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A love so pure, so tangible, and unconditional bouncing between us. The only safe space I have ever truly known beating inside her chest as I draw closer to it, pounding over the wood planks to answer her summons and feast on a love that blankets me. A love that protects me and brings me peace while keeping me whole. A love so mine, so ours.
“All today was, was just another bad day. Nothing more. So don’t give it any more power than that. The sunset you love so much is proof you fought bravely, so keep remembering that on your bad days . . . and remember that when the clock ticks past midnight, it’s another chance to win. I’ve seen you on good days, and you have them. It’s just that days like today are good at making you forget them. But you have them. I’ve been there. I’ve seen them. I’ve seen the bold, vibrant, life-filled, beautiful woman on days she’s won that battle. So, don’t believe the lie a bad day is telling you. And
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Filling our days with simple things and enjoying simple pleasures as our feelings became anything but.
“Never.” She jerks her chin. “I don’t wait for men.” “Then I’ll be your first because I’m worth waiting for.”
“There will be no other women for me because there is no other woman meant for me. I’m certain there is no other woman alive who will hear these types of promises from me because you’re all I want.” She pauses, her eyes glazing over as she shakes her head in disbelief. “Wait for me, and I’ll give you any life you can dream up.”
“Une si belle femme.” So beautiful.
“The idea of us coming together this way.” Lust coats every word of my admissions as she soaks my fingers, sinking against me, gasping against my palm. “It’s everything. You are all I want.”
“Look at me, baby,” I murmur with every ounce of the love I feel. “Look into your soldier’s eyes, listen to his voice, and you’ll see just how beautiful you are to him. You’ll understand what touching you like this does to him,” I order as her body hums against mine with need for release. “You’ll realize to him you are anything but poison.”
“Can you sense what’s happening inside me? How good this feels for me because of how beautiful you are inside and out? Answer me,” I order, rimming her again, tracing her soaked entrance before extending my finger as far as it can go. I’m rewarded with an entire body shiver. “Tell me, can you see how beautiful you are when you look at me?” “Oui,” she croaks. “I see, Tyler,” she rasps out, her eyes watering as I hesitantly withdraw my fingers.
“All you should feel, or that I hope you feel right now, is safe,” I murmur, “worshipped and beautiful. I want to give that to you and so much fucking more.” I press my forehead gently into hers. “What’s happening here, what’s happening between us, started pure and remains pure.” I stroke her cheek with my thumb. “It happened gradually and naturally. Neither of us forced this. Just . . . wait for me. I can’t be here for you while I’m gone, but I’ll come right back to you.”
“I’m not your problem, Soldier.” “No, what you are, is my fucking reason,” I declare, pulling back slightly to command her eyes. “My reason to fight and my reason to come home. You are home. Haven’t you figured that out yet?”
“You’re not just any woman, never have been or will be for me, and I know fucking well what promises I can and will keep, especially when it comes to you. Don’t presume to tell me how to think anymore. You’ve done enough of that. Not when it comes to this, anyway. This is where I prove to you that a man can be worth waiting for. I know a part of you believes me. Trust that part because I know you trust me.”
“Your soldier. Loyally and faithfully yours.”
“You be a good boy and sit tight. Mommy and Daddy will be right back.” “Fuck off.” “Love you too, brother,” Sean says through a chuckle. “If, by some bad luck, I don’t return, I’ll miss you most of all.”
I will fight for you, Delphine. I’ll fight you with everything I have to make you mine and to keep you mine. To keep you smiling and happy. To keep your beautiful face free of fear. To keep you protected and feeling safe for as long as there is breath in me.”
“If you meant to hurt me, well played. I’m bleeding freely, and for you, I will continue to as much as you need me to. I’ll take everything you have to throw at me. Everything. I’ll eat their sins, I’ll bathe in their wrongs, I’ll pay for the way they hurt you. I’ll take it all—for you. I’ll take it all just for the chance to be with you.”
“Get on the bed, spread your legs, leave your hands on your thighs, and don’t take your eyes off mine.”
“Get on the bed, Delphine, or tell me to leave. I can’t last much longer.”
A headspace where only Tyler and Delphine exist and are all that matters. The feel of our two bodies connecting as our hearts sync up and beat together. Until we’ve got nothing but each other in the dark—it’s there, in that space, that I feel her with me. It’s in her every movement. In her eyes, in her raspy tone, in the way she continues to reach for me to bring me closer.
“J’ai besoin de toi . . . I need you . . . Vous êtes la porte d’entrée. You’re my front door. Tu es mon seul moyen de rentrer chez moi. You’re my only way home.”
“You’re beautiful too, Soldier. So beautiful,” she whispers low before pressing a kiss to my chest, just above where my heart lies.
“I know what love and trust have done to you in the past,” I whisper before kissing her forehead. “But in time, if you let me, I will prove it.” I kiss her nose and both of her cheeks. “That this is real for me, and my feelings for you will never change.”
“I just spent the last two years of my life showering you with every bit of the love I have, proving how kind love can be.”
“If I ever made you feel like that,” I rasp out as tears I couldn’t hold if my fucking life depended on it streak my face, “like you owed me, then I have failed you.” I swallow in defeat.
She chose Tobias and Dom when I never even knew I had that competition, that there would be a choice to make between us. I’m not her decision and will never be.
Resigned to let their burdens be their own. To let them lie in their beds, weighed down as they battle their own fucking demons, haunts, and the consequences of their missteps.
But no matter how much distance or how many months and years I’ve put between that morning and this moment, the ache for her remains. Even without her aware of it, my heart kept its promise.
I don’t want that life without her. I can’t picture it without her, and so I don’t want to fucking bother attempting to live it.
Pulse steady in my ears, I hear her speaking to me as if she were standing beside me in the dirt, whispering into my ear.
And now, no matter how hard I try to visualize it, there’s no longer a door. I erased it. She erased it.
I still love her and am in love with her, and my thundering heart is telling me now that I always will. But my soldier’s heart is weary, and it needs its sanctuary. It needs her. I need my front fucking door.
“Because you still care for me?” she scoffs. “Still love me?” “Yes,” I reply simply as her lips part slightly in surprise as I take another step toward her chair. “I’ve just been doing it from a distance as ordered.”
In loving her, I’m already haunted enough.
“We healed each other before, Delphine, and we’re going to do it again,” I vow. “We’re going to do it again.”
“I will fight hard, I promise. For you, and for me, Soldier. I will fucking fight so hard.”
“Damn,” he groans, “my fucking name coming off that tongue of yours.
It’s the man who stares at me with love in his eyes—no matter my state—over the kitchen table every morning and across our pillows at night who makes all days worth fighting for.
“Your laughter heals me.”
“And you truly have saved me, Tyler, in every way.”
She is, and forever will be, the only woman to know me. All of me.
“You won your war, General,” I rasp out, “I’m so fucking proud of you.”
“Because of you, Soldier, because of you. Je t’aime, I love you, Tyler, my soldier, my one true love, my best friend, my miracle. My God, how I love you, and always will,” she pledges, “forever.”
My whole being harmonizing with the completion of the mission I started long ago—by becoming a loyal man for her to entrust, the man she reaches for. And the only fucking man for her.
As my soldier and I walk hand in hand from Dom’s graveside, we blaze together down that hillside with a matching search for vengeance in our rippling souls and wrath beating between our synced hearts.
It’s then I realize that though our time is limited, what happiness we created and the memories we made can’t be taken or stolen unless we allow it.
“So no, I have no intention of living the full life I have only imagined with you. That future you’re dreaming up for me is fucking fictional and was created out of jealousy, the same jealousy I would have if I was the one dying and I imagined you moving on. But know this—my future is being stolen right along with yours the minute you leave me.”
“General, can I have this dance?”
“You need to know, Delphine, that building a true home with you, being with you as that woman, has given me the happiest months of my life. We’ve had years together combined, and I’m going to spend the rest of my days thankful for every sunset we had. You were worth waiting for. You were so worth waiting for. So fucking worth it”—my voice cracks—“so worth it.”
“I loved you through space and time before, and I’ll do it again. I’ll do it again. I’m with you, I’m with you, always,” I croak in promise. As her last breath leaves her, I bend to whisper in her ear. “Forever,” I murmur, her weight sinking further into me as she departs.
She’s not here. I could search the entirety of this earth, and I won’t find her. That’s death.
