Heathen & Honeysuckle (Pacific Shores, #1)

by Sarah A. Bailey

My first impression of this boy was that he may be the most beautiful person I’ve ever seen. His first impression of me was that I had terrible taste in music.

He gives me a smile that is nothing but troublesome. “Yep. Honeysuckle.” “Excuse me?” “You remind me of honeysuckle. Nectar sweet as honey, like the sound of your voice. But the berries are deceiving—poisonous if consumed.” He shrugs playfully. “Beautiful and deadly.”

The boy next to him snorts. “Of course you’d already know what her mouth tastes like.”

“Zach, the older one, was adopted. August came a couple years later.”

“A heathen is someone who doesn’t practice an organized religion, although I do suppose your understanding of it would be the more modern definition.” He shrugs. “You’re not wrong, though. I don’t believe in religion, and I don’t particularly care for most of society’s rules, either.”

“I think you just need to learn the difference between the rules that matter, and the rules that only truly exist so they can be broken.”

Truthfully, though, everything about her reminds me of honey.

And maybe I’m wondering what her lips taste like.

“What are you doing here?” “Bored.” I shrug. “You wanna sneak out and go break some rules?” “Sneaking out is breaking a rule,” she snipes back. “Okay,” I drawl. “You wanna sneak out and then not break any other rules?”

“Well, I think maybe it’s best we ease you into the whole rule-breaking thing, yeah? Since you snuck out, we can keep the rest of the night tame. You wanna go get matching tattoos? Or we could get our tongues pierced?”

“This is what I live by: I only break rules that affect me and only me. I don’t ever do anything to hurt someone else. I don’t run traffic lights or steal from people. I don’t hurt or lie or cheat. I go swimming at night because the city ordinance in place is to protect me from drowning in the dark. I’m a good-ass swimmer, so I’m not too worried about that. Plus, if I drown, the only person I’m really hurting is myself, and⁠—” “And all the people who love you,” I say. He smiles at me. “That’s where you’re wrong, Honeysuckle. Nobody loves me. I can only hurt myself.”

But Leo’s hands don’t feel sinful. They feel reassuring, protective, comfortable. Maybe I shouldn’t trust him–maybe I’m as horrible and stupid and terrible as they claim my sister to be, but I don’t feel any of those things.

The last time I made a decision like this, it ended with the irreparably broken shell of my former self. Yet, somehow, I feel like running away from this wedding today may be the last chance I have at ever finding a way to piece myself back together.

“No, it’s not, but that’s how I’m going to spin it.” She shrugs casually, as if further ruining her reputation is of no consequence, as if the very thing I’ve been most afraid of my entire life is hardly an afterthought to her.

“I’m trying to protect Lou from this very type of pressure. Never in her life will she feel the need to do something that makes her unhappy for the approval of me or anyone else. You being strong and brave right now, Darby, is the exact kind of example I want to set for my daughter.”

Having her in my arms feels like the last ten years of my life have suddenly been erased. I’ve split my lifetime in two: before Darby and after Darby. I haven’t allowed myself to savor the blip of time that was Darby. Not until this moment. It hurt too much, and it was always too raw. So, I locked that summer away in its own private corner of my soul.

“Did you just notice how you didn’t mention yourself? That you didn’t mention him? You feel like you need to do this today because of the money that’s been spent on it. Because of the people who are watching. Because of your father. It’s not because you want this, not even because you think he wants this. It’s because you feel obligated.”

The fact that he just called me his and made that kind of claim on me—even if just to protect me from other guys—has my stomach doing kickflips in a way I’ve never felt before.

“If you want to save yourself for marriage, I think that’s great, but if you’re telling yourself you need to do so because your dad told you to, or because you’re afraid of being punished by your religion, that’s not okay either.”

“Any choice you make in life surrounding your body, Darby, you need to ensure it’s yours.”

“I haven’t found anyone I want to give a piece of my soul to yet…and I don’t want to take anything from someone else that I’m not willing to give back,” he says finally.

“Stop looking at me like that, Honeysuckle.” His voice is rough. “Like what?” I ask, suddenly breathless. His full lips part on an inhale as his tongue snakes out to rake across them. Maybe it’s whatever I’ve been drinking, but I realize I very much want to know what that lip feels like between my teeth. “Like you’re wondering what a piece of my soul feels like.”

Darby’s eyes narrow. “What was all that about?” I flash a smile at her. “Operation ‘Get Honeysuckle The Hell Out of Dodge.’”

I glance down to find the biggest set of honey eyes gazing up at me. She sticks her bottom lip out, and I swear to every god I don’t believe in that if she keeps looking at me that way, I’ll give her everything she’s ever wanted.

“You can’t even stand up straight, honey.” I chuckle. “Do you even know where you are right now?” She nuzzles her head against my chest. “I’m exactly where I want to be.”

“Don’t ever hide your smiles from me, Honeysuckle. I need to see every single one, especially the ones I put there.” I move my hand to cup her cheek. “Show me every smile, and I’ll do whatever you want, yeah?”

It’s like you know you existed before you found it—that thing, but you don’t know how you lived before it. You suddenly can’t imagine yourself being whole without it.

Now, I’m not sure how I’ve lived this long without kissing Darby. I’m not sure how I’ll continue existing without it, not now that she’s put it out on the table, that she’s told me she wants it. Wants me. I can’t imagine why.

“Why are you doing this, Leo?” With his gaze still glued on the windshield, he says, “Because I keep my promises.”

“I didn’t do anything but show up in case you needed me. The decision to leave, the decision to risk everything you’ve built for yourself, to stand up to the people who’ve been controlling you all your life, was yours. Today, Darby, you’ve given up your entire way of living.

“No. We’re not doing that. I asked you where on Earth you wanted to go, and you said Pacific Shores. I’m taking you to Pacific Shores. I’m taking you home, Darby.”

“It is important to me that you understand that isn’t true, that you understand you deserve happiness and love and fulfillment, regardless of the past.”

I can almost feel for the guy. I know what it’s like to wake up and find out Darby Andrews disappeared from your life. I know the kind of irreparable, gut-wrenching, soul-crushing heartbreak that comes with losing her, though I think he’s devastated for very different reasons than I was, and that makes me hate him.

“Because it’s crazy to me, Honeysuckle, that someone as beautiful and golden and good as you could want someone like me. I couldn’t kiss you until I let you see all of me, all of my past. Who I really am—an abandoned orphan from the wrong side of the tracks with nothing going for him, who will never be good enough for you. It’s impossible for me to believe that, after seeing that, you still want me.”

Her lips taste like finding faith, like realizing you believe in God for the very first time. Because how could I not? When she presses her beautiful body against me and runs her warm, delicate hand down the length of my torso, exploring me—savoring me—how could I not believe that God created her just for me?

“Wow,” she says breathlessly. “I’ve clearly been missing out.” I smile down at her. “No, baby. That’s something you only find once. Something you’ll only ever know with me.” “I guess you were worth the wait, then.” She smiles back.

“I read all of Lele’s books.” I shrug. “She’s my sister, and I want to support her.” “By reading about the girl who falls in love with her serial killer kidnapper?”

I hate that I still want to kiss them, that I still remember exactly what it feels like to have her against me and how hollow it feels to have her sitting right next to me now yet so far away. To know that I’ll never hold her that close again.

There can’t ever truly be friendship between us, because Darby and I were once intertwined stars. At one time, we burst with light, threading through each other and forging together, though, in reality, we were both dying suns. Now, there’s nothing left of us but stardust floating through the cosmos in the dark.

“Leo,” she breathes. “Stop looking at me like that.” “Looking at you like what, Honeysuckle?” “Like you know exactly what my soul feels like, and you’ve been incomplete without it all this time.” I do. I have.

“You taste like honey,” he rasps. I hum against his mouth. “You taste like corruption.”

“I don’t think it matters what promises we do or don’t make on this beach. I’ll be stuck on you, regardless. So, you can go back, and I can stay here, but I’ll still be yours.”

“I think I might wait my whole life for you to come back, Darby. Something tells me there would be no point in trying to move on from this, because I’d end up searching for you in every place I go, in every person I meet, aimlessly wandering until I find you again.”

I’m fairly certain she’s talking about Zach, but she doesn’t use his name, so neither do I. “Is it hard? Being so…intertwined? Between your relationship and the mutual friendships floating all around you?”

Rage toward her father. Her mother. The man she almost married, whose name I refuse to say, even inside my own head. She deserves so much better than all of them. She deserves me.

She doesn’t hide her smile from me this time, but she does burst with laughter. “That was really cheesy.” “Yeah, well, you make me a melted puddle of emotion, Honeysuckle. It’s your fault.”

I allow myself, for the first time in ten years, to feel every emotion coursing through my body, to relive the perfect moment from the perfect night all those years ago, the moment I knew I’d well and truly given my heart away to the girl in my passenger seat.

I realize now that I’ve never had it back. I’ve been wandering the earth with a hollow chest all this time. I know that my heart—my soul—has been sitting right here, in the palm of her hand. Blood spreads through my veins again for the first time. It feels like life is being breathed back into me as I watch the sunset over the red rock canyons, illuminating the girl of my dreams in a golden glow.

I’ve never much related to love songs, but as his thumb runs across my skin again, I can’t help but feel like the music speaks to me directly. I suddenly wonder how I’ll ever belong to anyone else again now that I’ve experienced what it feels like to be his.

Because the most beautiful boy I’ve ever seen, with bright blue kaleidoscope eyes, ended up being the kindest, purest, most genuine soul I’ve ever met. He ended up being the person I spent my whole life needing but never had, and now, I can’t imagine ever living in a world where he doesn’t exist.