Her throat moved, but she didn’t speak.
“This week has been the messiest, most unpredictable, and maybe one of the worst weeks of my life,” I whispered. “...and it’s also been the most wonderful, the most magical, and the most life-changing. It’s been the best week of my life, Krysta. Because of you.”
Her lips parted. “Yeah?”
“Yeah. And if you can forgive me for breaking every rule of yours, I don’t want this to stop when we get to the dock. I want more time together. I want... you.”
She dropped her gaze to my mouth, her teeth catching her lower lip oh-so briefly. “I want you too,” she said in a low voice, looking back to my eyes. “I don’t want to stop either. You are stubborn and obscenely peppy and you have more pastel-colored sticky flags than anyone could ever need. And I’m completely fucking obsessed with you. I want to follow you everywhere. I want to watch you sleep. I want you tosmelllike me.”
“Is this you saying that you forgive me?” I asked optimistically.
She sighed. But there was a smile tugging at the edges of her mouth. “Only because you didn’t break my most important rule.”
“What was that?”
More of a smile now. “No olives.”
Natch.
“So what happens next? Do you still want to be my bodyguard? Even though it’s a bad idea because I’m so hot that you can’t stop thinking about me?”
“A terrible idea,” she agreed, smiling wider. “But I think I have to. Someone’s got to keep you safe from overgrown theater kids and bad shrimp.”
Relief shivered down my spine. After having her so close this week, my own tall, bossy shadow, I couldn’t imagine living without her. It just felt right somehow.
“I don’t—” I paused, not sure how to say this next part. “I’ve never done the relationship thing before. I might not be any good at it. And I don’t know what’s going to happen when the world learns I’m queer. I don’t think I even knowhowI want the world to learn now, only that I don’t want to do it the way my mom and my manager want me to. But I do know that I want you to be part of it, if you want that too.”
“I do want that. And it’s okay not to know everything right now,” Krysta murmured. She reached up and pressed her hand to my heart. “We’ll figure it out together.”
“Okay,” I whispered as the music swelled around us. “I’d like that.”
“Me too.”
“You know,” I breathed, unable to bear the gravity of her perfection a moment longer, “this is the part where I’m supposed to be kissed by a vampire.”
“People will talk, Ms. Hayes.”
“I know.”
“Well, then.”
As the music reached its peak, Krysta dipped me back with her strong arms. And under the twinkling lights of a fake prom gazebo on a cruise ship, she pressed her mouth to my neck, grazing with unbearable softness and heat until she found my pulse.
There she lingered, until the lights came up to uproarious applause.
Epilogue
A year and a half later
Istartled awake in my bed, my thoughts as hazy as my vision as I registered someone watching me from the corner of the room. Someone tall. And blond. And hot.
Krysta stepped forward into the moonlight, holding an apple in one hand. She took a bite, regarding me as she did.
“Are you having a midnight snack while watching me sleep again?” I accused with mock heat as I sat up. The sheet slid from my chest as I did, and predictably, Krysta’s eyes followed it down.
“I have a fast metabolism,” Krysta said patiently as she came to the bed. “And you sleep naked.”
“Hmm.”
