Landon
Memories tore through. Moments, emotions, and meaning I’d been searching for my whole life.
Why I always followed him.
Why I trusted him.
Without fail, even when I didn’t know why, it thrummed beneath the surface because it was part of me.
He was part of me. Who I was, who I am, and who I’d become—it didn’t exist without him.
I was his.
Guilt tore through my chest at the memory of my mother, and my reaction to it as I stood before him. Flooded with feelings I’d had back then, I couldn’t stand it.
But I was older now than I had been then.
And what she’d done, what she’d shamed and brought straight to Drake D’Arthur needing to tear us apart, it was her—she had been wrong.
Not us.
Certainty pulsed through me, rippling like a wave over a midnight blue lake and coursing through my limbs.
I had to find him.
As I raced through the party, searching everywhere for where he’d gone after I left, my phone beeped, but I ignored it.
I couldn’t stop. Couldn’t stand another moment without telling him I remembered him.
I remembered us.
He stood by his father, his eyes unfocused as his father spoke, a hand constantly brushing down the front of his suit, and I remembered how he always used to do it.
The first time I saw him do it that day at his father’s house, I knew what it was—I felt it—and I’d stared at him as his father spoke about what I was meant to be for him.
What I might become.
I noticed each time his hand brushed his clothes.
His fear, his uncertainty—it resonated in my bones, and I chose him.
I vowed I would always choose him.
Be the man I was promised to become. Stay by his side. Follow him wherever he might lead.
Even though I didn’t know where it would lead, I vowed it that day.
I would not yield.
And as I approached him now, Kingston’s eyes honed in on my expression. Recognition flickered in his blue-gray eyes. The ones I’d know anywhere. The ones I remembered filling with tears as my guilt became too much, and I let them take the memories—take him—away from me.
With a nod of my head, I asked him to follow me, and I kept moving. I didn’t look back, didn’t need to check to know he’d follow me, too.
I went to the only place I could. The place Drake had created in Kingston’s home to serve as a reminder. To take me away from him every day.
And I waited.
He walked up slowly, his hands resting at his sides but twitching with the need to smooth his clothes. To soothe the loneliness that came with being Drake D’Arthur’s heir.
“Landon, are you alright?”
And I didn’t wait any longer. I didn’t second-guess.
I scarcely breathed as I met him beneath the lemon tree, took his face in my hands, and sealed his lips to mine.
He stiffened for one breath, surprise morphing swiftly into relief, tension draining from his body, and his response confirming the truth.
Kingston D’Arthur was mine.
And I was his.
I kissed him the way I should’ve that day, without fear, without the limits set upon us by weaker men who couldn’t love, and I poured every moment missed between us ever since into it.
As our lips fused, tongues explored, and teeth clashed only slightly while we found our way together, I held him as tightly as he held onto me.
His hands gripped my shoulders with the same intensity as I cradled his jaw, aligning our bodies and mouths like magnets finally reconnecting.
The pull I’d always felt toward him—I couldn’t believe I hadn’t guessed. Hadn’t seen this coming. Seen how much more was there.
But now, being parted from him was as inconceivable as it was with Quinn.
I was hers now.
I was his first.
And I’d be theirs. Always.
When we pulled back for air, he pressed his forehead to mine, eyes closed and cheeks damp.
My lips parted with words I had to release, feelings I’d contained for a lifetime.
A truth about myself I couldn’t avoid, didn’t want to hide anymore.
We were inevitable, Kingston and I.
But as the words filtered through my mind, a voice broke through, clearing the haze to echo them over a phone speaker.
“I love you.” Quinn. “Tell the guys…I’ll see you on the other side.”
Her voice, faint and scratchy, pulled our focus at the same time, as Gia’s shock cry forced us to part.
“Oh my god!” Her hands flew to her mouth. “Oh my god, you guys! I so badly want to let you have this moment, but dammit, I have to interrupt because it’s Quinn.”
We moved toward her on instinct, sharing a look that conveyed we’d speak again when we had time later before our eyes trained on her phone.
She had a voicemail pulled up.
“She did it. She figured it out.” Gia stared between us, eyes wide with awe, even though she wasn’t surprised, before trepidation crept into her voice. “She went into the tunnels.”
Kingston and I locked eyes again, fear coloring his expression as thoroughly as it raced through me.
“Do you know if she solved it?” He refocused on Gia, pulling out his phone at the same time that I grabbed mine. “Do you know if she found the right path?”
“She didn’t say, but she wouldn’t go unless she knew, right?” Her gaze grew frantic as it jumped between us. “She wouldn’t risk—”
But I turned to him.
And I knew what I had to do.
He dug into his pocket. “Take the bike. Go quickly.”
He slipped the key into my palm and grabbed my wrist. Because the truth resonated as deeply in him as it had in me.
I was his.
But I was hers, too.
So, with one final squeeze of his grip on my arm, he released me.
And I ran.