For a long, quiet moment, we just exist, our bodies still humming from the storm, our breath a shared rhythm struggling to find calm. The room is thick with heat. My fingers stay tangled in his hair. His hands stay curled around my hips like letting go means rewinding the world.
For a long, quiet moment, we just exist.
Twined limbs. Tangled breaths. No secrets. No distance. Just skin and truth and the kind of stillness that only follows after the rain finally stops.
My fingers stay curled in his hair. His hands don’t leave my hips—not even a fraction. He doesn’t let go. And this time, I know he won’t.
The silence between us isn’t fragile now, it’s full, heavy with everything we already know.
His forehead presses to mine, our skin slick and warm, our hearts thudding out the same, steady rhythm. My palm finds the tattoo on his chest, feeling it beat under my hand like a vow.
He pulls back to look at me. His thumb strokes along my jaw, and when he speaks, it’s a whisper.
“I just need you to know—” His voice cracks, and it shatters something soft inside me. “You freed me.”
I smile, but it wobbles, because now the truth doesn’t feel like a burden.
It feels like home.
“I’m not sorry,” I say. “For any of it. For the texts. For the fight. For falling.”
He exhales like he’s been holding that breath for months. “You could’ve told me.”
“I was scared,” I admit. “But I’m not anymore.”
A beat.
His hand moves to the back of my neck, fingers threading through my hair. His mouth finds mine again. This time with a sweetness that aches. A love that feels like staying. Like choosing.
Like it’s final.
When we break apart, his eyes are bright.
“I don’t want temporary,” he says. “Not with you.”
“Good,” I breathe. “Because you’re stuck with me.”
He laughs, quiet and beautiful, pressing a kiss to my cheek, then my temple, then the spot just above my heart like he’s sealing it.
And when he pulls me fully into his arms, holding me like he’s never letting go?—
I believe him.
CHAPTER 45
STEAM ME UP, SCOTTY
RORIE
If someone had toldme a week ago that I’d be willingly participating in a competitive game of drunk flamingo yoga on a paddleboard—I’d have laughed, possibly cried, and definitely asked for an early ticket back to New York.
But here I am. Three days in, sun-kissed and sore in muscles I didn’t know existed, surviving what has officially become the most unique and also unhinged team-building resort experience known to all humans.
There was the salsa dance-off that spun wildly off course when Jeremy tried to dip Laurel and accidentally flung his shoe into the air… where it smacked the CEO from Taylor and Blythe in the head and launched his toupee into a server’s champagne tray.
Then there was the mixology competition, where Nolan decided he absolutelyhadto outshine my Mirage and Titan by flirting his way behind the bar. Five minutes and an unnecessarily cocky wink later, he debuted a drink calledRhodes Rage—a concoction of tequila, bitters, sin, and a vengeance shot so potent it may have burned through the stomach lining of at least two fellow guests.
The whole night turned into a disaster. One guy kept crying, another proposed to a potted plant, and Rishi tried to legally adopt the bartender, who was clearly twenty plus years older than him. Shelby led a conga line through the cigar lounge wearing someone’s yachtclub blazer, chanting, “Shots before strategy!” like it was a corporate mantra.
