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He’d put them all in an album he named ‘Just For Me,’ and I knew then that I wanted all my forevers to be spent with him. Every minute. Every hour. Every lifetime.
“Because I want you to have it.” Another simple answer for a complicated question. He blinks at me through impossibly, and unfairly, long lashes. “Because I want you to wear it and think about me.” “Because you want to remind me that I used to be yours.” “Because I want to remind you that you’re still mine.”
“All I want, all I’ve ever wanted, is forever with her.”
“But I always knew I would get it back to you, and when I did, I wanted it to be something new, something to show that our future might not look anything like our beginning, but it could still be beautiful. Remade but still whole.”
A foundation we can build on until we’re solid enough to take the leap of faith starting over will require.
The hearts in their eyes, their hidden history, and the future Nic is about to ask her for. It almost feels too intimate to witness, the love passing between them, so I whisper a prayer that everything goes right for them and turn away.
Friendship with Mallory looks different than I expected. Like standing on a threshold you aren’t allowed to cross, balancing on the edge of a blade sharp enough to cut you, and wishing for the fall. For the chance to feel something, be something, have something that used to be yours but isn’t anymore.
“So, yeah, I guess I am speaking from experience.” “I always knew you were a fighter.” Wonder coupled with pride I don’t understand shines in her eyes. “To go through so much and still not give up takes a lot of strength.”
I like the sound of that, the way it captures what we are to each other. Two halves of a whole. Two people blessed with a shared sense of belonging that remains untouched by time
Trust. More specifically, her trust in me. Warmth spreads in my chest, driven by the presence of it in her eyes. She always did value the small things, the little moments of honesty and dependability that most people tend to write off as unimportant
because they think trust can only be built in instances of rare, life-changing events.
I have to tell her any and everything. All of my truths, no matter how small or seemingly insignificant, belong to her. Her hands are their home, and she might choose to discard them, to toss them over her shoulder or crush them under the soles of her feet, but she’ll never be able to say that I didn’t give them to her, that I withheld information from her or deprived her
the opportunity to weigh in on decisions that impact both of us. Whether she wants to acknowledge
it or not, she’s my partner in this life and the next. And I won’t ever make the mistake ...
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“Princess, I’m only going to find out what the hell is so important, and then I’m coming back here. To our home, to you.”
but you two are proof that we always end up where we’re supposed to be, that life can be beautiful even in the face of loss.”
“That love can be found in the most unexpected places.”
“I wish you two a million forevers and a life full of everything you want. No one deserves it more than you.”
to make your grief real to other people when they might have only seen your baby as a possibility, not a reality.”
Sloane is one of the closest people to me, and I know she’d say the same about who I am to her, and still, we’ve gone through so much of our life keeping
vital information from each other. Suffering in silence despite having someone in our corner who wouldn’t hesitate to help us carry the load.
“I do, and I also have to promise I won’t do that again. You’re my best friend. My sister. I don’t want to keep any secrets from you, and I don’t ever want you to feel like you have to keep things from me. I’ll k...
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He dedicated himself to my secrets, to uprooting them, to protecting them, to making them his, so I wouldn’t have to keep carrying them alone.
“He scares me, Sloane. I love him. I love him so much, but he scares me. And not in that 'he might physically harm me' kind of way, but in the 'he has the power to emotionally decimate me' kind of way. Even being friends with him is terrifying. Like right now, he’s off in California dealing with some mess that will probably end with him running off again, and I shouldn’t care, but I do because I love him, and I know I'm going to lose him again."
“And he looks at you all the time. Even when you’re not looking at him, even when you’re rude and mean to him, he still looks at you like he loves you. Like his whole world revolves around your smile.”
I love you.
I was wrong about so many things. I have so many regrets in this life, but you’re not one of them. I’m sorry. I’m so fucking sorry. I love you. I’ll always love you.
Your burdens are mine. I was made to carry them.”
“But if you want me to switch it up, become the man who loves you madly, who’ll listen to all of your problems while he’s got his face buried between your legs, I’d be happy to make the adjustment.”
They beg me to touch her, to sink my fingers into the softness of her flesh and bring her curves closer to my hard lines. They demand the taste of her skin and the divine power of her scent. They ask me to swallow her whole. They plead for me to savor her.
And because she’s her, the love of my life, the source of my every desire and need, she sees it all. The war I’m waging inside myself, the balancing act I’m attempting to successfully execute while dancing barefoot on the jagged blade of what was once my control.
“Do you want to get into an argument with me on your birthday?” “I’d rather argue with you on every birthday for the rest of my life than endure another moment of your silence.”
“That’s because there are years of history between us, and when you go quiet on me, the weight of it sits on my chest, suffocating me.” One of my hands comes up, landing on her cheek. My thumb brushes against the corner of her mouth. “Our history has taken some things from us. I know that. But it’s also given us so much, a level of comfort that we only have with each other.”
“Ask me why.” “Why do you want ten dates?”
“Because I want one for every year we lost. One for every birthday you spent without me. One for every anniversary we didn’t get to celebrate. For every Christmas where the only gift I wanted was your laughter in my ears and your heart in my hands.”
“Ten chances for me to show you that I’m not the same man I was before, that we can build a real life together.”
“Consistent communication. No more ignoring my calls or going weeks without answering a text. Of course, I would like to have all your time, but I know I haven’t earned that yet, so I’m willing to settle.”
want you to promise that you’ll walk away.”
“Fractured in ways they both thought could never be repaired, but when their second chance was within reach, they didn’t hide from it. And they didn’t put all kinds of stipulations on it. They were all in, and that’s what we need to be, Mal. We need to be all in, willing to give this everything we have.”
“What’s that thing people say about third times?”
His advance happens in fragments of time and space. Broken inches and shattered breaths passing in microseconds that I count in my head while I wait to taste our future on his lips. And when our mouths finally collide, it’s a slow unhurried union that turns the world upside down, oceans crashing into the clouds, wiping the sky clean.
At the start of something new and old at the same time. A collision of past and present, hopes and heartache. The first beginning we’ve had in a while that doesn’t have a designated end.
“I could have, but I wanted the first meal you had here to be something warm and familiar, so you’d associate those feelings with this house. With me.”
“I think that within your family you’ve created a role for yourself as the caretaker, the protector, the martyr. And despite everything you know about your family and friends indicating otherwise, you’ve decided that the only thing you have to offer them of value is servitude they didn’t ask for and, probably on more than one occasion, have told you they don’t need. They love you, Mallory, not what you do for them, which means if you stop doing for them and live your life, that love will still be there. So the question you need to ask yourself is why do you think it won’t?”
her soul and mine are wrapped around each other, inextricably linked, bound by a love that refuses to be undone no matter how much time passes—but I would love to have them.
And this time, it’s even more ridiculous because it’s aimed at a thing instead of a person. I want to brush those pieces of hair out of the way
to make room for curious fingers. A worshipful mouth and reverent lips. A hungry tongue that can only be sated by the taste of her skin.
and when she deepens the kiss with a wet, seeking tongue that demands admission into my mouth, it feels like an invitation to come home. To come closer. To delve deeper. To not only kiss but to taste, to savor.
“You can keep this one forever. Let it be the first of the many pieces that will make up your collection.
Everything is up in the air, sitting on heavy, burdened clouds that will either douse us in acid that will destroy everything or give us a blessed rain that will wipe our slate clean.
