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“I love you,” I whispered, tasting the words and memorizing what they felt like. “I love you. I’ll be yours for the rest of my life.”
“And I’ll be yours,” Jordan said.
The stars glimmered against the dark, moonless sky when he moved a little further away from me, tipping my chin up with a gentle pinch, making me look at his beautiful face.
“I am yours,” he said, leaning in again. And when his lips touched mine, my heart was whole. The cracks healed, welded together by the heat of his love. It gave me hope. It gave me life. It gave me a purpose.
We had traveled this road for a long time, crossing paths blindly in the dark and taking all the wrong turns. But now I saw the light we had been looking for. I saw the end of wandering and the start of an adventure.
I was ready for it. As I kissed him, my soul met his, and they merged together so finely that I couldn’t tell where one ended and the other began. I didn’t need to, either. We were simply us, and nothing else mattered.
Epilogue
Three Years Later
I leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed over my bare chest. In these moments of total silence, when the summer heat surrendered a little, and my life settled, my gaze would search for Asher.
He reclined in the backyard, a glass of white wine in one hand, big, dark sunglasses decorating his face, his other arm hanging over the armrest. His elegant fingers floated through the air as if he was listening to music. There was none. The only sounds for miles around us were the crickets and the rustling leaves on a warm gust of wind.
Asher was facing away from me and a dozen paces between us concealed the fact that I was observing him. Watching him was my favorite thing, especially when he was lost in his thoughts and clueless about my gaze kissing him.
He lifted the wine glass and pressed it against his lips. After taking a small sip, he placed it in the grass in the back of Dad’s lake house. We had gone for far too long since the last time we had spent more than a few days here. The home I had built with my father and the place where Asher and I allowed ourselves to finally feel all that we had been holding down, this house was charmed with memories.
Dad had lived here for nearly a year after finalizing the divorce, but the remoteness was more of an inconvenience than it was what he had needed at the time. He’d moved back to the city and undertook a massive expansion project in his firm. After that, the house was empty most days.
Asher lifted his floating hand and moved the locks of hair from his brow. He’d let his hair grow since the winter holidays. The long, wavy locks often fell over his eyes, and Asher developed a habit of running his fingers through the thick, light brown curls. It was a minute gesture that warmed my heart whenever I noticed it. It was the same as when he fixed his sunglasses by touching the lower left corner and pushing them higher on his nose.
If he knew I watched him do these things, he would ogle at me all confused.
Even this thought made my heart flutter a little.
I picked up my glass of red, a solid quality dry wine with dominant rich and earthy notes, and carried it across the backyard to join my love. He dragged the sunglasses from his eyes to the top of his head, trapping his beautiful hair in place. Shooting me a curious smile, he lifted his left arm, and I took his hand in mine. Then, I lowered myself to the second recliner. Our hands held together, we enjoyed the sounds of nature and solitude. After so much hustle and bustle, this felt like Heaven. I could sit here all night, never saying a word, and be happier than I had ever been before. So long as I was with my favorite person, I was content. “Dinner’s in the oven,” I said.
“Mm.” Asher’s contented hum was music to my ears. He loved my cooking and I loved making him happy.
We lifted our wine glasses and let their edges touch, then took a sip each. This year, the small wine collection in the basement was growing faster than we could deplete it. Playing for the NHL after a gap year of hoping for a better contract following my graduation meant I could afford these little treats that enriched our evenings. It also meant that our evenings together were more precious than any time before.
In the first year of dating, Asher and I had found ourselves in a brand new reality, but we had both known how fleeting it was. We’d had a year to drink all the pleasures we could from our proximity. After I graduated, Asher still had two more years of college. His junior year had been easy compared to what would follow since I hadn’t landed a favorable offer that whole season, and I could stay in the city with him. But this past year had been tough on us. I had been traveling with my new team whenever I wasn’t on the verge of exhaustion with drills and conditioning. It was the crescendo of everything I had wanted to achieve, but it pulled me away from Asher, who had stayed at Northwood, captaining the Titans. The title he’d gotten in his final year had made me beam with pride for months. Even now, it hasn’t completely worn off.
The swimming shorts Asher wore appeared dark red in the waning sunlight. They were all he wore after rolling in the grass with me an hour ago. Right there, to my left, was the spot where life-changing truths had come out in a moment of drunken carelessness. Three years later, I dared him to wrestle me again, but Asher refused. “Wrestle? Why would I ever want to do that when I can pin you to the ground in a much more satisfying way?” And that was precisely what he had done.
“Can you believe it?” I mused. “You graduated with excellent marks. We share an agent. And we get to be up here all alone like real life is just something we do when we feel like it.”
Asher chuckled. “Is that how you feel? About life?”
I rolled my big, round shoulders. “When I’m here with you.”
He narrowed his eyes in thought. “You’re right. It’s almost like we get a break from it.”
We were silent again, enjoying that break from real life. After a while, I let my gaze drag all over his sexy body. The summer tan was beautiful on him this year. “Do you ever get nervous?”
He bobbed his head left and right. “I would if I didn’t have you.” A small frown creased his forehead. “If I had to start over on my own, new place, new team, I think I would be terrified.”
I listened and nodded.
Asher sucked in a shallow breath of air and shot me a curious look. “Do you realize that the only time I had to go into it on my own was when I was thirteen?”
“Really?” I hadn’t thought about it.
