Chapter 42 #2
“Oh,” is all I manage to say. “What are the odds?” I ramble, nervously, wetting my lips as my teeth fidget with the plump bottom one. Adrenaline crashes against my sternum, his sudden appearance making it hard for me to get my bearings.
It’s just that he’s so handsome, standing there, eyes fixed on me like the rest of the room doesn’t matter.
So perfectly who he was that first night we met only it’s more, because I know him now.
Know how all of it is with him, just like he said I would.
I feel the ghost of his arms around me from across the room, imagine the surety that always seems to wash over me when I rest my head against his chest, when I hear the steady thrum of his heart beneath me.
“What are you doing here?” His bag drops to the ground, an invasive thud in the otherwise quiet space.
“Private jets fly all day,” I joke, before shaking my head, fixing my gaze squarely on him.
I walk toward him, and his gaze drops to the ground before finding mine again.
There’s nothing timid or restrained—it’s desperate and all consuming, and I swallow against it, trying not to jump the gun.
“I came to tell you I’m sorry…for runnin’. For leaving you.”
He shakes his head, stepping towards me. “You didn’t do anything wrong, Sloane. I…I lied to you.”
“You omitted the truth,” I correct him, a small grin playing at the corners of my lips but he’s not ready for it; guilt still slashes through his gaze, tortures him in real time, and I realize I have to let him do this. Have to let him bleed all of it dry before he’ll let me bandage him up.
“I should’ve been honest. As soon as my father asked me to keep tabs on you, I should’ve let you know. And then when things changed…I had no excuse not to tell you other than I was scared. I thought I had it all under control, thought I was handling him.”
I gnaw at my lip, the despair in his gaze like a knife between my ribs.
“I didn’t even let myself think I could have you until it seemed safe.” He closes the distance, taking my hands in his. “But then he threatened my mom, and Carm, and—”
I slide my hand along his jaw, lay it there to steady him. “I know. I know.”
“I should’ve told you, but I was scared. Scared you’d run, but instead…fuck, I left you alone, Sloane. I hate myself for it.”
Connie’s empty living room sprawls in my memory and there’s a small pinch of resentment that releases just as soon as it appears, and I let it go. It falls away like every other thing when he’s holding me like this, when I’m this close to the only soul that’s ever felt perfectly cut for mine.
“I’m sorry I wasn’t there,” he tells me, regret laced in his voice.
The wreckage of that night and the nights that followed, in the wake of Connie leaving, felt like an abyss I’d never find an end to. I think…if someone had held me through that, I might not have faced myself. Might not have hit rock bottom.
I take his regret, let it fall into the wound of that moment, and it ceases to exist. And I wonder if that’s the power of all this, if love renders our worst moments nothing more than splinters that, over time, become nothing at all.
“In some twisted way…I think it all happened the way it was meant to.”
“Fate?” he says, sort of breathless, his eyes searching mine for true absolution, and I nod.
“Oh, yeah,” I laugh, watching as he forgives himself just a little. “I mean, what are the odds we’d both be in this random airport?”
“Actually,” he murmurs as I stand before him, my eyes dipping to his lips as he does, “slim, because I was about to get on that plane.” He nods his head at something behind me and when I look, a different private jet stands on the runway. I release a shaky breath, disbelief blurring my eyes.
“Where were you goin’?” I wait, heart lodged high in my throat, desperate to hear it. Hope hollows my chest out, leaves me unbearably nervous even though I know, deep in my soul, that he was coming to find me.
“You, Sloane. Always you,” he breathes just as his hands grip me around the waist with life affirming force.
When he crashes his mouth into mine, every doubt that’s ever lived between my bones falls away, is washed away with the adoration he pays to me with the hungry brush of his tongue against mine, with the unabashed way he holds me in his hands.
“Thank god,” he tells me, his fingers tangling in my hair as he holds me to him, the wide breadth of his other hand pressing against my back as we weave a promise between us. I can feel the force of it with ever coming together, with every hallowed moan, with every sacred touch.
“Thought you didn’t believe in all that.” I smile against his lips, pulling slightly back so I can see the way his eyes shift at my tease. And they do, those amber flecks glittering right there in his gaze, just the way I love.
“I don’t,” he tells me, rolling his lips together as he shakes his head, his thick blonde waves falling across his brow.
“I believe in you. More than I’ve believed in anything.
” His thumb brushes across my lips, fingers swiping at the tears trailing down the side of my face as concern flits across his gaze.
“I’m okay. I just…” I shake my head, righting myself as the words wash over me, demand to be breathed to life, and he loosens his hold. Stepping back, I sniff away the tears that won’t stop running down my face, that always seem to fall when this man’s kissing me within an inch of my life.
“I have spent my whole life running,” I tell him with a helpless shrug, patting my cheeks like it’ll make a difference at this point.
Andrew’s jaw flexes, his restraint on full display as he gives me the space to say this thing howling in my chest. “From everyone who loves me. And I’d always thought I was just…
damaged goods. Like, I’d wrecked myself over the blunt edge of my chaos one too many times and everyone could see it.
” He starts to speak and I shake my head, smiling, my heart feeling lighter and lighter as the thoughts find purchase in the foundation we’re tilling in real time.
“But I couldn’t run from you,” I laugh, sputtering, and he smiles this soft, gentle smile that tells me he knows.
That he couldn’t escape us either. “You were…everywhere. And when you weren’t, you were in my mind, all the damn time.
So I thought maybe we could be friends. That I could avoid the inevitable loss that would be having you for real and losing you when you left.
But you knew, long before I did, that it wouldn’t work. ”
Andy’s eyes are wet with unshed tears as he nods his head, his lips pressing together.
“We could never be just friends because I was always, always gonna love you. There is not a life I’m in where loving you doesn’t happen—I know it in the marrow of my bones. That I love you.”
Chest falling, he doesn’t even try to hide the grin that cracks across his face, cupping mine in his hands. “I keep waiting for this to be a dream.”
“It’s not,” I tell him, our noses brushing as he ghosts his lips atop mine. Those same ribs that only a day ago might’ve collapsed from the force of my tears are now at risk of bursting wide open; it’s a contentment I didn’t think was possible. “I mean all of it. And it’s real. This is real.”
“Good,” he tells me, hoisting me up and I wrap my legs around him, looping my arms behind his neck. “Because I’m never waking up from this. I love you, too, Sloane. In this life, the next. All of them. You have them. They’re yours.”
And then he kisses me like I belong to him and he belongs to me, and nothing has ever felt truer.