“Like you?” he said. “For you, Penn, I’d steal the fucking stars.”
I bit my lip, teeth sinking into soft skin as I reached for his face again. I needed to feel him. Needed to believe he was real and not just a dream conjured by grief and salt water.
“You have me questioning everything I thought I knew about love and pain. My heart hurts so much, Dane.”
He didn’t flinch. Just let me wind my fingers around a strand of hair that had slipped over his face.
“And when your heart hurts,” he said, voice breaking softly against the tiles, “Days like today are the antidote. Here. Withme. Because Peach he’s a coward. A killer of your heart. He left you lying in the dark.”
He scooped me into his arms, strong and sure, stepping toward the bath filled with water that smelled like jasmine and white pear. Purple iris petals floated like little memories on the surface.
“My favourite,” I whispered, curling into him.
“I know, baby.”
“How?” I asked, burying my face in the hollow of his neck.
“Your office. Always full of them. Weekly delivery from Living Blooms.”
A laugh, fragile and fleeting, escaped me.
He remembered. He noticed.
Lowering me into the water, the heat bit at first, then melted over me like a lullaby. The scent ofmewrapped around my skin, and I felt my past claw its way up through my throat.
“I wish he could see how much it destroyed me when he left.”
Dane knelt beside the bath; fierce tenderness etched across his face. “Oh, Penn. I wish I could beat it into him, but I’d probably get arrested.”
I smiled. It cracked through me like lightning.
“He’s throwing away a ruby, chasing after glass. And that? That’s fucking tragic.”
His hands moved over me, washing away the salt and sorrow. The body wash smelled like vanilla and coconut, like the promise of softness after the storm.
“When I’m with you, Dane, I feel… safe. Like I’m home.”
I searched his eyes, afraid of what I’d find and terrified of what I wouldn’t.
“Sometimes,” he said, “we find home in people we’re not supposed to. Right person, wrong time. Right season, wrong feelings. Maybe I’m meant to be your season.”
“Do you think you could wait for me to find the right feelings for this season?”
He tilted my head back, fingers threading through my hair.
“Of course I can wait,” he said. “I’d wait for you forever. And I know you’ll ask me why, so I’ll tell you now, because I’ve been waiting my whole life to find my soulmate.”
As he rubbed shampoo into my hair, I stared up at him. This, this was the kindest thing anyone had ever done for me.
Even after my emergency C-section, Blake never helped me bathe. Never touched me gently. The nurses did. My mother. Not him. He blamed me, and even when he said he didn’t, I saw it in his eyes. Every damn time.
“Do you believe in love at first sight, Penn?” Dane asked.
“Yes. It’s how I felt when I saw Blake. IknewI would marry him.”
A small smile tugged at Dane’s lips.
“That’s good. Because that’s exactly how I felt when I saw you. I knew you’d be my wife.”
