Anywhere With You (24 page)

I climb back into the Pathfinder, wiping the stray tears from my eyes. Hailey reaches over and grabs my hand, silently offering me support. By the time we make it back to Gran’s, my tears are under control. That is, until Liam comes barreling out of the house. He must have heard us pull up. He runs to my side, just as I am stepping out. He captures me in one of his hugs and I feel the dam break. Tears flood my eyes and I sob into his chest. Tears of sadness and tears of happiness combined. Liam picks me up bridal style and carries me to the porch swing. He sits down with me on his lap, holding me tight.

He places a kiss on the top of my head as he softly whispers, “I love you.” He doesn’t say anything else. He just holds me close and lets me cry. After several minutes, I am able to control my tears. “How you feeling?” he asks me.

I sit up on his lap. “Good, I’m sorry that you had to see that.”

Liam tucks my hair behind my ear. “Don’t apologize, I want all of you, Allison, anyway that I can get you.” He kisses my temple. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“I wanted to tell my parents about you. I wanted to tell them that I had fallen head over heels in love with you.” I reach up and press my palm against his cheek. “My tears are happy and sad. Happy that I have you in my life, that I have you to wrap your arms around me and make me feel safe. Sad, they will never get to meet you and see how amazing you are. They will never get to see the happiness that you have given me.” I take a deep breath. “When you came rushing out the door to me, I could no longer control my emotions,” I explain.

“They are always with us, they know how much I love you.” He holds me tighter and when he speaks again I can hear the emotion in his voice. “They know that you are my forever.”

It is getting late so we say goodbye to Gran and Aiden’s parents and begin the journey to the MacCoy’s. Liam and Aiden load the Pathfinder and Liam tosses Aiden his keys. Aiden nods his head understanding that Liam wants to sit in the back with me. He tucks me close under his arm. I am emotionally exhausted and fall fast asleep in his arms.

I wake up to Liam pressing a kiss to my forehead. “Wake up baby, we made it.” I open my eyes and smile at him.

“I love you, Liam MacCoy,” I whisper in my husky sleep laced voice. I am gifted with his smile, dimples and all.

“I love you too, beautiful. Let’s get you inside.”

Exhausted from the drive, we say a quick hello to Mr. and Mrs. Mac and turn in. I quickly change into one of Liam’s t-shirts and slide into bed. As I slide in Liam reaches for me. He draws me tight against his chest. “Goodnight, beautiful. I love you,” I manage to tell him I love him too before falling back to sleep.

Christmas morning with the MacCoy’s is amazing. We all sit in the living room eating pastries and drinking coffee before opening gifts. I am nervous to give Liam the gift that I made him, so I busy myself with passing out my gifts to everyone else. Mr. and Mrs. Mac love the gift card that Aiden and I got them to a restaurant close to the bed and breakfast that Liam and Hailey reserved for them. Aiden loved his Best Buy gift card. He wants a new stereo system for his car. Hailey squeals when she opens her coach wristlet and matching iPhone case. I smile shyly at Liam as I hand him his gift. He smiles at me in return and hands me two more as well. He of course makes me go first.

I open the larger one first and grin from ear to ear when I see that it is the new coach purse that I have been eyeing at Macy’s. “Go on you got one more.” Liam urges me. I slowly un-wrap the last gift and open the black felt case. Nestled inside is a beautiful diamond heart necklace. I look up at Liam with tears in my eyes. “I figured that since you own my heart that you should have a symbol of that to wear as well,” he says while his entire family and Aiden watch us.

I don’t care who is watching, I launch myself at him and hug him tight. “Thank you, Liam. I love it. It’s beautiful.”

“Not as beautiful as you,” he whispers so only I can hear. He clasps the delicate chain around my neck, placing a soft kiss against my nape when he’s done. I grab the box that his last gift is in and hand it to him.
Here goes nothing
. Liam makes quick work of the wrapping paper and gently lifts the lid off of the box. He pulls out the pale blue binder that represents our school colors. Liam opens the binder and then looks back at me. “How did you?” he turns to the next page. “Where did you?” he looks through a few more pages, before setting the book aside and capturing me in a soul searing kiss. “I love it and I love you. This is the most amazing gift ever. When did you find the time to do this?”

I sigh with relief that he likes it. “I worked on it the weekends you had away games and spent the weekend at Grans. She gets tired easy these days and sleeps a lot, so I worked on it while she napped.

“What is it?” Aiden asks him. I kept the gift a secret from him.

Liam smiles as he passes it to him. “It’s a scrapbook of my college football career.” He tells him as he reaches for me and gives me one of his bear hugs. “You’re amazing, Allison.” The book is passed around and everyone complements me on it. Once they have all looked at it, Liam sits on the floor between my legs and studies the details of every page.

“Well there is just one more gift to give,” Mr. Mac says as he gets up and grabs four envelopes from the mantel. “We know how close all of you are and well we thought it might be nice if all of you were able to get away for a weekend.” He hands each of us an envelope. “All of these are the exact same, but we wanted each of you to be able to open it so on the count of three.” On three, we all tear open our envelopes and inside is a voucher for a three night stay at a log cabin in Gatlinburg, Tennessee. All four of us are immediately on our feet hugging Mr. and Mrs. Mac and thanking them for the gift. “There is no expiration date and it’s paid in full so you guys can go when you can get your schedules to mesh. Of course, you will have to call to schedule your date with the company.”

We are only able to stay at Liam’s parents for two days due to Liam and Aiden needing to get back to football practice. They are playing in a bowl game on New Year’s Day that our school is actually hosting for the first time.

Liam unloads all of our gifts into our room back at his apartment while I unload all of the left overs that Mrs. Mac sent home with us. Once I am done, I walk back to the bedroom and find Liam sitting on the bed propped up against the headboard with his scrapbook in his lap. “Hey.”

“This really is incredible, Allison,” he says as he continues to flip through the pages. “You managed to capture my college football career into this book. This is me. This is the best gift I have ever been given and to know that you made it for me makes it even better.”

“I wanted to do something special for you,” I hesitate, I was afraid to tell him what I was thinking. I decide to just go for it, he loves me. “I thought it would be something that you could show your kids one day,” I shrug.

He leans over and kisses me softly on the lips. “I will definitely be showing this to
our
kids, so they can see how amazingly talented their mom is.”

Waking up with Allison tangled in my arms is something that I will never get tired of. She pretty much lives here now. Well, not technically, but most of her clothes are here as well as all of her books and laptop. It’s been weeks since she’s stayed at her dorm. Hailey is also always here unless she has a date, which has been less often. The four of us have become a tight nit group. Allison thinks that there might be something brewing with Aiden and Hailey, but I don’t see it. Of course, I rarely pay attention to anything else when Allison is around, I am captivated by her.

Today is New Year’s Eve, and since Aiden and I have a big game tomorrow we have decided to just have a quiet night at the apartment. Hailey decided to stay in with us as well as Blitzen and his date Jerrica. Blitzen very seldom has dates, he is more of a hook-up kind of guy. I can’t judge him because I used to be the same way before Allie. Maybe Jerrica will be the one to help him change his ways.

Hailey and Allison take care of all of the food preparation while Aiden and I set up the living room to accommodate everyone. We picked up a case of beer, but that’s all since we have the big game tomorrow. Tonight we are just going to chill, not get our drink on. Hell, all I wanted to do was make love to Allison, but what else is new.

When Blitzen and Jerrica arrive, you can tell that she feels out of place being the only new person to the group. Allison must sense this as well because she quickly introduces herself and drags Jerrica off to the kitchen with her and Hales.

“So you ready for the big game tomorrow?” Blitzen asks us.

“We got this,” Aiden replies as he holds a fist out to each of us to bump.

“I think our chances are good, our team is strong,” I respond. We continued to talk about the game until the girls got our attention yelling that the food is ready, didn’t have to tell us twice. They have really outdone themselves. We have meatballs, buffalo chicken dip, finger sandwiches, chips, cookies and brownies.

I tug Allison into my chest and kiss her just below her ear. “Thank you for doing all this.”

She smiles as she turned to Jerrica, tying to include her “Thanks again for helping us get all of this together,” she tells her.

“This is so good,” Aiden says as he shoves a meatball in his mouth. I watch while Hailey grabs a napkin and wipes his face for him.
Interesting.

After we eat, we gather in the living room for a game of battle of the sexes. The girls kick our asses. So of course us being the manly men that we are, we refuse to play again and demanded another game. We vote for Rockband, so we take turns, guys and girls. Of course we are all acting crazy and making fun of each other, which leads to cranking up the iPod and dancing around the living room. Aiden, Blitzen and I decide it was time for more food once we return to the living room the girls have cleaned up the games and are starting a movie. We are watching Easy A, and surprisingly none of us have seen it before. I sit down in the recliner and tug Allison down on top of me. Blitzen and Jerrica take the loveseat while Aiden and Hailey take the couch. The movie is good, at least what I watch of it. It is hard to focus with Allison’s warm body snuggled up against me. The movie ends right before midnight which works out, we were all able to get our New Year’s kiss. I’m able to see Aiden pulling back from Hailey as I pull my lips away from Allison’s. I know that he wouldn’t hurt her and I can’t exactly tell him to keep his hands off my little sister since Allison is just like a sister to him and I pursued her. I will have to at least mention it, another time though.

Blitzen and Erica thank us for having them and leave just a short time after. Allison and I say goodnight to Hales and Aiden, and lock ourselves in our room. We go through what has now become our routine, brushing our teeth together and changing for bed. Allison crawls into her side of the bed and I follow pulling her next to me as close as I can get her.
She is never close enough.

“I love you, beautiful girl,” I whisper in her ear.

She looks over her shoulder. “I love you too, Liam.”

I kiss her. She rolls over to face me and deepens the kiss. I have my hand on her thigh and slowly move it up under my t-shirt that she is wearing to cup her breast. The next thing I know she has her shirt off and is pulling at my boxer briefs. I take the hint and make quick work of taking them off and throwing them on the floor. Allison climbs on top of me and continues our tongue dual. She pulls back and gently guides me home. I immediately sit up and hug her. I kiss her neck and work my way down to her breasts slowly making love to them with my tongue. Allison must have different plans as she pushes me back onto the bed and begins to rock against me. My hands immediately find her hips and I assist her with bringing us both the pleasure that we need. I am so close and I want us to fall over the edge together so I gently rub between her thighs. This brings us both crashing into bliss within mere seconds. She collapses on top of me and I instantly wrap my arms around her and kiss the top of her head. My mind travels to the engagement ring that I have hidden in Aiden’s room. I know that now is not the right time, but soon. I have to know that I will have these moments with her forever. I need to make her mine in every way.

Allison pulls herself off of me and immediately I miss the connection, the warmth of being inside of her. She curls up on her side and wiggles back into my chest where she belongs. It’s only a matter of minutes until I feel her completely relax and her breathing evens out, so I know that she’s asleep. I gently brush her hair back from her ear and whisper, “I love you, Allie, so much. I can’t wait to marry you.” And then sleep takes over.