FEELS LIKE COMING HOME by REBECCA WRIGHTS

"Jones?" I almost thought I had made it up when I heard him call out my name. But when he repeated it for a second time, I knew I wasn’t hallucinating. No one had called me Jones since my freshman year at college and only one person had ever called me that in my lifetime. It couldn’t be him, could it? I turned my head to follow the voice and the air got caught in my throat when I saw him. Immediately, my heart started to pound so loud in my chest that I thought it would burst right out.

Standing a few feet away from me was Camden Johnson. Professional football player, recent trade to the local pro team, and the boy I grew up with. Not just the boy I grew up with, but the boy who I had loved since I was in seventh grade. I looked at him without saying anything, taking in everything that he was now. Tall, built, undeniably hot. His face was the same as the last time I looked at it, except older and more mature. He had stubble along his strongly formed jaw and his hair was longer than he normally kept it when we grew up together. His eyes pierced straight through every logical thought I was trying to form. Deep emerald and perfectly fit for his face, exactly as I remembered them. The eyes I looked for every day on the playground, in the cafeteria, in the hallway, and that night during our freshman year in college.
What was the boy from my past doing here in a coffee shop, now a fully grown man?
And why did I suddenly feel a warm sensation filling my entire body?

I had walked away from him ten years ago and vowed to move on with my life.
But as life would have it, here is Cam again, making me melt during one of the darkest times of my life.

I would be smart this time.
I would protect my heart this time.
I wouldn't fall for him, again, this time.
I would keep him at a distance because I had to or else it would be my heart that gets broken yet again.

Forever and always.