“I’m proud of you,” I whispered. “You have no idea how much.”
She sniffled as tears trickled down her cheeks.
“I can’t leave. We’re not those people,” I continued.
“I know,” she answered back softly.
“I’m a dad too.”
She blinked at me. “Enzo’s son.”
I stiffened but nodded tightly. “He counts on me. I can’t leave him. I won’t leave him. I love him more than anything in this world.”
“I understand,” she said thickly.
“I won’t tell your secret.” I thumbed her bottom lip. “And I will always be there for you. I swear it.”
“I know,” she replied, her bottom lip wobbling.
I leaned in and brushed my lips gently against her forehead before I said to hell with it. This may be my last shot to ever taste her.
I kissed her lips, willing to back off if she wanted me to, but instead, she parted her lips for me and let me sweep my tongue against hers.
She kissed me back, and it was like I was raised from the dead. Every emotion surged to life inside of me.
She was it. She was the one.
I knew it in high school, and I fucking knew it now.
I deepened the kiss, pulling her against me as she twisted her fingers into my hair. Were this another life, I’d have laid her in the sand and claimed every part of her body, but this wasn’t that life.
This wasthislife.
And in this life, she was married and had a whole new life that I wasn’t part of.
I broke off the kiss, both of us breathless.
“Our secret,” I whispered against her lips.
“Our secret,” she replied softly.
I placed a fierce kiss on her forehead again. We held each other on the beach, the waves lapping gently at the shore in the night.
I wasn’t sure how long we stood there, but eventually, I pulled away from her.
“Do you visit Fox’s grave when you come to town?”
She shook her head. “I don’t. I-I make it a point to stay away from here.”
I nodded. “I go once a month to make sure it’s clean and take care of it. I take Laz. My son. Our son.”
Her eyes misted over again in the moonlight. “Don’t.”
I frowned. “What?”
“Don’t go. He-He wouldn’t want that.”
“He’s Fox, sweetheart. I’d never forget him or his sacrifice. Fuck, we went through so damn much together. I-I can’t not go visit him. We can go together. To see him…”
