My words from earlier.
“I love you,” I tell him.
George shuts his eyes, soaking it in, and then his lips find mine. His eyes open with a familiar spark.
He flips me onto my back and hovers over me.
“I love you more,” he says.
I laugh. “So it’s a competition?”
“No,” George says as he lowers his forehead to mine. “I love you more. It’s canon.”
“We’ll see about that.” I run my hands over his chest, tracing his tattoo. “You know how competitive I am, and I think I can prove otherwise.”
“Oh?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Might take a while,” he says, his tongue skimming over my bottom lip. “Might take all night.”
“Might take forever,” I tell him as his mouth finds my throat.
Until the end of time.
George lifts his head, eyes darting between mine.
“Think you can handle me?” I ask.
“No.” He grins. “There’s no handling you, and I wouldn’twant to try. I love that about you. You’re never too much—I always want more.”
“Be careful what you wish for.”
“I’ve been careful long enough.”
I’m surprised when a tear blinks out of my eye.
George kisses it away. “I promise to love you always.”
“I promise to love you back.”
“A promise for a promise,” George says.
Our best oneyet.
The WholeWorld
We Are Thirty-One
One Year Later
She surges out of the water as if weightless. Seventy tons are no match for her need to fly. I cup my hands over my mouth, smothering my awed gasp. One of the last remaining right whales, performing before our eyes. A ballerina of the sea. Her journey here was treacherous. But she’s made it.
“I miss my mom,” I say to George.
He puts his arm around me. I look up at him—windswept hair blowing into sea-blue eyes. We’ve been traveling up the coast, following the right whale migration for a series George has been writing, on and off for almost the entire year we’ve been together. During that time, we’ve also visited Newfoundland’s Fogo Island, Québec City, and Tombstone Territorial Park in the Yukon, places on my own bucket list. And now we’re here, on the Bay of Fundy.
“She’ll be here in a few days,” George says with a kiss to my cheek. “But let’s call her when we get back.”
