“I don’t want to be that naive girl anymore,” she whispers.
“You aren’t.”
My gaze drifts to the shelf along the wall, to the old, battered copy ofWuthering Heightsthat I left here all those years ago. I place a kiss on her forehead and reach out to grab it.
I pick it up.
“For years, I thought I was Heathcliff,” I say quietly. “That loving you meant suffering. Becoming something bitter. Dying alone just to prove how deeply I felt.”
She looks up at me through tears. “And now?”
I meet her eyes.
“I don’t care about the tragedy anymore. I don’t want to punish the world for loving you. I just want to love you. Fully. Completely.”
I take a step back and reach into my pocket.
“What are you doing?” she asks, but it only takes her a second to realize, her eyes going wide, when I pull the matchbook out. Then I ignite it.
The pages curl. Blacken. Burn.
I drop the burning book into the small metal bin that once held tools.
Together, we watch as the book burns.
“What now?” she asks softly.
“I won’t live without you. I choose you—here, now, as my wife.”
She takes a step closer, then her hand reaches out until it rests on my chest, right over my heart.
“Do we need to forget the past?” she whispers. “Because some of it was good—”
“We don’t have to,” I reply. “We just have to stop living in it.”
She looks at me for a second, and her lips tip up. “We were always coming back to each other,” she says.
“Yes.” I nod, a smirk forming on my own face. “Soulmates are inconvenient like that.”
Then I cup her face, thumb brushing away the last of her tears. “My Little Bird,” I say. “You flew so far just to land back here.”
She laughs through her tears.
Then she kisses me, but this time, it’s not desperate. This kiss is certain. Absolute. As if to finally acknowledge that we are inevitable . . .
When we finally pull apart, I need her desperately. There’s something about being back here, where it all started, that makes me need to lay claim to her in all ways.
I pull back, my lip lifting into a smirk. “Take off your clothes?”
“Here?”
“Yes, here. This is the perfect place.”
My very sweet and adorable wife blushes like we’ve never done this before.
I lift a brow. “Really? Are you nervous?”
“Last time we were here . . .”
