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My eyes shoot open, finding my right wrist secured to the railing with my own belt. Absolutely fucking pathetic.
“Answer me,” she growls. “Twice.” “Liar.” “Three fucking times.”
“Admit you’ve wanted me for as long as I’ve wanted you. Admit you’re mine. Admit you belong to me.”
I don’t think I’ve ever been this fucking hard.
“I’m at your mercy, Lily,” I promise. “You’re not going to lose yourself if you give in. You have me, and I’ve got you.”
“It’s about you, every fucking word,” she says quietly enough that her voice could’ve been mistaken for a breeze. But it’s enough for me.
“You gonna write about that?” I tease against her mouth, tenderly stroking my lips over her smile. “I think I’ll keep this memory just for me.”
I peek at the new lily flower coiling around my kelp tattoo. Two pieces connected as one. Making her a permanent member of my family.
She’s my everything. I may not truly understand what it means to be in love yet, but giving her my all feels like the right thing. It’s what I want to do.
Ah, who am I kidding? If she wanted to swipe my credit card for llama spit eye cream that cost a thousand dollars, I’d buy her as many bottles as her little heart desired.
The sight of her like this sparks visceral anger in my blood. I hate that someone hurt my girl.
“People fall in love in all sorts of ways. There’s no use trying to understand how and who your heart will pull toward. It’s why romance is fun. It’s entirely unpredictable.” Like her. Like us.
You’re perfect.
She smiles in response. It’s a smile filled with fudge-stained teeth but my favorite one nonetheless.
It could be just us on a chilly day in December, making pancakes and watching movies on our couch in front of our television before catching a flight the next day to ski in the Swiss Alps. Lily could write her books, and I could work on something remotely revolutionary. A life shared with a person I can call home. The desire is surreal, and I ache for the opportunity to have it.
“Of course you’re allergic to something with calming effects.” She tosses the packet and cleans the residue off my skin. “Come back to bed. I’ll get you some ice, and we’ll watch another movie until the swelling goes down.”
I could’ve sworn we’d made progress. For fuck’s sake, she was the one who cuddled up close to me and dozed off halfway into Misery.
The words hurt more than I care to admit, but her defenses flare anytime she lets me in. “Are we really living in a time when I can spend hours inside you and get a matching tattoo with you, but asking you not to leave after we fall asleep together is too fucking much to deal with?”
“I just want to feel you close,” I say. “Is that alright?” “Just this once.” Yeah, I’ve heard those words before.
Nico’s transformed into a different person over the past few days. Well, not really. But there’s something concrete about him now. A sort of protective barrier he’s put up around us.
“You submitted erotica to your professor? You’re a fucking legend.”
“Besides, I could never tire of you, Lily. You’re you. And not everything needs to be so black and white. If I start to feel restless, we could take another trip. We can figure it out together.” I do my best to ignore the building blocks he’s put before me, a peace offering of sorts meant to say, Hey, we got this, even if it’ll take some work.
There’s no use in being oblivious. He would pluck stars from the sky if I asked him to. And he has changed. He made a plan for the summer, kept up with my carefully structured morning routine, and even started preventing his phone battery from falling below 50 percent since we landed in London.
Not at all. I miss you. I miss being in the same bed. I miss things not being so messy.
Nico same, don’t think i’ll sleep without u tonight Lily Already longing for me? Nico i long for you always, Lily
“I came to say good night.” He falls onto the mattress, and the springs creak loudly. He pulls me to lie alongside him.
“Back to sleep, baby,” he murmurs, yanking me into his bear embrace.
The Navarro brothers sure do love bringing their women drinks first thing in the morning. No, wait. Avery is his wife. What Nico and I have is different—right?
Avery looks over at her husband and mouths, You’re going down. “We’re on the same team, Ave,” he reminds her, ever the patient and calm soul with her.
“I love her.” There.
“I don’t ever want to be away from her. Somehow, I feel happier making Lily smile than at any other time in my life, and apart from all that, she lets me be entirely myself.”
That’s not at all how it feels with Lily. “She makes me want to be a better man, Luca. A man who works on the relationship and himself, no matter the obstacles.”
My freshly manicured nails twirl the gift from Nico, a diamond and purple sapphire tennis bracelet that matches the tattered friendship bracelet from Rio. He put it on my wrist this morning after he sang me a cute birthday song in Spanish.
Avery claps as her husband looks at her with so much love, it’s almost potent enough to taste.
The last place I’ll get to call her mine before our agreement expires.
“You have all that fucking to get back to,” I joke. My brother backhands my head. Alright, well-deserved for being highly inappropriate, but the stories I heard while hiding under Lily’s bed when we arrived were enough to traumatize me for years to come.
I won’t give up on her. Ever.
“Me equivoqué,” he whispers. “What did you say?” I try to mask my excitement. Luca admitting he’s wrong is a once-in-a-millennium occurrence.
“I’ve never seen you happier than you are with her.”
“If she’s worth it, you’ll wait forever.”
and I know, as intuitively as breathing, I’d give a lifetime for her.
This is not how I imagined our first morning sharing a bedroom would go. We were supposed to get up for coffee, tea, room service, and sex overlooking the ocean, not discuss my imaginary cheating in her dream.
Even when she’s mad at me, she is so fucking perfect.
“I won’t. I don’t want anyone else, Lily,” I promise.
“Your problems are our problems, princesa, whatever label you want us to wear.”
“Well, beautiful girl, there’s the nail-biting, the constant phone checking even though we have absolutely no service, and—”
“As long as I win in your eyes, I think it’ll be enough.”
I like every part of you I’ve seen.
“We’re talking about my favorite person in the world with a mind so sharp, it’s caused me to drop to my knees on several occasions.” Nico places a kiss on my forehead. “Eyes that spend a long time leering at me when I get out of the shower.” He grazes his mouth over my eyes, but I pull away with a giggle.
“A mouth so soft and wicked at the same time, it has a witty retort for everything I say, and that’s an accomplishment in itself.” His lips finally reach mine and stay there long enough for my heart to pass two beats. “Then there are your beautiful freckles that make me so jealous…”
