He Will Be Mine (New Horizon Book 1)

The Breakdown: Matt

Five Years Later

After my long-time girlfriend, Jessica, accepted my proposal the other night at dinner, the first thing I thought of was taking her to the same campground where my parents spent their 20th wedding anniversary. I guess because it was a special part of my childhood, and I so clearly remember how much they loved going there, it stands out in my mind as a good way to celebrate a marriage. They kept talking about how it felt like a second honeymoon for them, and for some reason, that has stuck with me all these years.

It took some serious persuading to convince her to come rough it in the woods with me, and honestly, it wasn’t until her best friend, Meredith, invited herself to come along that Jessica was fully on board. Meredith has been with my best friend, Trevor, since we were 12 and in junior high together. Meredith is why Jessica and I got together in the first place, so it fits that she would come along to help us celebrate our engagement. And since it has become a group thing, we also invited Tyler, Trevor’s and my roommate, to come too. Tyler is single, but he is always down for any excuse to drink beer and party, so he was game before we even asked him.

This morning we all packed our suitcases, tents, and camping gear into the back of my old secondhand minivan and set out on our 7-hour road trip.

The first thing Jessica asked me when I told her we would have to drive for several hours was, “Why can’t we just camp somewhere around here?”

Her question brought a smile to my face because I remember always being the one to ask that when I was younger. Sure, there are plenty of good camping locations more locally, but this one is special to me. I guess at my ripe old age of 21 I have grown sentimental, and I want to go back to the same place where my extended family used to meet every summer to camp together.

“Because this place is right smack in the middle of where my dad’s family lived all spread out around the country, so it was about an equal trip for all of us to make,” I explained to her why my family chose it.

She argued a bit more that since we aren’t meeting up with my family, it makes no sense, but eventually she stopped protesting. I think she could sense that it was important to me not just to go camping, but to do it there.

For the first few hours, Trevor and I sat up front and the girls were in the middle seat. They seemed to be content passing the time having their not-so-private girl talk and giggling together about practically everything. Every now and then, one of them would squeal when Tyler would randomly pop up from his seat in the back and mess with them. He’s a goofball, but I love that about him. There’s never a dull moment when he’s around.

Partway through the trip we stopped for food and a bathroom break, and now Jessica is up front with me and Trevor moved to the middle with Meredith. Tyler seems to love being in the back, and we’re happy to let him have it. Of course, Trevor and Meredith can’t seem to keep their hands off each other and have spent most of the past couple hours making out. Tyler will reach forward to pull her hair every now and then, and it’s actually kind of funny because she thinks Trevor did it and gets turned on by it. I don’t think either of them have noticed that they have an extra participant.

Jessica and I have been talking about the wedding. We agree that we want to wait until we are finished with college before getting married, and since we are both heading into our last year of undergrad at the end of this month, that will be at least a year from now. It is still too far in the future to be worrying about the finer details, if you ask me, but she insists we need to at least pick a date and start making reservations for things. Apparently, venues can be booked up years in advance, so you want to book early to make sure to get your preferred date. Who knew?

“Well, fall is my favorite season and my favorite color palette, so I was thinking October. What do you think, Matt?” she asks me.

Honestly, I could care less about the details. I just want to have a wedding. I’d be happy doing it at the courthouse, but I know that will never fly with her. She can be a bit high maintenance, and I’m sure that her head is spinning with ideas for how to make it the biggest production possible right now. I’m okay with that, too, though. If she’s happy, I’m happy.

I decide that’s what I’m going to tell her. “That sounds perfect, Jess. If you love it, then I love it. All I want is to be married to you. Everything after that is icing on the cake.”

“Aww, so sweet, Mattie,” she coos at me as she reaches across to take my hand.

I grin at her and she beams back at me. Then I return my attention to the road and continue listening to her rattling on and on about all her ideas. I’m so glad her parents are planning to pay for most of this.

This strange sense of déjà vu comes over me as we get closer to the campground. The woods and scenery to the East start to look so familiar, which is odd considering that we are still about 20 minutes from our destination. I slow down just ever so slightly to give me a little extra time to think about it, and just then there is a loud bang on the passenger side of the vehicle. The van starts to slip and pull a little to that side and it feels like there is suddenly a ton of drag and not so much control in the steering.

“Damn it!” I curse out loud and bang my hand on the steering wheel.

I struggle to pull the van off the road and maneuver it into the nearest driveway. The scraping and dragging sound it is making tells me I’m in trouble. Just my luck, there are signs very brightly and boldly declaring “No trespassing – Keep out!” on either side of the drive, so I would assume that the owner of this driveway isn’t going to be terribly happy that I’ve parked here.

We all climb out of the van and circle around it to see what happened. The tire on the front passenger side is destroyed. I can’t even explain it because I have never seen anything like it before.

“Whoa, dude, you like, exploded that tire,” Tyler states the obvious.

“Yeah, I see that,” I respond, still not believing it. “I don’t even know what can possibly do that to a tire, though. These were new, and I didn’t see anything in the road, especially not that could do that amount of damage.”

Meredith is walking around holding her cell phone in the air, seeming to be trying to find a signal. Well, that’s just perfect. Five people with cell phones and probably not enough signal to place one call between us.

Jessica starts freaking out about the idea of having to walk anywhere and is already grumbling about what a dumb idea it was to come so far to do something we could do in the backyard if we wanted to. Really perfect. Now the fiancée is blowing up on me too.

At least Trevor seems to have his head on straight. He goes to the back to look for a spare tire, though even if he could find one, I don’t think it would help us. I think we need more than just the tire, judging by how utterly destroyed everything looks. Plus, it doesn’t matter. I distinctly remember that we decided to leave the spare behind when we were struggling to fit everything in the back this morning.

As I’m trying to calm Jessica down, and just about when Trevor realizes his efforts are futile, I see a couple of very fit guys around our age approaching us. They’re not walking, either. They’re running, and fast.

And that’s when it hits me. I remember this scenery because this is where I saw that girl with the dark hair running and then trying to flag down our car about five years ago. I can’t believe I didn’t recognize it immediately. That girl haunted my dreams for a solid year after that and I didn’t think I would ever be able to forget.

“Hey!” one of the guys bellows out. “This is private property. You can’t be here.”

I take a deep breath and try to get a grip on myself. Guys like these tend to intimidate me in the best of circumstances. I’m tall, but I’m not particularly fit, and I know these guys could have me on the ground in an instant if they wanted to.

“Sorry, we didn’t mean to stop here,” I start to explain. “Something in the road blew my front tire and we were just trying to figure out what to do.”

“That would explain that gunshot sound,” the other guy comments.

They come over to us and look us over, then the taller of the two approaches the van to look at my useless tire.

He whistles as though he is impressed. “Yeah, you aren’t going anywhere like that, are you. You’re going to need that rim and everything replaced before this is driveable again.”

He and his friend confer for a couple of moments while I try to calm Jessica down. She keeps cycling between being pouty and mad that I dragged her all the way here and worrying and dreading how far we might have to walk or carry our stuff. I give her arm one last comforting pat and then approach the guys.

I hear one of them mutter under his breath, “We should just call Aly down here. She’ll be gentler with them,” and my nerves return full force.

Gentle? What sort of people live here, anyway?