allowed all the worry and pain to slowly disperse from my body.
Yet I knew that it would definitely take much more than a week of emails and texts to build this one’s trust to meet me for a date.
I could feel my heartbeat pound against my chest.
Thank fuck that I now knew where she was. I’d always tried to keep my hopes in check over the years, never really believing that I’d find her, and yet here she was beaming at me on the screen.
She looked just as spunky, and clearly as determined as ever. The picture showed her in a cap and gown, so I knew she’d graduated college even without family support. You had to admire that.
What a girl Lucy Rivers had always been. Her face was as familiar as my own once, but now I could see the clearer lines and less rounded features of a woman, not a girl. She looked harder, tougher than I remembered her, but her cat-like eyes were still filled with the sadness I had seen in them when she’d left here five years ago with hatred in her heart.
But still, even through the haunted look in her eyes, she looked fantastic. I could feel the usual pull that her closeness had always left me with as a teenager, an ache in my groin and a desire I could never shake. And all this from a tiny profile photo… I could only imagine the effect she would have on me if I were to see her in person.
Yet, how could I possibly let her know who I really was?
She would run a mile, but I had to know she was okay, had to try and rebuild the trust we had once shared. She was the only woman who had ever gotten me so hot and horny I couldn’t think straight, and trying to maintain our lifelong friendship had been tough as we had blundered through our teen years.
God, I remembered that glorious, summer night like it was yesterday. We had so nearly taken everything to the next level… and that incredible kiss still tormented me to this very day.
The perfect moment when we had finally been alone had been unexpectedly interrupted by the news that would change everything, forever. I could still recall the frustration I had felt, my cock so hard and eager, and my body feeling so robbed of the sensation of her soft breasts pressed up against my hard chest, her silky skin under my fingers.
Even now, just thinking of that night alone in her bedroom made my cock twitch with excitement. Oh, I wanted her… still do.
I pushed the urge to explore the memory further as I tried to figure out my next move. My head felt dizzy with indecision.
I should tell Lucy’s dad, Tom, and my Mom that Lucy was okay, that I’d inadvertently found her. They’d want to know she was fine and had fulfilled her dream of being an interior designer. They had a right to know, I told myself, but an almost imperceptible inkling urged me to keep the information under wraps for now.
Guilt swirled in my belly. Tom had been worried out of his mind for years, had tried to trace her, but without enough money to hire a private detective we had come up against every kind of barrier. The police had deemed her old enough to make her own decisions. Her leaving home had broken the poor man’s heart. Mom had tried to console him, and the arrival of Morgan just six months later had probably helped him to learn to live with the absence of his beloved first daughter, but he had never come to terms with her being gone. It had been so hard for them both when they got married, not having her there, not having her blessing.
It had been tough for me too. I hated the idea that the girl I adored was now my stepsister, but I didn’t take it half as badly as Lucy did. To her my mom and her dad getting married was a betrayal she simply could not get past.
I wondered if she was still angry, or if maybe I could find a way now to be the friend she had so needed then, but that my idiotic, hormonal teenage brain couldn’t bring itself to be at the time. I’d been angry too. I had wanted her too badly. The new sudden change from best friends – and almost more – into being siblings had made it insanely hard to be around her, and my desperate attempts to make her listen, not just react, had made her push me further away too.
But unlike Luce, I had known that Joanna, her mom, had schemed to ensure her husband would be cared for and loved by her best friend even on her death bed. And I was stubborn. I couldn’t, and wouldn’t condemn my mom, or Tom for doing what Jo had so begged them to do – not even for Lucy.
They deserved to be happy too, and I know they found solace from the pain they had both been through in each other, and real love grew between them. It wasn’t just about Jo’s dying wish; it was about what made them both feel whole again. I would never want to deny anyone that feeling. I hoped every day that I would find my better half so I could be whole again too. And here she was, in Providence, Rhode Island - and suddenly the mountain I had to climb to gain her trust again seemed even higher than when I had no clue where she was!
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