Page 75

Have you seen the man, Jess? It probably gets used often—very often.I swallow down my thoughts, my irrational jealousy, and a handful of other things while I’m at it. Like the intense need to erase those memories of his with some new ones of our own.

I’m not left to contemplate these things for long, though, as he makes the reason for being in here embarrassingly clear by guiding me through a door I hadn’t noticed until now and into what looks like a recording studio.

“Wow,” I say, looking around the small room. “This is rad.” I don’t know much about recording studios, but this one looks pretty damn legit. Instruments and microphones sit behind a windowed wall, and a hundred different flips and switches on a soundboard rest in front of it, in the half of the room we’re standing in.

“It’s my favorite room in this house,” he comments with a smile. That crooked smile of his that never ceases to take my breath away. The smile I so desperately would like to kiss right now. I’ve fought the urge to do it all night, and it’s a battle I’m fully ready to lose at this moment.

Soon, I silently admonish myself.

Talk.We need to talk first; wehaveto talk first.

Get it together, Jess.

“I bet.” I take in a deep inhale of air, willing my feelings to settle, and spin around on the balls of my feet, but my eyes land on a single photo that quickly steals the breath right back from my lungs. Not a single one of them remains.

Because…holy shit.

I swallow thickly, pushing against my tears that surge forward, threatening to fall. Forcing half-breaths in and out of my mouth.

He kept the picture.

He kept it.

And it’s hanging right there, on his studio wall.Blown-up, and framed, and resting in a spot you couldn’t miss from anywhere in this room, andholy shit.

I stare at my sixteen-year-old self, sitting on a swing, entirely consumed, as relief curls itself around my heart and cradles it with hope.

Emotion lodges itself in my throat.

And my tears, they just want to fall, and fall, and fall.

Sixty-three After

I FORCE ANOTHERshaky breath in and out of my lungs before turning back around to face Greyson, meeting his gaze. His eyes sink into mine, and they shine with the same emotions I’m feeling, and I can’t help it.

I walk straight into his arms.

He wraps them around me with zero hesitation, and I let out an audible sigh of relief at the same exact moment that he does. Andthis.This is exactly where I belong. Where I’ve always belonged.

Somehow, a sixteen-year-old version of me knew it before I ever could’ve comprehended what the weight of that meant. Like my soul saw his and took its first breath in centuries.

Like it whisperedhello,and his whispered backI’ve missed you,and then they sat back in contentment, willing to wait until we came to the same conclusion:

You are mine. You are mine; you are mine; you are mine. You have always been mine, and you will always be mine.

Greyson’s arms envelop me, his scent permeating the air around me, and I breathe it in. Let it settle into my bones. The familiar smell of mint and chocolate and Greyson—mixed in with a feeling of home I want to linger inside of forever.

And right now, in this moment, I think I could.

One breath against his chest turns into four, and four turn into a hundred, and I’m still wrapped up in his arms. I don’t want him to let me go. Not now, not ever.

But he deserves his answers. He deserves an explanation for the decisions I made all those years ago.

I start to step away, but his arms tighten around me, and a smile breaks free on my lips, slipping past the myriad of emotions I’m feeling: Fear, uncertainty, contentment, peace.

A hundred, a thousand, a million others.

I look up at him, my chin resting against his chest, and his eyes meet mine, locking them in place.