Page 87 of Chasing Clouds

Her hands run over my back as mine cup and take in the weight of her breasts and my mouth sucks in her nipple. She gasps and arches underneath me.

A man could die just from yearning to hear the sounds she makes.

I want to tell her to sit still, that if she keeps moving this will be over before it begins, but I don’t. I can’t say a word. Instead, I take off every stitch of our clothing and worship her the best way I can.

The warmth of her skin as it caresses mine makes me feverish. The taste of her lips has me intoxicated, and the feeling of her heart beating with mine leaves me delirious. How one person can cause so many different visceral reactions is beyond me, but I want it. I want it all.

Us, together, moving, breathing, enraptured as one—there is nothing greater than this expression of love, a love I intend to hold onto for forever.

Sometime later, we make ourselves some lunch then head upstairs to her bed. Both of us are exhausted and quickly fall asleep. Hours pass as we nap curled around each other, until I’m finally awoken by the twilight sun. Everything is warm—her room, her bed, her—and I feel more content than I have in my entire life. How I went all those weeks without this—hell, all those years—I’ll never know.

Slipping out of her bed, I’m on my way to the bathroom when I spot the original photo I saw of her and Clare. I bring it with me, crack the door, and turn on the light. Of course, now when I look at it, it’s plain as day that the girl smiling at the person taking the photo is not Camille, and the girl with her head thrown back laughing is—the girl with the pink hair. Yes, they are identical twins, but the differences between them aren’t that subtle. Clare’s face is rounder, her eyes are farther apart, and the energy that’s present in Camille just isn’t there. Clare is beautiful, but she looks colder, stiffer, and from all they’ve said, perfect for Patrick.

Patrick and I will never be friends, but I do feel sympathetic for his loss. Loving someone for so long and so completely, and then to have her tragically taken away . . . I can’t imagine the pain and hope I’m lucky enough never to experience it firsthand, but then I change my mind. At the end of our life, one of us will have to die first, and it hurts to say this, but I hope it’s her, not me. I don’t want her to go through great loss twice. Once is enough.

Sliding back in the bed, I pull her up next to me, and her arm drapes across my chest.

“Where did you go?” she mumbles against my skin.

“Nowhere,” I tell her, and deep down, I mean it. For weeks, even though we weren’t physically together, I’ve been with her and only her. She consumed all my thoughts and heavily filled my heart.

My wife.

Well, technically she’s not, but that’s not from our doing and wasn’t our choice. If I have anything to say about this, the paperwork will be resubmitted and our status will be remedied somewhat quickly.

“Camille,” I whisper, my lips in her soft hair as my hand runs down the bare length of her spine.

“Hmm,” she murmurs, half asleep.

“I love you.”

Starting at her foot, her skin ripples all the way up to her hand on my chest, where her fingers curl into her palm.

“I do. I love you, and I just thought you should know.”

“Reid.” She pulls back, looks at my face, and then cups my cheek. Her thumb slides back and forth, making me feel treasured. With a small smile, her eyes are happy as she says, “I know you do.”

“How do you know?” I question, returning her adorable smile.

Sitting up, she leans over to her nightstand, opens the drawer, and pulls out three wrinkled pieces of paper. I immediately know they were the airplanes I made. That’s why they weren’t downstairs—she found my notes.

Laying them on my lap, she crosses her legs as she sits close, and I wait for an uncomfortable shyness to take over, but it never does. I have nothing to hide from her, nor she from me, and for the first time in my life, I want to share every part.

“It was the ink on the third one—I saw it first, and, well, of course I had to go read your other hidden messages. These mean more than you will ever know, Reid. Tomorrow you have to refold them so I can keep them forever.”

“Were you surprised?” I ask, a little sheepish but a lot more curious.

“Surprised isn’t a big enough word. I was many things, but mostly so happy because I love you, too.”

“Yeah?” I ask, hope healing all the little broken cracks in me.

“Oh yeah,” she says, grinning from ear to ear. “I love you very much.”

EIGHT WEEKS HAVE passed since that day Reid showed up on my doorstep.

Eventually, I told him all my biggest secrets, burdens, and sources of guilt, and being the man he is, he absorbed it all and in return exuded a strength I found complimentary to my own. I don’t need him, can do this life on my own, but with him, I feel like I can take on the world, two being greater than one.

“So what do you think?” I ask as I join him out on the back veranda of my parents’ plantation home.