In the silence.
In the same room.
In love, but knowing it wasn’t her place to expect him to want anything more.
Eve let out a small breath and rolled onto her side. She reached out and turned her lamp off.
A few minutes later Darius turned his off too.
Eve could still make out the window a few feet away.
Muscle memory nearly made her move.
There was no point climbing out tonight when the boy next door was already there.
Eve closed her eyes.
And then an arm wrapped around her.
Beneath the sheets, Darius’s bare arm slid across her hip and hooked up between her breasts. His hand balled into a fist, twisting her shirt in his grasp. It was a gentle hold that kept her steady as the rest of him moved into place. Every curve of herwas met by every curve of him. His chest to her back, his hip to her hip, his knees to the backs of hers, his forehead to her hair.
No space was left between them.
Even as he spoke, the only place his words had to go were into the back of her neck.
“I never blamed you for leaving, Eve.”
His words rumbled through his chest and into her back.
“But you never looked for me either,” she pointed out.
“When you didn’t reach out, I thought you were happy. I didn’t want to mess that up.”
Eve smiled.
“And I thought you were happy and didn’t want to mess it up either,” she countered. “Now look at me. I came back with nothing but baggage. Messy, complicated baggage.”
Her eyes felt hot.
Guilt, anger, frustration, longing.
Years of stress and listlessness.
A broken ship on the sea, hoping to see a storm but instead lost in an endless boring calm.
A life that had been lived on autopilot.
And then suddenly seeing a familiar island on the horizon.
But it had been too long.
The landscape had changed.
It was no longer an island deserted.
There were other people and boats and stories that she had never been a part of.
Time hadn’t stopped for a moment since Eve had left Seven Roads, and while she had grown up, Darius had too.
