I sprinted down the jetty. On the last wooden slat, I bentmy knees and jumped. Air whistled through my hair and the sea whipped by under my feet. Then I landed on the boat.
‘Fucking fuck me,’ Aster breathed. ‘Jumping into that valley was nothing to you, was it?’
I straightened and looked him in the eye, making no attempt to hide the mass of emotion threatening to spill out of me. ‘I don’t want to say goodbye.’
Aster blinked, walking from beside Errol to stand before me. ‘What?’
‘You said you needed a goodbye.’ I breathed deep of his wild scent. Fresh roses and long grass and warm fires andAster Aster Aster. ‘But I don’t want to say goodbye to you.’
His eyebrows rose. ‘You heard that?’
‘I heard everything.’
His cheeks, already made rosy by the battering sea breeze, flamed brighter. ‘We need to have a conversation about your wolfy powers.’
I wondered if he remembered why we’d cut that discussion short. I ached with the need to touch him, but I had to make this right first.
‘Aster, I’m so sorry.’
He shook his head, scrunching his nose. ‘I don’t care about that.’ He reached up to coast his hands across the sides of my face.
‘I am sorry though. I?—’
‘Shut up, Cal.’ His hands gripped tighter and I leant into his touch until my forehead braced against his. ‘I don’t want to waste time with that shit. You don’t need to say you’re sorry, okay? Just tell me this: do you love me?’
I leant back to stare into his eyes. ‘I love you more than anything.’
‘Oh, thank fuck,’ Aster breathed, briefly lookingto the sky before pinning me with his gaze again. ‘Do you want me to stay?’
I crowded into him, wrapping my arms around his back and burying my face in the crook of his neck. ‘Please stay,’ I said into his skin. ‘I never want you to leave.’
Aster pushed on my shoulders, but distance didn’t remain between us for long. His mouth came down over mine. My moan drowned out the waves lashing against the boat and the wind gusting past my ears.
Aster was everything. His lips on mine and his hands on my neck and his chest pressing into my chest. My hands curled into his back and my thigh slid between his legs.
‘No fucking on my boat.’ Errol reminded us we were not alone.
Aster broke away from me with a smile on his face. ‘Is that a rule you and Louisa stick to?’
Errol didn’t answer, but the corners of his mouth twitched.
My eyes flicked back to Aster as he tangled his fingers in my hair, bringing my forehead to meet his again. I breathed him in, my heart pounding with relief and joy and love. So many things I’d barely let myself feel, even as Aster and I became closer. I couldn’t feel them before, not fully. Not when he was going to go away.
Even though he hadn’t said it, I knew Aster was mine now. He wouldn’t leave me.
‘You know I do have to leave today, right?’ he asked.
Breath punched out of me. I reared back. ‘What?’
‘Cal. Cal.’ Aster didn’t let go of me, rising on his tiptoes to keep his face close to mine. ‘I have to go. I have to finish my master’s. But—and you better be listeningto me right now, Callum Armstrong—I will come back. And once I’m here again, there’s no way you’re getting rid of me.’
His heart didn’t trip once. He had to leave, but only for a short while. He’d come back, and we would be together.
I relaxed into his hold. ‘I’ll miss you.’
I didn’t expect Aster to laugh. I expected him to burst into tears the next second even less.
He rubbed his face across my chest. ‘Sorry. I know I’m being weird, but you don’t know how much I’ve wanted to hear you say that.’
