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I’d spent my whole life chasing the next high. When you had everything, everything got boring fast. I wanted bigger, better, faster. I wanted something that would last, and when Sloane rolled to the side and curled up against me, I knew I’d found it. This was my greatest high. Her, sated and happy, in my arms. Nothing in the world could ever beat this moment.
My tone gentled, turning serious. “I would never hurt Sloane. She means…” The world. “Too much to me.” Pen’s frown remained for another beat before it melted into something more vulnerable. “Good,” she said, her voice small. “Because she’s been hurt enough already.” I hadn’t planned on getting punched in the gut by a nine-year-old today, but Pen’s aim was even better than her virtual soccer skills. A burn spread from my gut to my chest, for Sloane and Pen. Both of them deserved better than what they got from the people who supposedly loved them.
But there was something about the way he held and looked at me…He posed the greatest danger to my perfectly constructed world, yet I’d never felt safer than when I was in his arms. Take your hair down, Sloane. It was a simple request, but when I did it, it’d felt like more. It’d felt like trust.
Once they got rolling, my memories couldn’t stop replaying the past few days—the way Xavier felt inside me, the way we moved together, the way he’d planned the outing with Pen and how great he was with her. I didn’t have much of a maternal instinct, but my ovaries had almost exploded when they hugged goodbye. There was nothing sexier than a man who was good with children.
“Good.” Xavier sank to his knees and pushed my knees wider, granting him an unfettered view of my soaked arousal. His eyes gleamed up at me, dark and bright as volcanic glass. “Then they’ll know exactly who you belong to.”
“I wish she could’ve met you,” he said, so quiet that I felt more than I heard his words. “She would’ve loved you.” The tightness behind my ribs morphed into a raw, pervasive ache. It spread everywhere—my throat, my nose, behind my eyes and in the deepest grooves of my heart. I didn’t cry, but this was the closest I’d come to doing so in a long, long time.
Playboy, heir, hedonist, flirt—those masks were gone, leaving only the man in their place. Raw in his vulnerability, flawed in many ways, and marred by cracks and bruises beneath a deceptively polished façade. I looked at him, and I’d never seen anyone more beautiful.
She was so fucking beautiful it almost hurt to look at her. I wondered if she knew that. I wondered if she knew how much she occupied my thoughts and how I counted down the minutes to seeing her again when we were apart. I wondered if I’d upended her life the way she had mine, to the point where the pieces would no longer fit if she weren’t there, because she wasn’t a pit stop; she was the destination.
And I wondered, my mind flipping from the first time we’d met in her office to this moment right here, right now, just how in the hell I’d fallen in love with Sloane Kensington.
The way my mind mapped every detail about Sloane, both consciously and unconsciously, like I would drown if I didn’t inhale enough of her. The comfort I had in sharing my secrets with her, and the spike in my pulse whenever she was near. The warmth; the jealousy; the fierce, overwhelming protectiveness. I loved her, totally and completely, and I’d be damned if I let anyone hurt her.
“You kept asking me why I called you Luna. I didn’t tell you because I was afraid it would send you running for the hills. Even before we kissed, before we were anything other than a publicist and her client, you were a light in my life. A persistent, sometimes scary one, but a light all the same.” Xavier’s throat bobbed with a hard swallow. “Luna is short for mi luna. My moon. Because no matter how dark the nights got, you were always there, shining so brightly that I always found my way through.”
“I don’t know when it happened. One day, you were someone I was stuck with if I wanted to keep my current lifestyle. The next, you were…you.” A sad smile touched Xavier’s lips. “Beautiful, brilliant, and so damn caring beneath that mask you present to the world. You can try to hide it, but it’s too late. I’ve seen the real you, with all its perfect and broken pieces, and I love every single one of them.”
I couldn’t see Xavier through the blur in my eyes at the end, but I’d heard the anguish in his voice and felt it in the air. It’d mirrored the same pain rushing in to fill the emptiness in my chest because he was right. I had lied to him. I cared. More than cared. He made me feel everything when I’d thought I could feel nothing, and that realization led to an undeniable truth: I loved him, so much so that I couldn’t breathe, and I’d pushed him away because I knew love would only end in heartbreak.
I pressed my fingers to my face. A drop of the substance trickled onto my lips, and it wasn’t until I tasted its salty grief that I realized what it was. A tear.
“I’ll make it as hard as I can,” I said fiercely. “I love you, Sloane, and if you think I’m letting you go that easily, you’re mistaken. I’ve spent half my life running from the hard stuff and taking the easy way out because I’d never wanted anything enough to work for it.” I swallowed. “Then I met you, and I finally understood what people meant when they said love is worth fighting for. I know it sounds like a cliché, and if you heard this in a movie, you’d probably write a scathing review about it”—Sloane choked out a laugh—“but I mean it. I’ve learned to fight for what’s important, and
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Don’t run away from what could be because you’re afraid of what might be.”
“I know you think happily ever afters are unrealistic, Luna, but they don’t have to be. You just have to believe in them enough for yourself.”
Me and Xavier, the most unlikely of couples. Opposites in so many ways, yet similar in so many others. He knew every part of me intimately—mind, body, and heart—and he loved me not despite but because of my flaws. We’d seen each other at our worst, yet we’d fallen in love anyway.
“I’m here, Luna. I didn’t leave. I’m here.” His words should’ve reassured me, but they threw the floodgates wider. I buried my face in his chest as years of pent-up emotion poured out. Every fear, every frustration, every heartbreak. They’d waited a lifetime to break free, and once they did, they didn’t stop until every last drop of moisture had evaporated and I sagged against Xavier, emptied and exhausted.
“Love isn’t about perfection, Luna; it’s about imperfect people creating their own version of happily ever after. And while I don’t know everything, I do know this: Every version of my happily ever after will always include some version of you.”
Xavier framed my face with his hands, stilling me. “I always want to kiss you, and you’re perfect exactly the way you are.”
I love you. Three words, uttered countless times by countless people over the centuries. Yet coming from her, they had the power to bring me to my knees.
And as my gaze traced the delicate fan of her lashes and the content curve of her lips, there was only one word running through my head. Mine.
The flicker of warmth ignited into a roaring flame. “Have I ever told you how much I love you?” “Once or twice, but I’m not opposed to hearing it again.” “I love you,” I murmured. “Más que cualquier otra cosa en el mundo.” This time, I kissed her, and I let it last.
