Chapter 38
The sand shifted beneath his bare feet, cool and yielding after the heat of the day.
Blade matched Tori’s pace along the shoreline, the same stretch where the stalker had cornered him weeks ago.
Cold grit under his back. Knife steel flashing down.
Heat ripping through his shoulder. The reel unspooled, sharp as ever, but it slid off him now, weightless.
Just facts. Just something that happened to someone else.
Tori splashed through the ankle-deep surf beside him, her sundress hem darkening with salt water. She didn’t care. The woman who used to flinch at getting sand between her toes now kicked at the waves like a kid.
“You realize you’re destroying a perfectly good dress,” he said.
She grinned. “It’s just fabric.”
Just fabric. Three weeks ago, she would have hiked the hem above her knees and tiptoed around the water.
Now she waded right in. Anton’s visit had changed something in her.
The brother who was a stranger, the family that existed in theory but not in practice—somehow meeting him had loosened something that had been wound tight for years.
The sun hung low behind them, a molten orange ball sinking toward the Intracoastal on the western side of the island. The Atlantic threw back streaks of amber and rose like watercolors on wet paper. Beautiful.
But he couldn’t stop watching her instead.
She stopped walking and turned to face him. The dying light caught in her hair, creating a golden rim around her face. Her smile was different now. Smaller, sadder, more real than the bright one she’d worn for Anton.
“Thank you,” she said.
“For what?”
“For not giving up. On finding him. On me.” She slid her hand into his. “Always.”
Her fingers were damp from the salt water, warm from the sun. The contact sent electricity straight up his arm. Years of friendship, of careful boundaries, of pretending this moment would never come. All of it crumbled.
He pulled her closer, just a step, until he could smell the coconut sunscreen on her skin. The surf filled the silence between them, washing and retreating, washing and retreating.
“I need to tell you something,” she said. “About Anton. About having a brother who’s basically a stranger. It’s weird, you know? Sharing DNA with someone who doesn’t know that I hate mustard or that I still sleep with a night-light.”
He nodded. Waited.
“But watching him today, seeing how he looks at the world . . .” She paused, her thumb tracing across his knuckles. “It made me realize how much I don’t want to be strangers with the people who matter.”
He led her up the beach to a spot above the tide line where the sand was dry and soft. They sat facing the water, watching the sun melt into the horizon. The sky deepened to purple and gold.
“You know what Kiara said when she broke up with me?”
Tori went still beside him. “What’s that?”
He picked up a handful of sand and let it run through his fingers. “She said my heart belonged to someone else. That I was in love with you and just couldn’t see it.”
Tori’s breathing changed. Shallow. Careful.
“She was right.” He turned to look at her. “You know that, don’t you?”
Her eyes searched his face. Hope flickered there, mixed with fear and something that looked like relief. “Blade . . .”
“My life didn’t change the night I killed that man at the pier.” The words came easier than he’d expected. “It changed the moment I heard you scream. Every choice I’ve made since has been about getting back to you. I love you, Tori. I always have.”
Tears welled in her eyes, but her smile broke through them like sunlight. “I love you too, Blade.”
The space between them disappeared. Her hand curved around the back of his neck, fingers threading through his hair. Every nerve ending in his body came alive.
This was Tori.
He closed the gap, dropped his mouth to hers, and claimed the kiss.
Her lips were warm, soft, tasting like the strawberry lip balm he’d seen her wear since high school. The kiss started gentle, tentative. A question. Then she pressed closer, and the question became an answer.
His arms circled her waist and pulled her against him until he could feel her heartbeat through the thin cotton of her dress.
Time stopped. The world narrowed to this one moment. Her mouth on his, her arms clinging to him. The way she fit perfectly against him like she’d been designed for this exact spot.
When they finally broke apart, neither moved away. Her breath whispered warm against his cheek. Her forehead rested against his, and in her eyes he saw himself whole. The man she’d been waiting for all these years while he’d been too scared to believe he deserved her.
“So.” She traced lazy circles on his chest. “What happens now?”
He captured her hand, pressed it flat against his heartbeat. “Now we stop pretending we’re just friends.”
“Good. I was getting tired of that anyway.”
He kissed her again, deeper this time. Her hands fisted in his shirt, anchoring him to this moment, this choice, this woman who’d always been his home.
The waves rolled in, crashed, and pulled away, washing away everything that came before. Only this remained.
Only Tori.