"It's beautiful." Her voice cracked on the word. She took the shell, feeling its slight weight in her palm—so small to carry so much meaning. "Thank you."
For a moment, they just stood there, the shell between them like a bridge neither quite knew how to cross.
Then Lily rose on her toes and kissed his cheek, lingering just long enough to feel the rough stubble against her lips.
"Come on," she said softly. "Let's go watch our last sunset."
They ate on the beach, watching the sun paint the sky in colors that would look fake in any Instagram filter. The silence between them was different tonight—charged with everything unsaid, weighted with the ticking clock they'd both been pretending to ignore.
"Lily," Alex started, and her heart lurched with sudden, stupid hope.
"Yeah?"
He was quiet for a long moment, his jaw working like he was physically fighting with words that wouldn't come. She watched the battle play out across his features—want versus fear, hope versus self-protection.
Fear won.
"The video you made," he said instead, and something in Lily's chest crumbled. "It's going to do good. Real good. I hope you know that."
"Thanks," she managed.
That's not what you were going to say. That's not what I wanted you to say.
But she'd made her decision. She wasn't going to beg.
The sun sank lower, bleeding orange and crimson across the water. Lily drew her knees up to her chest, arms wrapped around them, trying to hold herself together.
"Can I ask you something?" Alex said quietly.
“Of course.”
The ghost of a smile crossed his face. "What would you do differently? If you could go back tothat first day, when the boat dropped you off. Would you change anything?"
The question caught her off guard. She considered it seriously, turning it over in her mind.
"No," she said finally. "Even knowing how it ends, I wouldn't change a thing."
Alex turned to look at her, his blue eyes dark in the fading light. "Even the parts that hurt?"
"Especially those." She met his gaze, letting him see everything she'd been trying to hide. "The hurt means it mattered. And this—" she gestured between them, at the beach, at the blazing sky "—matters to me. You matter to me. Even if you can't say it back."
Something cracked in his expression. His hand found hers in the sand, fingers interlacing.
"Lily," he said, and her name in his mouth sounded like a prayer and an apology all at once.
Then he was kissing her.
This kiss was desperate, consuming—the kiss of a man who'd run out of words and had only this left to offer. Lily gasped against his mouth, her hands fisting in his shirt, pullinghim closer.
They tumbled backward onto the sand, mouths still fused together. Alex's weight settled over her, his hips pressing between her thighs, and she could feel how much he wanted her—hard and insistent against her core.
She ignored the reality that she’d end up with sand in her crack for days because she so desperately wanted to feel Alex inside her as many times as she could manage until it was time to say goodbye.
Was that pathetic?
Maybe a little.
He pulled back just enough to look at her, his chest heaving. The last rays of sunlight caught his face, illuminating the raw need in his expression.
