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“What would you have done if you had run away?”
“Oh, gosh. I don’t know. Probably lived on the beach and sold seashells to tourists. Or, actually, I would have been an explorer. I would have jumped on the first ship that would have me and traveled the world.”
“What’s stopping you from doing that now?”
I smiled, my heart squeezing in my chest. Nothing. Nothing was stopping me. That horrid phone call with my mom had made that very, very clear.
“What will you do after your year at Gatlington is over? Will you stay and teach if it’s offered?”
Rhys was quiet for a moment before replying, “I don’t know. I enjoy teaching. I’m not sure I’m cut out for the American college experience, though. I’ve never slept so poorly in my life.”
I grinned, chuckling a bit.
“I have time to decide.”
“Your parents... They’ll want you to come home eventually, won’t they?”
“They’re used to me jetting around by now, but yeah, I think they will.” He looked down at me, a fine dusting of snow sticking to his hair. “I think they’d like you, Whitney. I know this is very abrupt but—They would.”
I smiled up at him, looking deep into his eyes, and suddenly my heart cracked in a way I didn’t think could be repaired.
Rhys and I had something that I knew was rare. It was like I’d been made for him, and him for me. I didn’t know it was possible to feel the way I felt for him in such a short amount of time, but that had to be why I’d felt so off this past semester.
I’d been looking at him, this man, this practical stranger, almost every day for weeks, feeling like I was being drawn to him like a magnet.
Then we’d kissed, and then we’d slept together, and now I felt like my heart was going to fall out of my chest at the thought that this was it for us. A few short days together. A secret affair.
I’ve always been a practical person. I liked when things made sense.
Nothing about this made sense to me, but that’s why it was so beautiful.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
“I’ve never been better, honestly.”
Looking up at him again, I realized he might have been thinking about the same thing. He bent his head and kissed me tenderly, his lips brushing against mine so gently it nearly brought tears to my eyes. “We’re going to figure this out.”
“I know,” I whispered, but I wasn’t sure I believed it.
We walked through the market until the stalls began to shut down. We went to a bar to warm up, my hand knitted tightly in his. We looked like a normal couple and acted like one, too, except we were a couple with a heavy burden hanging over our shoulders as we walked back to the bed and breakfast in the late hours of the night.
Once inside our room, snuggly tucked away from the world, he helped me out of my jacket and hung it over the back of a chair. I took off my hat and laid it on the dresser, watching his reflection in the mirror as he pulled a fresh shirt and pants out of his backpack.
Professor Rhys Ellis was everything I’d ever dreamed of without knowing it. He was—and I knew this with every fiber of my being—my greatest adventure.
And the thought of losing him hurt me more than anything I’d ever experienced before.
He pulled off his shirt, his back muscles rippling with the action, and then turned around, meeting my eyes in the reflection of the mirror.
“Whitney,” he said, approaching me from behind and sliding his arms around my middle. He rested his chin on the top of my head.
“I’m okay,” I assured him, closing my eyes against his touch and drinking it in. “Let’s get in bed before the ghosts catch up to us.”
I turned around and wrapped my arms around his neck, standing on my toes to kiss him as tenderly as he’d kissed me at the market.
He deepened the kiss, parting my lips with his tongue as he explored me fully, softly, like he was trying to memorize how I tasted and how his lips felt on mine.
And then he picked me up like I weighed nothing and laid me on the bed.
