reactions from me with almost everything he says or does. And it all loops together to one tantalizing emotion: Longing.

Longing for touch. Longing for safety. Longing for closeness. Longing for...

Oh God! Don't finish that thought.

I don't want it. I don't need it. All was good until Mason dropped this bomb of a question on me and made my emotions raw again. I feel them bubbling very close at the surface now.

I worked so hard to get back on my own two feet and feel like myself again after my heart was ripped out of my chest. I patched up the Samir-shaped hole in my soul alone over the past years. I got my life back. I healed on my own because Danny, Samir's parents and this entire goddamn town prefer to hush about it. Sweep everything under the carpet as if that makes the pain go away. Out of sight, out of mind? Bullshit!

And now this dickhead from the great lands of America comes to town, shakes up my group of friends with his cocky remarks and confuses my feelings, inserting himself into my thoughts and making me homesick for something I thought I could never have again. He makes me feel all that yearning again, ripping open wounds that I thought were healing just fine. Things I kept under control for so long. Like an addict who's been dealing with treating his addiction just fine and is now put in front of a mountain of his preferred substance.

Maybe I am weak.

My steps are wooden as I follow Chase with Baby who sat between his legs the short drive hot on our heels too. Together we walk up the overgrown concrete tiles to my mom's apartment building. It's still the same house I grew up in and where I shared a room with my brother growing up. Chase goes ahead of me and shoulders the front door open before climbing the stairs to the first floor.

"A dog?" I exclaim as I stand in the middle of a cage in a shelter in Brisbane and four puppies yelp and whip up my legs. One is brown, one black and two are white.

"Yes!" Samir smiles the broadest smile I've ever seen. Okay, maybe except our wedding day. "You've wanted one since we moved into the house. Happy birthday, Blue." He kisses the top of my head.

"But is this a good time?" I ask, with cinched brows and still in disbelief – and probably a little love drunk from the cuteness overload happening at my feet as the pups roll around and show off their pink round bellies. "I mean with all the qualifiers coming up this month and..." Why am I talking? My husband wants to get us a puppy. Shut up!

Samir rolls his eyes playfully, hunching down and grabbing one of the white puppies who's also the smallest of them all. "We'll make it work, I promise. Look how cute she is," he coos and picks it up. "Are you a baby girl? Oh, yes, you are."

The little dog greets him with a sloppy wet tongue kiss to which he grimaces. But then his face softens and his eyes all but melt. I laugh and step closer, stroking my fingers over the soft puppy head. "Did you just fall in love with another girl?"

Samir can't stop grinning. "I just might have."

"Who wants a dog now?" I quip.

"But I fall more in love every day with you, Blue," he replies earnestly, looking straight at me with earnest eyes that leave no space for doubt.