"You got it figured out,” she said. “It all worked out in the end.”
"I almost didn't. I almost let fear win again." His jaw tightened. “I’m never taking that chance again.”
The sun was painting him in shades of gold and amber, catching the silver threads just starting to appear at his temples, the laugh lines that had deepened over the past six months. What a gorgeous man.
"Move in with me," he said.
His request knocked the breath out of her.
"What?"
"Move in with me. Not to Boston—I don't care about Boston. Move in with me wherever we end up. Here, or the Keys, or the Bahamas, or wherever the next project takes us." His hands tightened on hers. "I want to wake up next to you every morning, not just twice a month. I want to fall asleep listening to you edit footage at 2 AM. I want to argue aboutcoffee and watch you steal all my shirts and build something real with you. Something permanent."
Lily's eyes were burning. Her throat was tight. She'd spent six years performing emotions for cameras, and now, when she wanted to respond, she couldn't find any words at all.
"I know it's not conventional," Alex continued, his voice rougher now. "I know my job is weird and my hours are worse and I still have the emotional intelligence of a sea cucumber sometimes. But I love you. And I'm done being too scared to ask for the things that matter."
He's being brave.
The thought broke through the shock, settling warm in her chest.
He's finally being brave.
"A sea cucumber?" she managed, her voice cracking on a laugh that was half sob. "That's the best metaphor you could come up with?"
"I was under pressure."
"Sea cucumbers don't even have brains."
"Neither do I, apparently, since I fell in love with the most impossible woman on the planet."
Lily laughed—really laughed, the sound wet with tears she hadn't realized she was crying. "Okay, first of all,rude. Second of all—" She cupped his face in her hands, her thumbs tracing his cheekbones, memorizing the feel of him. "Yes."
"Yes?"
"Yes, I'll move in with you. Yes, I'll argue about coffee and steal your shirts. Yes, I'll follow you to whatever research station or tropical island or underwater cave you end up in." She kissed him, tasting salt—from tears or the ocean, she couldn't tell anymore. "Yes to all of it, Alex. I've been trying to figure out how to ask you the same thing for weeks."
"You could have just asked."
"I could have. But I wantedyouto be brave enough." She pulled back, searching his face. "I'm so proud of you."
"For asking you to live with me?"
"For becoming the person who could ask." She brushed a damp strand of hair from his forehead. "Six months ago, you couldn't even tell me you wanted me to stay. Now look at you—asking for things, communicating feelings, making jokes on camera like a normal human person."
"I learned from the best."
"Damn right you did."
He pulled her into his lap, wrapping his arms around her waist, and Lily let herself be held. The sun finished its descent, bleeding the last of the color from the sky, and she didn't even reach for her phone to capture it.
Some moments weren't meant to be content.
Some moments were just meant to be lived.
Later—much later—they lay tangled together in the narrow bed of Alex's station quarters, the ceiling fan turning lazy circles overhead.
Lily should have been exhausted. The flight, the emotional rollercoaster, the enthusiastic reunion that had followed them from the dock to the bedroom—all of it should have knocked her out cold.
