“I’ve been staring at you since you were a teenager.”
She doesn’t turn around, but I see her shoulders move as if she’s laughed.
“Stalker.”
I step towards her, placing my hands on her waist, pulling her ass against my front, feeling her warmth.
“Always. Kind of my job.”
Her head tops back against my chest. “One of your jobs.”
“My career.”
“Maybe. Maybe there’s more. Maybe you’ll be a part of history.”
“I already am. Your history.”
She turns around and lifts her hands to my face, cupping it.
“And my future. Our future. There’s no such thing as perfect, Ben, but I think this is as close to it as I can get.”
My hands are on her ass and had every part of me not been exhausted I would have been hard. “It’s more than I deserve.”
“You deserve everything I can give you. We can give you.” She smiles; it’s soft and sweet, her eyes are flooded with more than I can comprehend.
“I love you.” The words don’t come easy. They never will because I never practiced saying them.
“I know.” She stands on her tiptoes and presses a kiss to my lips. “I never stopped. When I thought you were dead and it was just me and Isaac, I couldn’t stop. Couldn’t grieve. Maybe I would’ve turned into Miss Havisham and stopped all my clocks at the time when I last saw you, I don’t know. I never stopped, Ben. I don’t think I ever can, no matter what happens.”
The crescent moon shimmers through the mist and I can’t process her words because nothing will happen other than me protecting her forever, even if she doesn’t want me too.
“I’m not going anywhere.”
“Good.”
“I promise.”
“You won’t leave me again?”
“I have no reason to.”
My addiction. My craving. My heartbeat.
And as much as I love Isaac, and I understand it’s returned, Blair is our fixed mark.
“Good.” She says the word softly but with force. “Because this is it.”
Lovers, liars, traitors and thieves. A maze made us all of these. A crazy world only makes what we have simple and now we’re just the first.
We walk to the bed, and I elbow Isaac so he has his fair share of real estate. He doesn’t stir. The man sleeps like a corpse after sex.
Blair puts her head on my chest and I pull a blanket over us, my eyes closing, her warmth and his is everything.
They’re everything.
She sleeps, her body relaxing, and I watch the mist start to lift and the sun start to rise. My heartbeat is steady, slow and I drift off to the sounds of the waves of the loch and the call of birds as they wake.
Another day.
