Stars shine for you. (2)

(James' POV)

It was getting dark and I wanted to surprise her, knowing the past few days should've been stressful for her. I needed to do something special.

Her house was situated in a beautiful place: surrounded by flowers and trees, it wasn't hard to get lost in the beauty of that place. In fact, every time we did, we would walk around as she picked flowers for me to place in her long brown hair, which always led us to have to take a bath together as soon as we found her house. Sometimes we would even find little animals that would nervously wait for us to give them seeds and fruits we found or brought with us.

I couldn't tell if it was that place or her that made me feel at home, but holding her hand to get lost in the woods and kissing her softly while we laid on the grass just felt so right.

I lifted her chin and smiled at her, "come here princess, we need to get a jacket for you", I took her hand, leading her to our room.

She nodded and followed me, "where are we going, daddy?".

I put my finger over her lips, "shh... just follow me". I picked a white floral print jacket and helped her put it on before we opened the back door. Even during spring days you could feel the cold air at night and the last thing I wanted was for her to get sick.

Still holding her hand, I started walking. As the sun quickly went down, it left behind a bright pink, almost purple light, with which it painted every single inch of that beautiful evening. I didn't have to say a word for her to know where we were going, it was our favorite place.

"Daddy, daddy! Look!", she pointed at the sky, where large groups of birds returned home. We didn't exactly know the reason behind it but everyday, at 7:00pm, they would fill the sky for a few minutes to finally get to the tallest trees we could see around.

"Count them baby! I see um... twelve, twelve or thirteen".

"Hmm... No daddy they're fifteen!", she laughed.

"Ohh you're right love. Hey those ones look lonely", I said pointing to another group flying behind them. "Can my princess tell me how many they are?".

"Two daddy, that's easy", she giggled. "But they're like us, they're not lonely, they have each other and that's enough, right?", she looked up at me.

"Of course. As long as we have each other, everything will be okay". We finally arrived at that special, almost magical place. A big rock patiently waited for us under a tree, where we could see the sky clearly. The sun was almost gone and we ran to sit on the rock. "Okay, you know how the game works, every time you see a star I owe you a kiss, and the same for daddy".

She nodded, her eyes firmly looking at the sky. "Go away sun, I want my kisses!". We waited a few minutes before she saw the first star. "There! I got the first one", she said, proudly pointing at that star.

I smiled, "good job!". I wrapped my arms around her waist, she looked down for a second, trying to hide her big smile, as soon as she looked at me, wrapping her arms around my neck, I closed my eyes and kissed her gently. Her soft lips tasted like cherries.

She smiled more and grabbed my shirt, whining a bit. "Daddy, I love you".

"I love you too, baby girl". I looked at the sky again, finding another star. "Look, that one is brighter, I think I win this time".

She gasped, "so pretty!", and nervously biting her lip, she took my hand and kissed it. We smiled.

"There's two stars over there, oh and one there too. How many kisses will daddy get?".

She kissed my cheeks, "two and...", then my lips, tightly grabbing my shirt again, "three". She looked up again, "another one there!".

"That's the one I found, love!".

She pouted. "That means um, that I get two kisses daddy".

I laughed, "that's not how it works", I said and started tickling her. We ended up laying on the grass and I kissed her forehead. When we looked up, millions of stars were shining just for us, for our smiles, for our love...