Page 78 of The Sun & Her Burn

So I leaned forward to brush a kiss along the sharp edge of his square jaw and whispered, “I think it has been a very long time since you were seen instead of just looked at, Mr. Meyers. You’ve been alone in the dark for too long, and I’m happy to be the one standing beside you now.”

“For the next three years, at least,” he said. It was meant to be a joke, but it landed unevenly, broken, and ugly.

“For as long as you’ll have me,” I corrected softly, our noses brushing.

I watched his long, tangled lashes sweep down to cover his eyes, his Adam’s apple bobbing hard as he swallowed before he nodded tersely and stepped back to close my door. He turned to walk away, hands in his pockets, shoulders squared as if for battle.

I realized that in the past few weeks, a tenuous anchor had hooked through my heart and linked my soul to his. It tugged as I watched him walk away, urging me to go back inside with him.

Without giving myself time to think, I undid my seat belt, wrenched open the door, and jumped from the car before running to him carefully on my high-heeled sandals. He turned before I reached him, catching me with a surprisedoofas I threw myself into his arms.

A startled huff of laughter stirred my hair even as his arms went around me in a tight squeeze. “What’s this about?”

“You looked like you could use a hug,” I whispered thickly, clutching him close and burrowing my nose in his neck where his rich, clean scent filled my lungs.

After a moment’s hesitation, he relaxed slightly against me and sighed deeply.

We stood like that for long minutes, pressed together as if sewn tight at the hips, thighs, and chest. When he finally pulled away, there was a phantom sensation of ripping, as if we weren’t meant to be parted.

He cupped my cheeks, staring somberly into my face. “What a gift you are,” he murmured. “A single sunbeam in my lonely dark.”

“Not so lonely anymore,” I reminded him.

“No,” he agreed softly, thumb sweeping over my cheek before he abruptly dropped his hands and offered me a tiny smile. “Go home, Sunbeam. Text me when you get in safely.”

I nodded, my voice lost somewhere in the sensations battling inside my chest.

When he started walking away again, he did it backward, hands in his pockets once more, that little, private smile constructed just for me pinned between his cheeks. I walked backward toward my car, giggling when I tripped over my feet and had to catch myself on the spare wheel attached to the trunk.

When I looked back up at him, I caught the flash of his wide grin before the door to the house closed on his face.

Now, five days later, Adam was on his way back from New York City, and I would finally get to see him again. He had a surprise for me, one he’d teased me about during his absence in a surprisingly boyish way that made me kick my feet whenever I received a text.

I was seeing out my last shift at Affaire, working from opening at eleven until seven. My schedule was too busy to maintain my job at the restaurant now that I was dating Adam and, as a result, finally booking scads of auditions. Mali had told me just that morning I had five lined up for minor roles in some serious blockbusters just next week. The paparazzi, who were always frequent visitors outside the star-lauded restaurant, were also aware that I worked there, and they hounded me whenever I came and went. It had reached the point where my manager had politely suggested I had outgrown my stint with them.

It was sad, in a way. Serving at the exclusive French restaurant was my first job in Los Angeles, and it led me to meet Rozhin, my first and only best friend in town.

So it didn’t surprise me when tears sprang to my eyes as I entered the server hub just before my shift was about to end to find Ro huddled with several other servers around a little citrus mousse cake.

“Congrats!” they called out in a muted shout so they didn’t disturb the diners.

I laughed as they swarmed me, huddling me toward the cake so I could blow out the single candle and read what the pastry chef had written in dark chocolate on the top.

To the future Mrs. Adam Meyers.

I rolled my eyes so hard they almost stuck that way, making Ro and another girl, Shirley, laugh.

“I told you I’m not leaving to be his stay-at-home wifey,” I reminded them.

Dan, a gorgeous gay man who applied makeup like a wizard, batted his mascaraed eyes at me. “Don’t be coy, honey. We all know no one in their right mind would resist that future.”

“There’s nothing wrong with lying around naked all day waiting to serve that fine piece of ass,” Mary agreed.

“If we were ever friends, you’ll send pics,” Paris teased.

“Naked ones,” Dan qualified.

I laughed, covering my face with my hands. “You lot are incorrigible.”