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“I don’t think getting left is kind at all.” Noël knocked back his Tito’s.
She couldn't be looking at me. She was probably looking at Wyatt. And who could blame her? I was seaweed next to him.
How he leaned in, and how I followed, and how he tipped his hat back so we could sit as close as a whisper.
Something inside me was opening to Noël. Something like old hopes and sixteen-year-old dreams, and like watching the sun set behind those first ten acres with my father.
I wanted his sharp edges and the teased-out laughs. I wanted to watch his eyes glitter, then turn mischievous or soft or startled, doe-eyed or wondrous or uncertain. He was like a top that spun and spun, and I was dizzy with him.
I’d rested my arm around the back of his chair at some point during our last glass of wine. I couldn’t remember doing it. It just seemed like holding on to Noël was the most natural thing in the world.
He laughed. His whole body went into it, and his hand stretched toward mine as his fingers brushed my wrist. Electric zings danced through my veins. Never end. Never, ever end.
As we walked, my hand settled on the small of his back. Was that him leaning into my touch? My thumb circled a single vertebra, the tiniest massage.
Half a mile away from our sandbar, I spotted a pair of sea turtles swimming at the edge of the indigo ocean shelf. One kept the other under its flipper. I guided Noël to where they swam, and I, too, kept Noël inside the shelter of my shoulders.
Wyatt tasted like sea salt and waves, chapped lips, and the coconut margarita he’d had earlier. Like promises and patience and the way he’d touched his fingers to his hat brim when he’d said “Howdy” in Dallas. Like sweetness and adoration and the first blush of falling in love.
The world was gone, replaced by Wyatt. His lips moving over mine, his breath shuddering across my lips. His tongue, slipping out to tease at the same time his thumbs glided over my cheekbones.
Our eyes met, and that mouth of his, that gentle, tender, sweet mouth, dropped to my belly and— Time lost its shape.
I smelled sun and sand in Wyatt’s hair and kissed him again. I felt his heart beat and the heat of his skin. I felt his lips move across my shoulder. I thought of starlight and ocean waves and cowboy hats. I thought of him saying “Howdy” to me, and thought that it was impossible, absolutely impossible, for us to have ended up here, just like this, but here we were. Here we were.
We kissed like we’d invented it. I imagined I could learn everything about Wyatt’s soul by the velvety indulgent way he moved his lips against mine.
“Noël,” he kept whispering. I didn’t think anyone had ever said my name so beautifully.
Firelight and ocean waves and shooting stars wound up my spine. It was so fucking exposing, and so fucking intimate. So fucking amazing, too.
I was whispering his name and ridiculous things like, You’re so beautiful and Fucking gorgeous and Never, ever, Wyatt, and even I adore you.
I opened beautifully to Wyatt, like I’d been made for him and he’d been made for me. We moved like silk on silk.
The slide of him into me, the thickness of him opening me. Fuck, the sounds we made, obscene and filthy and gorgeous.
His first, his only. Him, me. This bed, this night, us.
Maybe, maybe, maybe we could, one day… Lord, the thought of it—imagining it, coloring in the outlines, even thinking it was a possibility—walked like a ghost through my veins, so powerful it felt like a memory, something I had time-traveled forward and seen with my own eyes.
I was in love. Heartbreakingly and profoundly in love. I loved him, I did, even in such a short time. I knew it wasn’t supposed to be possible. What did I honestly know about Noël? Well, I knew enough, I thought. I knew I wanted forever.
I tried to merge our souls, making love while he breathed my name.
His voice, low and sweet when he sang, his lips at my ear and the sand between our toes.
Dear Wyatt, I wish I’d never left you— Dear Wyatt, I wish I’d never met you— Dear Wyatt, I can’t do this without you—
The look in his eyes. It seized me, stilled me. I couldn’t say a word.
there was a new undercurrent to everything. A warmth, and a tenderness, and a beautiful openness. What was rising between us felt like a newly-born star.
We both had our hands cupped around our baby star, sheltering it, nurturing it, keeping it shimmering and radiant and ours.
I wanted slow, sweet nights and beautiful days, and his eyes on mine as he played with my hair after we made love. I wanted to see his gorgeous smile and hear his hearty laugh, and I wanted to be the person who made him that happy. I wanted to be the man who cherished him more than anything else, and I wanted him to know that.
My sweet, sweet cowboy, who was shy and didn’t like selfies and said goodnight to his horse, and who made the lives of everyone he touched remarkably and extraordinarily better. My dearest, darling Wyatt. The man of my dreams.
Wyatt had zipped two bags together, and we were one great tangle of arms and legs, with my cheek against his and our whispers sharing the same air.
Starlight filled Wyatt’s face. He kept looking from me to the sky and then back to me, as if what was down on Earth and who he was holding were more precious than the heavens.
Wyatt whispered, “Make a wish.” I couldn’t keep the words in one second longer. “I’m in love with you, Wyatt,” I blurted out.
Being with him, being around him, and feeling his love, felt like I was surfacing from the bottom of the ocean.
I was a raging perfectionist who, at the center of my soul, believed I was a complete fuck-up. Everything around me had to be perfect because I was so very, very far from it.
There was no way to describe how it felt, or what it meant, to be loved by someone who had seen each and every part of me, all my horrible and selfish places, all my insecurities, all my doubts and anxieties and peevish, petty parts, and yet still wanted me. He loved every part of me, maybe even more so for those ugly places, because how could I be me without all those layers tangled together?
Wyatt never asked for anything. Not a single thing, but here he was, breaking down on the phone and asking me to come help him. Of course I would. Of course, of course.
“I think—” My voice wavered. “I think becoming your brother-in-law would be the best thing that could happen in my life.” After a handful of miles passed in silence, Liam reached across the truck and laid his hand on my shoulder.
Noël, my mind whispered. Noël.
Noël took my hand. I laid my other on top of my dad’s wine barrel. I miss you so much, Dad.
Noël and I shared a private toast before he took his first sip. This night was a goodbye to my father for everyone else, but it was both a hello and a goodbye for Noël. He would never know my father as a living man, but he’d know him through my memories, and now, through this wine my father had made. Noël had been so strong holding me up, but when he inhaled the bouquet of my father’s petite sirah, his expression crumpled.
Dad, meet the love of my life, I thought. I gathered Noël close, and he melted into me.
He stole a kiss, and then another, breathless little things that made our lips cling. His fingers drifted down my cheeks, and we stared into each other’s eyes. I want this whole life to be shared with you, Noël. Tell me you want the same. Tell me you want me forever, too.
“I came to you!” I shouted, oh so romantically, at him. “I came here for you, Wyatt! I came here to be with you!” The rain pounded down on the two of us, beading off the brim of his hat and falling onto my eyelashes. He was staring at me like I’d lost my mind. “I love you, and I want everything with you!” I screamed. “All of it, our whole lives, together-forever! I want to marry you and have kids with you! I want to grow grapes with you and stay up for a whole week to pick them! I want to listen to Jason run wild on Christmas morning, and I want to hide Easter eggs for him in the vineyards,
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I looked at Wyatt. Wyatt looked at me. He gazed at me like I was the only thing in the world that could touch his soul. He’d look at me like that forever, I realized. We would never break this bond between us. We would never find the end of this love. And he would look at our kids the same way, full of love, and adoration, and awe. He’d look at our kids the way his father had gazed down at him.
I never told Wyatt, but sometimes I talked to his father when I was all alone and out on the ranch, where I knew his dad could still hear me. I’d whisper promises to him that I’d love and cherish his son forever, and that I’d try my best to never, ever fuck up again. And if I did—because of course I would, I’m me—I swore I’d make things right every time. Abel, I’d murmur to the wind. I love your son, and I’m going to love him for all time. I promise, I swear. He’ll never be alone. I felt wind slip down the back of my neck.
“This belonged to my father, and to his father, and now I want you to wear it. Noël—” His voice died. He took a breath and tried again. “Noël, marry me?” His voice was nothing but a whisper. “Hitch your star to mine, and let’s spend the rest of this life in long certainty with each other. Let’s raise children and grapes and cattle together. Marry me, Noël?”
I nodded, frantic, desperate, ecstatic, gasping as I choked out, “Yes, Jesus, Wyatt, yes. Oh my fucking God, yes. Yes, I will marry you—”
He kissed me again, and then again, and I curled as close as I could get, drawn into the warmth of his embrace and the gentleness of his hold. A breeze slipped around us and rattled Wyatt’s wine glass like a celebratory bell. Abel, I thought. Abel.
