Page 162 of The Sun & Her Burn

She meant she missed me and she wanted to be the one to watch over me protectively as I grieved.

“I might go to England to see Cosima,” I mentioned even though the thought hadn’t occurred to me until just then.

She was due with triplets any moment so she couldn’t come to me, and I found myself desperately needing the solace and intimacy of my twin sister. She would understand everything without me having to find the words for the bloody massacrein my chest. She would tuck me up in one of those opulent bedrooms in her British manor home and lavish me with tea and treats and so much attention that I’d never feel alone even in such an enormous house.

I needed that more than I needed Elena’s sharp watchfulness or Mama’s smothering or Giselle’s quiet company and understanding.

I needed Cosima to smother away the loneliness yawning open in my chest like an insurmountable crater.

“I can take some vacation time,” Elena suggested. “I’d like to be there to meet the babies when they come.”

“Okay,” I said quietly because I wanted that, too.

Years ago, we hadn’t been able to stand each other, but love had changed Elena just as it had changed me, then and now.

“Will you be okay?” she asked.

“No,” I admitted on a raw laugh. “But they’re waiting for me, now. At least I have tonight to say goodbye.”

It was 4 a.m. in New York City, and my big sister had answered the phone on the first ring. She hurt for me, and it was obvious when she said, “Call me when it’s finished. No matter what time,d’accordo? I’ll be here.”

“Ti amo, sorella mia,” I told her as tears burned my eyes but didn’t fall.

I love you, my sister.

“Intimo sempre,” she responded, together always.

It had been our safe words as children when we needed to hide from the mafiosos circling our father, Seamus, like carrion crows.

In moments like this, it felt like a hallelujah.

Even when I felt like I was staring down the barrel of gun, knowing I wouldn’t be spending the rest of my life with the people I loved, I had a reminder that I’d never be truly alone.

There were candles everywhere,but since it was California, even though it was only early March, they were flameless vessels with battery-powered ambient light. Strewn across the sand at the base of the narrow beach in front of Adam’s property, they illuminated the night like stars fallen from the night sky above.

They spilled warm golden light on the two golden hair beauties lounging on a black velvet blanket on the sand. They seemed like something from a fever dream, skin glowing, limbs tangled and undulating slowly like the waves rocking softly into the shore, their naked bodies alternatively hard and lush, perfect as usually only exist in the imagination.

But they were here.

They were real.

And they were waiting for me.

None of us said a word as they unclasped their bodies and rolled to their knees to wait for me to approach. As soon as I was in their reach, they disrobed me as if it were part of a sacred ritual, kissing every inch of skin they uncovered, smoothing their hands along the curves of muscle in my arms and legs, testing the weight of balls and the heft of my thickening cock.

Only when I was naked did they push me to the blanket. I settled between Adam’s spread legs, my back against his chest, his erection flush across my spine, while Linnea climbed into my lap. Sandwiched between them, their hearts beating on either side of my chest, I almost started to cry.

It felt like something holy. A kind of love that transcended language and was spoken only through flesh and blood and bone.

“I wanted to tell you this under the moonlight,” Adam said into my ear, rubbing his nose into the hair over my temple and pausing to breathe deeply as if my fragrance was a drug he could get high off. “I wanted to hold you skin to skin while I told you the truest thing I’ve ever known.”

His arms wound around me, one diagonally across my chest to rest his palm against my heart, and the other banded over my hips as if he wanted to fuse us.

“I love you, Sebastian,” he said directly into my ear as if he didn’t want any space between us to sully it. “I loved you then and I love you now in a way I know in my bones and marrow I’ll never stop. I live a half-life without you, and I never want to experience that pain again. I wish I had the watch to give you, to show you how serious I am, but maybe one day I can give you a ring.”

He sucked in a deep breath that I mimicked because I had forgotten to breathe until just then.

“I told you once that I would love you until the end of time, and I meant it,” Adam continued. “I still want your impossible universe. Only now, Linnea had reminded me that it doesn’t have to be impossible. One day, maybe years from now, I’m going to put a gold ring on your finger that matches your eyes and you, me, and Linnea will exchange vows on the beach and vow to love each other forever even though we already have and always would.” He swallowed thickly. “I hope one day, when we can walk away from the fame and film, we can have a family with children who look like you and never stop moving like ourtrottolina. I have this mad hope in my heart that you want that with me, with us, too. But even if you don’t, you have always been my North Star, lighting up my life and leading me along the right path, the truest one to happiness. My Polaris.”