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I felt my cheeks heat. I turned away and hugged Leo to me. He held me tight, sliding me off the chair and suddenly he was sitting on his chair, and I was in his lap. He pulled out his phone and made me pose for more photos. The diamond earrings felt heavy, like they didn’t belong—like I didn’t deserve them. Silly to think that way but…I’d never worn something so expensive before.
I pressed a kiss on Leo’s cheek. “Thank you.”
He looked pretty chuffed with himself before he nodded once and looked at Hunter. “Your turn, bro.”
Hunter wouldn’t meet my eye as he slid the present across the table to me. I leaned over to grab it, Leo’s hands held firmly at my hips, tugging me back against him. Hunter’s present was in a shape of a book. He knew I loved to read. It was also wrapped disastrously. I giggled, imagining how long it must have taken him to wrap it. This wasn’t his forte. As if sensing my thoughts, Hunter smirked, eyes still drawn on the table.
I wouldn’t know it for a long time, but Hunter was feeling inadequate. Like his gift would not impress me so much. Honestly, at the time, it didn’t even occur to me. I didn’t pick up on it. I just thought Hunter wasn’t meeting my eye because he felt conscious.
I tore at the wrapping, wondering what book he got me.
I instantly stilled, my smile wavering in surprise at the worn hardcover, its green lettering gilt title shining under the light.
“It’s a 1946 edition,” he said just then, shrugging one shoulder. “You like them old, you said. So…”
It was my favourite classic.Persuasionby Jane Austen. I’d read that book on my shelf to death, its pages torn and tattered. Hunter had known how much it meant to me. Those nights together, him bruised and hurting. Sometimes I’d brought him into my room and read to him as he shook from pain, from the traumatic violence he’d freshly endured.
I looked up at him in awe, his gift so much more than he could imagine. We had a moment. Staring knowingly at one another, my voice from our past reading the lines—lines I was too young to fully absorb as he yearned for me to continue. I slid off Leo and curled up in Hunter’s lap. I wrapped my arms around his neck tightly, squeezing his hand every few moments, looking up at him. He stared down at me, unsmiling, but his expression soft.
“Thank you,” I told him sincerely. I looked across the table and at Leo, repeating. “Thank you. You guys have made me the happiest birthday girl in the world.”
Leo’s smile stole my breath away. “For you, anything.”
I honestly didn’t know what I did to deserve them.
“At the end of the day,” Leo added, glancing at Hunter, “all we have is each other. All we ever had was each other.”
I nodded, choked up. “I feel like I’m dreaming right now…”
“Dreams are incomparable to this,” Leo told me solemnly.
Hunter’s grip tightened around my hips. “Skye,” he whispered in my ear, triggering a chill down my body. “There’s no point dreaming when you’re our dream in the flesh.”
We didn’t party like we anticipated that evening. Instead, we wound up eating the entire cake, chatting away until the early hours of the morning. Reminiscing of our childhood. Remembering the years we were leaving behind us, and wondering what was to come.
By the time we finished, that comforting silence inching its way to us, I wound up back in Leo’s lap—unsure exactly when over that conversation I had done that—and had fallen asleep.
I stirred when Leo stood up, cradling me to his chest as he carried me up the stairs and to the master bedroom. He settled me down on the bed, and I gripped his hand, shaking my head, muttering for him not to leave. He slid under the covers with me, and I curled to his side, his arm wrapped around me. He traced my spine, up and down, an endless rhythm.
I fell straight back asleep with his scent in my nose and his touch all around me.
