Page 204 of The Fall

“I, uh…” I start, searching for words. “Honestly? I avoided dealing with it.” That is close enough to the truth.

“I get that.” He studies me, his gaze thoughtful. “What changed?”

You.The word sits on my tongue. I breathe in. “The right man made everything make sense.”

Blair is quiet for a moment. He lets out a soft, “Hmm,” and he shifts, twisting to look at me. “I’m jealous,” he says, his tone playful but his eyes serious. “Who is this ‘right man’? Should I be putting someone through the glass?”

I laugh. “No need. He’s sitting right here.”

He’s quiet again, and then he says, “That’s who you are for me. You make everything in my life make sense. You’re worth it, everything.”

I watch the way his eyes shine in the low light, the way he looks at me like I’m a secret he’s been aching to tell. His words settle over me like sunlight through a window I didn’t know was open. A single breath settles everything inside me. I rest my forehead to his shoulder.

The ocean murmurs at our feet, pulling blossoms from the sand and sending them tumbling into the waves. The bonfire ebbs to embers, flames whispering as delicate as folded paper.

This is what I lost. This is what I found again. The feeling rises in me like water, like light. I’ve held it in so long, kept it locked where it couldn’t be taken from me again. I’ve loved him forever, it seems, this love sunk beneath my skin, ink bled deep into paper.

I turn in his arms until we’re facing each other. “I love you,” I whisper to him. “I have always loved you, Blair.”

His breath catches sharply between us; the sound stops time. I watch his face transform. For a second, he doesn’t move, doesn’t speak. “Say it again?”

“I love you. I love you,” I say again. “Only and always you.”

His eyes search mine, deep blue in the fading light. Blair slides one hand up to my neck, his thumb stroking my jaw.

“I feel like I’ve waited my whole life to hear you say that,” he breathes. His eyes never leave mine. The sea air wraps around us, carrying salt and sweetness.

“I love you.” The words slip out of me again, unstoppable now that I’ve let them free. My voice breaks on the words, but I don’t care. I need him to know how deep this runs.

Firelight catches the moisture filming his eyes, turning them to liquid sapphire. He leans closer, our foreheads touching, and the world outside the two of us dissolves into a soft blur of fire and sound. A small, shaky laugh escapes him, full of wonder. “I want to spend every day making you happy, Torey.”

“You already do,” I whisper.

Forty

Days blend togetherin soft layers. Some mornings start with Blair’s mouth brushing against my shoulder, others with my fingers following the line of his spine beneath the sheets. Then the sheets tangle around our ankles. Pillows tumble to the floor.

Some days, we manage to leave the villa. When we do, our kayaks cut through water so clear it seems unreal, paddles leaving silver trails as we follow darting fish through the shallows. On the driving range, my golf balls disappear into sand traps more often than not, but Blair rewards my terrible swings with long and lingering kisses. Strange how my game never improves.

We race into waves like teenagers freed from supervision, rating the splash of each other’s cannonballs and laughing at bad belly-flops. The waves speak in whispers as the sun melts into the horizon, and we drink virgin piña coladas as we sun ourselves on the dock.

Night pulls us into the ocean, naked in the warm water. We bob beneath the stars, holding on to each other.

And every night?—

God, I’ve dreamed of him exactly this way, not once or twice but a thousand times.

The feeling of him, thick and hot, pushing inside me is not a dream. It’s real, and he fills me completely. He sinks into me inch by excruciating inch until he’s buried.

This is what my dreams were missing. The stunning, absolute reality of him inside me.

His heat seeps into me, burning away every thought that isn’t him, isn’t us. I’m starving for him, for the drag and push of him, for the way he unravels me.

Every frayed edge of me, every broken piece, knits together around him. I see my own soul reflected in his eyes.

There’s no part of me left that isn’t his.

Every day, I fall deeper in love. He shares pieces of himself that have been tucked away for years: his first wobbly steps on skates, the boy in his freshman homeroom who made his heart race. One evening, he sits behind me on the dock and summons the courage to confess how nervous he was before our first date at his house. He hides his face in my neck as he speaks, and I feel the curve of his lips as he laughs at himself. “I was more nervous than putting on the C for the first time,” he admits. “I didn’t want to screw anything up.”