Theo stood where the trees met the sand in the shadows, shirt unbuttoned, sleeves rolled to the elbows, a look on his face that said he’d been watching me for a while. Tracking everymove like I was a flame he couldn’t help but walk toward, even knowing it would burn him alive.
I waved, headed back into shallower water and waited. Watching him watch me, the corners of his lips twitched as he moved.
He walked to me, through the shallows, clothes getting soaked, not caring. That was so unlike the Theo I’d come to know. The one he showed the world back in Brookhaven Ridge. Maybe we were both living in an alternate reality here. He stopped in front of me, hands rising to cup my face like he was afraid I’d vanish if he looked away. His touch was warm. Grounding.
“You looked like you were trying to disappear,” he said softly.
“Was I?”
His thumb dragged across my cheekbone, slow and reverent. Looking at me like I wasn’t already broken. “Don’t. Not from me.”
I kissed him, unable to help myself—salt-slick, breathless, and messy. Our lips dueled like the world was ending and this was the only way to survive it.
When we pulled apart, his forehead rested against mine, his breath heavy against my lips. “Come on,” he whispered. “Let’s waste this day pretending it’s ours.”
And we did.
We wandered through winding, sun-drenched streets hand-in-hand, lost in the blur of color, drunk on heat, laughter and the lie of something more. Theo haggled in perfect Spanish for street food we ate off paper plates, fingers brushing, laughter bubbling in our throats.
He bought me a carved sea-glass pendant from a stall run by an old man with cloudy eyes and too many stories. He pulled it over my head, the chain cool against my sun-warmed skin.
“It matches your eyes,” he said.
“Before or after I start crying?” I joked.
He looked at me, all serious and soft. “Always. But don’t cry. Not today.”
I grinned. “Couldn’t if I tried.”
We swam in hidden coves and kissed behind the waves. He pressed me against sun-warmed rocks and laughed into my skin, teeth grazing the shell of my ear like he couldn’t stop tasting me. We played like people who didn’t have knives at their backs. Like the world wouldn’t tear us apart if only given the chance.
Even though we never said it, we both knew it wasn’t real. Not in the way the world demanded.
But the way he held my hand, fingers laced like a lifeline—thatwasreal.
The way his voice softened when he said my name, like it was something precious, like I was something precious.
That was real.
That night,I dragged myself out of the shower like I was peeling off a second skin. My body was clean, but my soul was still steeped in everything I couldn’t scrub away. I dressed slowly, mechanically, and stepped barefoot onto the terrace.
And froze.
A path of fire stretched out before me.
Flaming torches punctured the darkness, lighting up the sand like constellations had fallen from the sky. The southern curve of the beach shimmered in their glow, the ocean an endless sweep of midnight and indigo, the last sliver of sunset bleeding into the horizon.
And there he was. My Theo, standing in the center of it all like he belonged to the gods. Barefoot, shirt half-unbuttoned, dark strands tousled by the salt-kissed breeze. A rare, unguarded smile split his face, soft and devastating. His green eyes glowed in the torchlight, bright with hunger, with heat, with something dangerously close to love.
A table waited between us. Candlelight flickered over porcelain and silver. Champagne nestled in ice. Two plates. One night carved out of the chaos of our lives.
“You did all this?” I asked, my voice catching.
He shrugged, almost bashful. “You deserved one moment that didn’t belong to the world. You deserve peace.”
“This is peace?” I stepped closer.
“This isus,” he said, quietly. “Uninterrupted. For now.”
