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September 3 - September 5, 2025
“I can’t fucking breathe when you’re not near me.” He dragged his mouth down the column of my neck, his tongue tracing the tattoo below my collarbone, then sucking the skin hard enough to brand me. “And when you are? I want you just like this. Spread out and begging. That cunt dripping for me. Because that’s the only time it feels even close to enough.”
“Fuck. You think you can come on my cock like you fucking own it and pretend this isn’t real?” He pressed his forehead against mine and sank deep, filling me to the brim as my release still echoed around him. “Lie better, baby.”
“You think this is just fucking?” He drove into me again. Deep. Hard. Like he wanted to sink inside and never leave. “I don’t fucking believe you. Not when you come like your whole body’s begging me to stay. Not when every inch of this pussy feels like mine.”
“Say you’re mine. Or are you gonna try to lie to me one more time?” I arched beneath him, my body clenching tight around his shaft, so close to falling, and breathed the only words that mattered. The words I wished fiercely were true. “I’m yours.”
“That’s right. You’ve been mine since the second you stumbled out of that fucking shed. And you’ll be mine even when you leave, won’t you?”
“There’s my dirty girl,”
I’d gone and done the one thing I swore I never would. I’d fallen in love. Me—the girl who never stayed. The girl no one ever asked to stay. And now, I wasn’t sure I’d survive what came next.
“I’m just gonna say one more thing, and then I’ll drop it.” Sutton set her glass on the table and leveled me with her no-bullshit stare. “Sometimes the thing you think will trap you ends up being exactly what you need to hold you steady. And I’m saying that as someone who also spent her entire life running. At least until I found a reason to stay.”
I’d let all these people in, and I’d fallen in love with this town. Worse? I’d let Xander in, and I’d fallen in love with that structured, rule-following, color-coded-schedule kind of man. Me—chaos in a hoodie—fell in love with the one person in the world I shouldn’t click with but somehow did.
Find the best lobster roll within fifty miles Teach Emma how to ice skate Skinny dip in the ocean at midnight Dance in the rain Start a tradition that’s just ours Get snowed in during a Nor’easter Catch fireflies with Emma Cliff dive (but only if I’m with you) Have sex somewhere we absolutely should not Go kayaking at sunrise I scanned the rest, tears filling my eyes with each item I read, chosen and handwritten by Xander. And then I got to the last items on the list, and the tears I’d been holding back lost their will to cling to my lower lashes, and they rolled down my cheeks. Slow and
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“I’m saying I want to add to that list for the rest of my life, Chloe. I want to give you adventures every day—whether we do that in Starlight Cove or we continue your yearly trip to Sedona or we swing by the elephant sanctuary in Thailand. It means I want you to go on the greatest adventures of your life. But I want you to experience them with me and Emma.”
“I’m in love with you, chaos.” He kissed me then. Slow and sweet. Full of intent and devotion and the love he just confessed. “And I’m asking you to stay.”
“Then we buy a ticket to the first place that sounds good. We hop on a plane or a boat or a train or we jump in the car, and we go wherever that wanderlust heart of yours wants to go. But then we come back. Because this—you and me and Emma? This is home.”
“Hands and knees, chaos. I know how much you love it when I fuck you nice and deep, and I get the deepest like this, don’t I, baby?”
“I love you,” he murmured before pressing a kiss to my shoulder. Soft and achingly sweet. “So fucking much.” I reached back, tangled my fingers in his hair, and turned my face toward him. I captured his lips in a kiss, then rested my forehead against his, eyes still closed, and breathed deep. “I love you too.”
“I hope you know I’m never letting you go,” he said, his arms tightening around me. “I know.” And I did.
