She sits cross-legged beside me on the blanket I laid out, kicking off her shoes, her hair still a little tangled from the ride. She’s painting something invisible across her knee with her fingertip; a habit I’ve come to learn when she’s thinking too hard.
“What’s going on in your head, sunshine?” I ask.
She glances over, smiling faintly. “You wouldn’t want to know.”
“Try me.”
Her shoulders lift in a gentle shrug. “Just thinking about how some people feel… familiar. Like you’ve known them forever, even when you haven’t.”
I do, and you’re my person.
Something shifts in my chest, just a steady tug that’s been there since the first night she tumbled into my bar with Catalina, laughing too loud.
“I know what you mean,” I respond. “Feels like this click, this pull, where you just know.”
That earns me a small smile as she tucks her hair behind her ear, and I can’t stop watching her, the way moonlight paints her ivory skin, giving me a glimpse of the small beauty mark on her neck that I’ve come to love.
I move closer, at a pace slow enough for her to stop me if she wants to. She doesn’t.
“You ever think,” I murmur, “that some people are just meant to find each other? No matter how many wrong turns they take?”
Her gaze shifts to mine. “You mean like soulmates?”
Yes.
I nod once. “Yeah. I believe there’s always that one person for someone.”
Her lips part, but she doesn’t speak, continuing to look at me like I’ve said something she’s been waiting her whole life to hear.
I reach out, my fingers tracing the curve of her jaw and the soft skin at her throat. She leans into my touch instinctively, her eyes fluttering shut.
“Layla,” I whisper.
I kiss her slowly, as if I’m trying to memorize the shape of every breath between us. Her lips are warm, trembling, with a faint taste of vanilla.
She exhales into me, her hand sliding into my hair, the slight scrape of her nails sending a shiver down my spine.
We break apart, she laughs softly, not out of humor, but from disbelief.
“What?” I ask, brushing my thumb over her bottom lip.
“I didn’t know it could feel like this,” she says, her voice barely above a whisper. “Like we’ve done this before.”
I rest my forehead against hers, our noses touching as our breath mingles. “Maybe we have,” I murmur. “Just took a while to find each other again.”
Her smile jitters, and I kiss her again, deeper this time, until everything else fades away—the lake, the crickets, even the air.
There’s only her, pressed close as her hands slide up my chest until she’s holding my face.
We stop kissing, catching our breath, and she doesn’t pull away.
She remains right there, pressing her forehead against mine, breathing steady against my lips.
“I think I believe you,” she whispers.
“About what?”
“Soulmates.”
