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Easton Crowne is not some budding star. He’s a supernova.
If I could bottle or needle it, I would inject myself regularly, even as its danger presents itself, and despite her warning, it’s lethal. I want more. I want her.
I could live a hundred more years of life and will never forget the way she looked at me while I sang for her in the hotel.
“How will you know when you’ve found the right one?” “When I miss her too much to go from one day to the next without her, only then will I consider putting the job last.”
In this universe, only we exist.
I live in the moment, knowing the instant we separate, all thoughts of existing in the place we’ve just created will be over, and so will we.
I hate so much that Easton Crowne is the most beautiful secret I’ll ever have and will forever be the one I’m forced to keep.
You punched a hole in my goddamned chest in Seattle, only to leave me in the dark to try and figure out how to fill it.”
“I can’t fall for you, Easton,” she whispers hoarsely. “I’ll lose everything I’ve worked for…my whole life is in Austin, my future.” “You’re already mine,” I declare, knowing that’s the truth for us both.
“Intelligent men don’t let life-changing women pass them by without trying to grasp onto them with both hands. I don’t need endless months to figure out you’re that woman for me. I’m not most men, Natalie. I know exactly what I don’t want, and it’s everything outside of that door. What I do want is standing in front of me, and the idea of letting her walk away from me a second time is fucking eating me alive.”
“I want more for myself, and I want to give you so much fucking more. So, think of what you’re asking me because I know exactly what I’m asking of you,” his voice cracks with emotion. “This is me fighting dirty for us both, so please just admit it so I can give you the best parts of me, because I want every fucking part of you.”
“I cried the whole way back to the airport because I knew it would never feel the same with anyone else, so I haven’t bothered to look. I couldn’t.”
Inside of that kiss, I collide with my supernova going a million miles an hour, all space between us diminishing in its entirety.
For now, I just want to concentrate on us, and I want you to know you’re safe…” He brushes my chest where my heart lay, “that this is safe with me.”
Knowing he’s with me in every way that matters, physically, spiritually, emotionally, I leap.
My attraction for her hums through me now—a beastly threat that I, in no way, want to cage. Even if the depth of what I already feel for her intimidates me, I won’t do a single thing to stop it. It’s the ferocity in which I want her—in my need to possess her—that has me leaping over hurdles I’ve never dared attempt before.
The truth that our souls clicked seamlessly together before our bodies ever aligned, and it can no longer be denied or undone.
“The truth of the matter is some people work together, some people don’t, time will tell, and trust me, it always fucking does.”
“Rumor is, I have no soul.” “Only because I stole it.” “That may be true,” I sigh, allowing him to hear the smitten in my voice because that’s what this is—smitten, and every accompanying synonym—taken, enamored, infatuated.
“You can’t base important life decisions on the feelings of others. That’s one thing I can say for certain. What you two found with each other and have now is rare, really fucking rare, and I can attest to that because I’ve watched it happen. So, embrace it for what it is and let the worries for what might be go for now, because those are out of your control.”
Being with Easton in any capacity is like trying to cling to a shooting star, and somewhere inside, I know that if I don’t relish this time with him, I’ll miss it as he burns his brightest. Even if it seems impossible that he’ll burn out at all, I know for certain that I want to burn with him for as long as humanly possible.
No…there’s nothing to compare this feeling to, and that’s why it’s the meaning of life. Love is purpose, belonging, and the very definition of living.
A rock star he may now be, but for me, he was first a man who reached in with a gentle soul and discovered some of my veiled truths before forcing me to acknowledge parts of who I am—and what I want. A man who made me feel important at a time when I questioned my direction and everything else I thought I knew. A man who has since freed me to be that woman, all the while addicting me to new needs. Needs he himself sparked and created before gifting me with the type of love I dreamed of. The love I hoped to experience for myself.
In becoming her, we both fell—unguarded, raw, and vulnerable—the only way to fall. The most potent aspect of all is that he helped blueprint our love, just as my heart conjured it.
Inside, I’m aware I’ll never be her again, the woman who doesn’t know what this kind of love feels like.
“Marry me,” he repeats, “let’s do it, let’s make a life together.” He slowly lifts my left hand and presses a soft, full-lipped kiss to my empty ring finger. “Marry me because we’re the rare, lucky ones who managed to find something together so many others don’t have—it would feel criminal not to. For both our sakes, marry me, Beauty, right now, marry me tonight.”
“I always wondered why I never gave too much of myself away to anyone in a personal capacity and felt more comfortable in isolation. Sometimes it would worry me. Like maybe I was lacking some basic human need…until I met you.”
“Baby, you have no idea how good it feels to know that you love me the same way I love you.” “And how do we love each other?” “Wholly, unconditionally, and definitively.”
“You can talk to me about anything, Beauty, absolutely anything. Don’t be embarrassed to talk to me, ever. We’re one now. Okay?”
“Your dreams don’t and won’t come second to mine. I want to be the man that stands beside you or behind you when you need me to. I can and will be there for you when it matters most to you.”
“Sometimes, love, no matter how real it feels and is, isn’t always the right love, and you don’t figure that part out until you’ve lost it and put some time between your feelings and reality.
Because though we were very much in love, we never fit the way we needed to in order to last.
I can now say that I loved a woman with every fiber of my being, heart and soul, and always will. I can claim that. I wonder how many souls can’t.
“The man who’s loved you with the whole of his heart, year after year, through Every. Single. Thing. Even when you broke it, even when I begged it to stop, tried to force it, willed it to, ignored it. It never failed you, it never stopped loving you, and it never will. I think it’s past time I let it, and you let me love you with it, for good.”
Broken I may be for the moment, I would do it all over again, just to feel what I did when I had that time to love her. As disastrously as it’s ending, I know without a doubt that I would do it all over again.
My expectation is this, us, nothing more. It’s so simple but a means to an end to the most complicated journey I’ve ever taken. Forgive me for being blind to the fact that your love was bottomless, and I’ll forgive fate and the hard road we had to travel.
There were few sparks without a single trace of fire. I’ve had fire, and even if I lost it, I refuse to settle for anything less.
“Easton, I don’t want to not know you. You became my best friend. I miss that so much, outside of everything else. Can we at least try to be what we couldn’t be before? I don’t want to not know you,” I repeat. “It’s too hard. I miss you.” He remains quiet as I grab his hand, and he turns back to face me. “Maybe, one day, when it doesn’t feel…so much like entering the seventh circle of hell?”
“If you ever…need me,” he utters softly, “I’ll be right where you left me, okay?”
The sight of him, and with as disarming as he is, it’s easy to see the shiny. For me, he’s all shine.
I couldn’t forget a single minute of him if I wanted to, and I’m almost positive I can remember every word we’ve ever exchanged.
The truth is, for the last two days, I’ve been sitting on the beach drowning in the realization that while loving you helped me recognize my worst fear, losing you left me living in it. Any life I live without you now will feel like settling.”
“Do you think I didn’t know what I was giving up when I let you go? I’ve been brave, Easton. Brave enough to face and endure the pain and the knowledge that I lost the thing with you that made me feel the most alive. I’ve braved every day knowing I should never have let you drive away that night without telling you that I love you, that I’m sorry, and that I wish I would have done so many things differently. And I’ll regret it tomorrow, the day after, and after that for the rest of my fucking life—that’s bravery!”
He’s brilliant, magnetic, and…magical, and I’m drawn to him more than I have ever been to any other soul in my life.
“He’s my supernova, the only star in my sky, and oh…how he shines. Every time I look at him, my insides light fire, and I am every bit a moth to his flame. But I don’t care if I burn because…because I would rather burn with him in any capacity, than exist safely anywhere else without him.”
“What took you so fucking long?” “I’m sorry,” I lick the salt from my lips. “I got lost.” “But I told you where to find me. I told you I’d be right here where you left me,” he reminds me as I shake in his hold, hope lighting up my being. “It’s not too late, Beauty,” he murmurs, “and with you, it was never going to be.”
You should know by now, even when we were apart, you’ve always been with me.” His eyes shine with emotion. “You’re so much a part of me—it’s unreal.”
Like me, she was a little bit jaded, a little bit over it, but just as hopeful she was wrong about being both those things. I didn’t have the answer that night of who I was to her, but it hit me like a freight train a few months later. Hers.
Relief relaxes her features as we silently exchange that we’re both at peace with the place we have in each other’s lives. I don’t want Stella feeling guilty because I meant the words I spoke to my wife. I wouldn’t change a thing. I wouldn’t go back. I wouldn’t alter a minute of my life, not a fucking second.
