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“Killing a person is different.” “I wouldn’t hesitate to shoot him or anyone threatening her, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
“You can still fight with fear in your heart.” A watery chuckle escapes me. “Sometimes it’s the greatest motivator. The fear of what you’ll lose can make you that much more determined to win. My life is at stake, and I’ll do whatever it takes to get out of this alive, but if I don’t, I have to think about the ones who mean the most to me.” I discipline my mouth into a firm line. “I’ll be prepared for the worst and fight for the best.”
“He’s lucky to have you.”
We’ve bonded around peril and adventure and all the things young men chase when they have no real sense of their own mortality, their limits. We spent our wanderlust together in dozens of cities in a hundred different ways. Spent it on more women than I can count, but none of them were ever Nix.
“I wouldn’t ever let that happen.” I press our foreheads together. “I would have moved heaven and earth, bought heaven and earth, to get you back.”
“I knew I was going to die, Doc, and all I could think was that I’d never told you I loved you.”
“It may take some time, but you love me and I will be okay.”
Dark hair is brushed back from his handsome face, but one lock falls over his forehead like he got ready in a hurry because he usually does. He wears a navy blue three-piece suit with a silvery gray shirt that’s open and tieless. Lord above, he looks delicious.
“You have plans for tonight?” “You. You’re my only plans.”
“I love you.” His expression softens and he looks at me in a way I’ve never seen him look at anyone else. And I know it’s because I’m the only one he loves in just this way. He leans down to give me a quick, searing kiss and whispers his reply over my lips, “Same, baby. Same.”
😭😭
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“I was proud of you then.” I dip to kiss her, just a quick brush of our lips. “And I’m proud of you now. Of course I know you can do this.”
I tighten my arms under her, pulling her close. She’s mine completely. And I, unequivocally, belong to Lennix Moon Hunter.
He dips until our foreheads kiss. My cold skin against his impossibly warm. “I found you when you were seventeen.” He lifts my hand to kiss my wrist. “I found you again in Amsterdam.” He brushes his lips over my knuckles, setting a thousand feathers free in my belly. “And I found you after a decade of waiting for just the right moment.”
😭😭😭😭❤️🩹
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“Nix, baby.” I push the tumbled hair back from her face, and thumb the tears on her smooth cheeks. “Wake up for me.” Her body goes stiff in my arms and she slowly pulls back, blinking wet, spiky lashes. “Doc?” Her voice is hoarse, and I wonder how long she’s been crying, and crying out in her sleep. “You’re here.” “I’m here.”
CRYING
“Hold me tighter,” she whispers through tears. “Love me as hard as you possibly can.” “I do, Nix.” I kiss the top of her head. “God knows I do.”
“There’s no one like you, Nix.” God, it’s true. “Jesus, Doc. There’s nothing like this.” Her words break on a sob, and the elegant line of her shoulders trembles. “No one like you.”
“And I’ll be damned if anyone will bother you again. I’ll kill him myself if he’s still breathing.”
“The sky is so dark,” she says, reclining in the hull of the boat and tipping her head back to stare at the hypnotic swirl of stars overhead. It’s a cathedral sky at night, lit with starry sconces and cosmic candelabra. “It makes the stars brighter.” My girl who chases stars.
“That’s a very sexy brain you’ve got there, Mr. Cade.” I wink at her. “Be a good girl and I’ll let you touch it.” “Ew.” She scrunches up her face. “You had to go and make it weird.” “It’s what I do.
LMFAOOOOO I LOVE THEM
“There’s this one optical illusion called water sky. Sailors have used it forever to navigate because the light projects open lanes of water onto the clouds, and shows them how to avoid dangerous ice floes. I thought of your eyes every time I saw one.” “You did?” Her smile softens, grows tender. “Yeah, you have water-sky eyes.”
She pulls my hand to her lips and kisses my fingers one by one, and with that simple act of affection, a rare, fathomless contentment saturates the air. A meridian of seconds where I’m completely satisfied, and at least for this handful of moments, there’s nowhere to be, nothing to gain, and this is enough. This, she is the first time I’ve tasted enough, and I savor it on my tongue, hoard it. Fold it into my hands to memorize the feel of complete satisfaction. An entire kingdom fits in this boat. My whole world rests against my heart.
Traditions are the memories of those before us, breathed to life when we carry them on.
“I will live this day in gratitude,” I whisper, the words mingling with the smoke I scoop over my face. “Grateful to be alive and breathing and able to give and receive love. I will face every obstacle with the boldness of those who follow me, and with the courage of those who came before.”
Her eyes snare mine, and I breathe, not realizing how anaerobic I’ve been since my father called. She’s my air, and I don’t even wait for her to stand, but reach down, scooping her up in my arms.
SOBBING PROFUSELY WHATTHEFUCK 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭
“Robert Kennedy said, ‘There are people in every time and every land who want to stop history in its tracks. They fear the future, mistrust the present, and invoke the security of a comfortable past which, in fact, never existed.’
“The past is behind us. The future is ours. Figure out how you can change the world right now, and don’t fear it. Do it.”
She slides her arms around me under my suit jacket, and her fingers seek and find the tension in my back, kneading the muscles through my shirt. “I missed you.” I kiss her forehead and push the stream of hair over her shoulder, exposing the line and curve of her jaw and neck. “I missed you, too.” She cups one side of my face and searches my eyes. “How are you?” “Breathing. That’s about it.” “It’s enough.”
Our bed. Our place. Our life here.
“You’d let her affect the most important decision of your life?” he spits. I cup the curve of her neck, caressing the raging, pounding pulse there, reassuring her. “Nix is the most important decision of my life, and you’re not helping your case by antagonizing her.”
“No matter what happens,” he says, tracing up my ribcage to cup my
breast, “it’s just us, Lennix. Don’t forget this. Don’t forget us.”
“Once, I was trying to impress a beautiful girl, and I told her all my big dreams—that I wanted to make the world a better place, that I wanted to change a nation, this nation. I asked if that was arrogant or presumptuous. You know what she said?” He chuckles and presses his hands together. “She said revolution requires a certain degree of hubris. I have hubris to spare. Whether you know it or not, we need a revolution. We need to shake things up. The status quo is insufficient for what lies ahead. Let’s not fear the future. Let’s make it.”
“I’m very, very proud of you,” she whispers, closing the space between our mouths and kissing me. She tastes as pure as she did the first time I kissed her on a dark night on a cobblestone street. I stand and kiss her back with all the hope and love she inspires in me.
“I want our daughter to be just like you.”
DEAD
but there will always be a part of me that remembers our week in Amsterdam. Eating crusty bread and drinking wine in bed. Counting tulips in the field. Our bodies seeking and finding each other in a dark alley with rain-soaked kisses.
Some guys steal their fathers’ cars. I stole Dad’s plane.
but you already know who I want.” “Yes, the one girl who hates me,”
“That’s it, baby.”
🧎♀️
“I needed this so much.” I kiss her shoulder, pull her back into my chest, and cup her breast. “I needed you so much.”
“Fuck,” I mutter into her hair, tears streaming from my eyes. “Dammit.” She turns over, naked and beautiful, her eyes wet and concerned, searching mine in the lamp’s anemic light. “Oh, Doc,” she whispers. “It’s okay. Oh, baby, please let it out. Please let it go.”
☹️😭
I don’t know how long the tears fall, and I’m not ashamed or self-conscious. Not with her. She’s an extension of me, and I’m an extension of her. She’s a layer of my skin, a chamber of my heart. She’s the tattoo on my chest. Endurance. I know what it meant when I got it, but Lennix brings new meaning to everything, even the word inked on my skin. She endures. This connection that started so many years ago, it endures. For the first time tonight, I think I can make it, as long as I have this. As long as I have her.
If you ever touch her again, mark her again, I’ll black ball your ass so hard you won’t find a job sweeping floors. Am I being clear with you?”
I pull out my phone to look at the screensaver. It’s a girl and a guy kissing in a field of tulips, a freeze-frame of love in bloom. They look young and happy and unconcerned, no idea what the years ahead will bring, but it doesn’t seem to matter. He’s holding her like she’s the whole world in his arms, and she looks glad to be there.
You don’t stop running because it’s hard. You don’t stop running because it hurts. Don’t you dare stop running because someone says you’ll never finish the race, or even that it’s not your race to run. Prove them all wrong. Blaze your own trail. Girl, woman, they’ll never give you the world. You have to make your own.
“Let’s change the world, okay?” My smile fades and so does his. He searches my eyes, caresses my mouth with his thumb. “Together?” he asks, his voice sobering. I nod, pressing my hand to his heart. The compass charm on my bracelet catches the light, glimmers like the love that guided us from our first unlikely moment to this one. “Yeah,” I answer, practically feeling my face glow with the love in my heart, with the peace I’ve made. “Together.”
SCREAMING CRYING SHAKING THROWING UP GNEHEHRGEHSHEHDBD😭😭😭😭😭😭😭
“Love is such a dynamic force, isn’t it? It is the most inexplicable and yet the most beautiful force in life. O, how joyous it is to be in it.” —Love Letter from Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. to Coretta Scott (July, 1952)
“We weren’t unlikely, Nix,” I say, no levity in the words. “We were inevitable.”
