Page 296 of Every Almost

"I have been falling in love with you all over again every single day," Charlie whispered.

Reyna let out a wet laugh and pulled back.

"But you're saying it was after me."

A tear slipped down Reyna's cheek. Charlie moved her finger and caught it.

"Yes." Her voice was low and steady.

Reyna's eyes moved between hers. "How?"

Charlie took a breath and felt the first of her own tears come up. "Because for me it took about five minutes."

The silence sat there for a beat. Then Reyna laughed, open and whole.

"Five minutes?" Her whole face was lit up.

Charlie scoffed. "Yeah. Five minutes, okay?" She was already rambling. "Look. I plead temporary insanity, on account of being thrown across the universe at the time. I needed a minute."

Reyna laughed again. And then Charlie felt Reyna's fingers tighten against the back of her neck.

"You can have all the minutes, Charlie Wickett." Reyna's voice had gone quiet. "As long as they're with me."

And then Reyna kissed her again, and Charlie knew she'd give her every minute she had, for the rest of her life.

When she pulled back, the gold on Reyna's arms was moving.

Charlie had never seen it do that. It had always just been there, warm and steady, and now the gold at her wrists deepened, and climbed. Past her forearms, past her elbows, and where it went it turned, the gold giving way to something warmer, until it reached her throat and settled.

A soft, steady rose.

And it stayed.

Charlie watched it and couldn't breathe. It wasn't holding still. It moved with Reyna, brightening where Charlie's fingers rested against her skin, going deeper when Reyna looked at her.It was alive in a way the gold constellations Charlie was used to had never once been.

Charlie didn't know what it meant.

REYNA

Reyna felt it before Charlie pulled back. It came up out of her wrists, warm and slow under her rolled up sleeves. It was nothing she could have stopped.

When she saw the color appear on her wrist, she was shocked.

She knew what this was. Every Kaelari did. You heard about it young, the color that came when one of your own found the person their entire self answered to. It happened to the lucky ones. Reyna had seen it once, on a woman four decades older than her, and she had always hoped for it, but somewhere along the years, without ever deciding to, she had stopped expecting it.

Reyna had spent seventy-five years being certain of things by working them out. She had never once known what it was to be certain of something this way, to have the answer come up out of her own body before her mind had any say in it, plain and undeniable and entirely beyond her control.

Her body knew. It had known before she did.

And now it was saying so, out loud, in a color, where Charlie could see every bit of it.

She let her.

"Reyna," Charlie said softly. "Your?—"

"I know." Reyna's voice was full of emotion. She didn't look down at herself. She kept her eyes on Charlie. "I can feel it."

"What is it?"