He gives a strangled laugh. “You’re so… you.”
“Words, Enz.”
He raises his head. His eyes are red and glassy, but when he talks, he looks directly at me, pulling me in. “You’re the sun, Axel. You’re bright and charming and have all these great friends and this great family and so many people who admire you.”
“Don’t forget my fan clubs,” I say.
He snorts. “Right. Your fan clubs.”
“You have fan clubs too.” I remember stalking them when we didn’t speak, looking at page after page of Enzo, wondering what happened.
“The point is, you dazzle everyone. I-I didn’t think I was important.”
“You’re underselling yourself, babe. You’re sweet and caring, Enz. You’re so beautiful too. I go deeper in conversations with you than with anyone else. We have a history, and we’re going to have a future. These three years will be nothing compared to all the time we’ll spend together.”
“Really?”
“Oh, yeah. Years and years and years.”
He sniffs. “I’d like that.”
“It would be pretty embarrassing if you didn’t.”
He shakes his head. “Never, Axel. I was yours from the moment you walked into our dorm room. Yours for life.”
My heart thunders. I squeeze his hand. “And you were mine. We were bound together.”
I pull him toward me.
Our bodies tumble together. I hoist him into my arms, and his legs lock around my waist, his ankles crossed at my back.
“I love you,” he says. “I love you, I love you, I love you.”
I wipe the tears from his cheeks. Then mine. Then I laugh, because we’re both a mess, all salt and snot and shaky breathing.
I carry him to the bed and lay him gently down.
Maybe I always loved him. I just didn’t let myself name it. I wanted him in my life forever, even when it was inconvenient, even when we were thousands of miles apart.
I just didn’t realize I couldhavehim. Not like this.
My life might have appeared full from his perspective, and I get that, I truly do.
I wish he’d called and yelled at me and told me I shouldn’t have slept with his sister, and I could have told him that I never, ever would have done that.
But I get why he assumed I did, and I get why that was a step too far and he felt he had to cut me away from him. His father left him, and though he says it didn’t matter, of course it did. Of course he heard other people talk about dads, of course he saw dads on TV, of course he met dads in real life, of course he wondered why he didn’t have one.
I understand.
And now I can make sure that he knows how important he is to me and how I’ll never abandon him.
And we can be together, in a better way than I could ever, possibly have imagined.
He’s not just the guy I call when I arrive at a new hotel for the night and am bored and want to go over my day with someone.He’s the man I snuggle up to at night, the man I love, the man who loves me.
And together we’re raising a little boy.
“Life is going to be more magical than we ever imagined,” I tell him.
