I take his regret, let it fall into the wound of that moment, and it ceases to exist. And I wonder if that’s the power of all this, if love renders our worst moments nothing more than splinters that, over time, become nothing at all.
“In some twisted way…I think it all happened the way it was meant to.”
“Fate?” he says, sort of breathless, his eyes searching mine for true absolution, and I nod.
“Oh, yeah,” I laugh, watching as he forgives himself just a little. “I mean, what are the odds we’d both be in this random airport?”
“Actually,” he murmurs as I stand before him, my eyes dipping to his lips as he does, “slim, because I was about to get on that plane.” He nods his head at something behind me and when I look, a different private jet stands on the runway. I release a shaky breath, disbelief blurring my eyes.
“Where were you goin’?” I wait, heart lodged high in my throat, desperate to hear it. Hope hollows my chest out, leaves me unbearably nervous even though I know, deep in my soul, that he was coming to find me.
“You, Sloane. Always you,” he breathes just as his hands grip me around the waist with life affirmingforce.
When he crashes his mouth into mine, every doubt that’s ever lived between my bones falls away, is washed away with the adoration he pays to me with the hungry brush of his tongue against mine, with the unabashed way he holds me in his hands.
“Thank god,” he tells me, his fingers tangling in my hair as he holds me to him, the wide breadth of his other hand pressing against my back as we weave a promise between us. I can feel the force of it with ever coming together, with every hallowed moan, with every sacred touch.
“Thought you didn’t believe in all that.” I smile against his lips, pulling slightly back so I can see the way his eyes shift at my tease. And they do, those amber flecks glittering right there in his gaze, just the way I love.
“I don’t,” he tells me, rolling his lips together as he shakes his head, his thick blonde waves falling across his brow. “I believe in you. More than I’ve believed in anything.” His thumb brushes across my lips, fingers swiping at the tears trailing down the side of my face as concern flits across his gaze.
“I’m okay. I just…” I shake my head, righting myself as the words wash over me, demand to be breathed to life, and he loosens his hold. Stepping back, I sniff away the tears that won’t stop running down my face, that always seem to fall when this man’s kissing me within an inch of my life.
“I have spent my whole life running,” I tell him with a helpless shrug, patting my cheeks like it’ll make a difference at this point. Andrew’s jaw flexes, his restraint on full display as he gives me the space to say this thing howling in my chest. “From everyone who loves me. And I’d always thought I was just…damaged goods. Like, I’d wrecked myself over the blunt edge of my chaos one too many times and everyone could see it.” He starts to speak and I shake my head, smiling, my heart feeling lighter and lighter as the thoughts find purchase in the foundation we’re tilling in real time. “But I couldn’t run from you,” I laugh, sputtering, and he smiles this soft, gentle smile that tells me he knows. That he couldn’t escape us either. “You were…everywhere. And when you weren’t, you were in my mind, all the damn time. So I thought maybe we could be friends. That I could avoid the inevitable loss that would be having you for real and losing you when you left. But you knew, long before I did, that it wouldn’t work.”
Andy’s eyes are wet with unshed tears as he nods his head, his lips pressing together.
“We could never be just friends because I was always,alwaysgonna love you. There is not a life I’m in where loving you doesn’t happen—I know it in the marrow of my bones. That I love you.”
Chest falling, he doesn’t even try to hide the grin that cracks across his face, cupping mine in his hands. “I keep waiting for this to be a dream.”
“It’s not,” I tell him, our noses brushing as he ghosts his lips atop mine. Those same ribs that only a day ago might’ve collapsed from the force of my tears are now at risk of bursting wide open; it’s a contentment I didn’t think was possible. “I mean all of it. And it’s real. This is real.”
“Good,” he tells me, hoisting me up and I wrap my legs around him, looping my arms behind his neck. “Because I’m never waking up from this. I love you, too, Sloane. In this life, the next. All of them. You have them. They’re yours.”
And then he kisses me like I belong to him and he belongs to me, and nothing has ever felt truer.
Epilogue
Andy
April
I never opened that file. In fact, I shredded it with out a second thought, because whatever was in it wouldn’t have mattered. The woman beside me, guiding us up this narrow road, could never be contained by anything or anyone, much less a manilla fucking folder.
Sloane grasps Delilah’s large leather wheel, winding it around the mountain her family’s summer cabin is nestled on. I squeeze her thigh and her smile shines brighter than the mid morning sun. Something settles in me. For once, I finally feel like I won. Like I’m in control and in charge of my own destiny.
As we make our way down the path the home sits on, I learn thatcabinis an understatement. Sprawling green and wooden planks make up the home’s exterior and I feel like I’m inside one of mom’s Martha Stewart catalogues.
“Nervous?” There’s a glimmer in Sloane’s eyes when she asks and for a second this all feels like a dream. The happyending I’d imagine as a child, a happy ending that felt so out of reach when Luis passed. Sitting here beside Sloane though, I realize this is real. She is real and sometimes happy endings aren’t really endings at all.
I haven’t seen anyone since the game other than her and Will. The thought honestly does terrify me. Sloane was so quick to forgive me, so quick to understand. I know the others won’t be.
We need to rip off the bandaid.That’s what Sloane kept saying as her and Evie discussed using the cabin for an impromptu trip over spring break.
Her eyes peek over at me as she pulls the car beside a large F150.
“Do you think your brother’s going to hit me?”
