71. Dylan
SEVENTY-ONE
DYLAN
I blink my eyes open, groggy and disoriented.
I’d panic, but then my eyes land on Adrian. He’s leaning against the headboard, still gloriously naked, a small frown on his face as he studies his phone.
“I approve of the outfit.” My voice is raspy, and Adrian turns his head and smiles at me. He slides his fingertips over my cheek and lips, eyes taking me in.
“Morning,” he says softly.
I stretch myself. “What time is it?”
“Two o’clock.”
My eyebrows fly to my hairline. “I slept for almost twelve hours?”
“And all it took was confessing your true feelings for me.”
“Now there’s a cure for insomnia.” I nod toward the phone. “What are you doing?”
He glances at his lap where the phone has landed.
“Exploring our options. Making plans.”
I push myself up to a sitting position and lean my head on his shoulder.
“Am I in them?”
“In every sentence on every page,” he says.
I nod and sort of feel like crying again. I’m not even sure whether it’s from happiness or something else.
“Tell me about these plans,” I say.
“Well…” He wraps his arm around me and pulls me closer. “I plan to live with you. And love you. And build a home with you. And be stupidly in love with you.”
Goosebumps.
The good kind.
I kiss him.
I kiss him again.
I kiss him some more.
His hands slide down my body.
We won’t get out of bed just yet.
It’s already getting dark by the time we drag ourselves out of bed and out of the apartment. We go grab food to go and drive to a random beach. We sit down on the sand and eat.
“It’s the first time I’ve seen the ocean since we left the island,” Adrian says.
“I thought I’d never want to see it again.” I look around the abandoned beach, and the waves softly rolling to the shore in the darkness. “I actually don’t mind so much.”
He lies down and pulls me down too, his arm behind my back, his temple against mine.
I look up and meet his gaze. “Tell me about our plans.”
He gives me a knowing look that also manages to be impossibly soft.
“I want some time with you. Alone time. Just us. Away from everything and everybody else. I want space. I don’t think either of us is coping with life here that well. And if that’s the case… We don’t have to be here for now. We have options.”
I frown at him. “You’d do that? What about your family?”
“I love you.” He says it like it explains everything. “Our family. They’ll still be here.”
I shake my head. “I don’t deserve you.”
“You belong with me,” he says simply.
I don’t argue. I just accept.
There are still so many loose ends, though. Complicated matters and no easy answers.
“What about Freya?” I ask quietly.
He sighs and looks at the sky.
“I ended things with her.”
I snap my head up. “You did? But…”
“I realized something. It wasn’t about choosing you or her. It was you or nobody.”
“How?” I don’t feel like I deserve all this happiness when it comes at somebody else’s expense like this.
“Because.” He shakes his head. “You make me laugh more than anybody else. I know everything about you. I can read you like a book. I miss you when you’re gone.
You’re a part of me.” He drags his hand through his hair.
“There’s eight of us, and I’ve never felt like something was completely mine before.
You are. You’re mine, Dylan. Nobody else has ever been simply mine. You are.”
My heartbeat isn’t frantic anymore. It’s a soft, steady thump in my chest. I lean over him and press my lips to his before I rest my head on his chest. His arms wrap around me, and he hugs me to him.
“How did she take it?” I ask in a small voice.
Adrian blows out a breath. “She said it didn’t come as a shock.
She also said some other things.” He sighs.
“There’s this guy, clearly very much into her.
” He bites down on the inside of his cheek, thoughts somewhere far away.
“I wasn’t jealous. It didn’t even occur to me to be.
But”—he meets my gaze, the look in his eyes so intense it makes me shiver—“I fucking hate Indy.”
My mouth drops open as I stare at him. He shrugs, but there’s not even a hint of apology in it.
“Indy’s my friend,” I say.
“I know. I bet he’s great. Awesome. Still hate his guts.”
“That’s… really fucking unreasonable.” It’s also really fucking unreasonable to have that spark of satisfaction flare in me.
It’s a quick, bright flash, and before I can stop myself, my lips are tugging into a smile.
It feels good in a guilty, stolen way. My body hums with the thrill of his jealousy.
The corner of his lips hikes up for a second when he looks at me, but then he sobers again.
“She said that I never really gave her a chance,” he says.
“She’s probably right, but… I tried to see myself in my old life, and whichever way I tried to twist myself, I just couldn’t make myself fit.
I went to our old apartment. Couldn’t imagine myself living there.
There were still things there that were mine, but even those didn’t fit.
I was there, and the whole time I just felt like something was wrong.
It’s because you weren’t there.” He kisses the top of my head.
“You said we’re codependent. All I can think is, so what? ”
I press my lips against the underside of his jaw. “That’s supposedly not a good thing, you know?”
“Who the fuck cares?”
“I… don’t know? I think a part of me feels like we should care.”
“But do you?”
I start to say yes, I do care, only I can’t seem to get the words out.
“Who the fuck gets to judge that? It’s me and you, Dyl. Fuck everybody else.”
I squeeze my eyes shut.
Hope.
Everlasting hope.
So much hope.
“What if your family disapproves?” I ask in a small voice.
“They won’t.”
“They might.”
“Dyl, they love you more than they love me.”
“They also love Freya. She’s like a daughter to them, and we…”
“They’ll come around,” he says.
“And if they don’t?”
His arms tighten around me like he’s trying to make sure I don’t go anywhere. “It’s you and me. No matter what. Everything else is bonus. Yeah, I want it, but everything else in this world I can live without. You? I can’t.”
I draw in a deep breath and let those words settle. For a change, there’s no small voice inside me arguing and telling me to hold back and be cautious.
“I don’t think I can live without you either,” I say.
He smiles at me. “Good. You don’t have to.”
We lie in silence for a bit. I bury my nose in his neck and inhale the scent of shower gel and grass and us that clings to his skin.
I smile against his neck. “I love you.”
I’m free to say it now. As many times as I want. I can rebuild my whole vocabulary from the ways I love him.
He kisses me then, his arms tightening around me. There’s a mix of everything whirling inside me. Love, happiness, relief, hope. Fear. It’s still there, but it’s just a sprinkling now, instead of an overwhelming wave.
And it’s home.
He tastes like home.
The home he’s always been for me.
“Say it again,” he murmurs against my lips.
“I love you.”
“I love you, too. And I will tell you every day for the next eighty years or so. Until you’re sick of hearing it.”
I laugh, my chest vibrating against his. “Please do.”
He repeats it over and over between kisses, underneath miles and miles of stars.