Beams of green and purple light up the sky. The beautiful colors and twinkling stars take my breathaway. My mouth drops open, and the corners of my lips lift. Gavin lets my hand go but stays close to my side.
“I’ve never seen the northern lights with my own eyes before. Only in pictures and videos.” I say, tilting my head back, stunned by its beauty.
“So beautiful and so incredible.” My vision blurs. I can’t believe I’m seeing this. I feel like I’m falling in love with life again, slowly. My cheeks burn from grinning so hard.
“Yes,” he replies softly.
I peer over to him. Isn’t he seeing this too?
He’s standing right next to me, his gaze locked onto my face and not the sky. How long has he been staring at me like this?
He’s smiling.
“You are,” he finishes. The green rays, tinged with lavender, beam across his handsome face. I match his smile with my own. I’m afraid to open my heart again, but if love feels like this moment, right now, it might be worth a chance.
CHAPTER 21
GAVIN
For the first time since I was in the Navy, I talked.
Like,really talkedto someone about something other than deployments, missions, fishing, and war. We talked for hours outside, collecting shed after shed, and not once did she complain. I’ve always done this alone, since I was five years old. My father would get deeply inebriated, and he would pass out on the couch after he would beat and stab me. To make myself feel better, I’d go hunt for sheds for my mother and for me. Today was the first time I did this with another person.
Coraline Rosa.
She knows things about me that no one else does. She catches the little things—like how I like my coffee black and how I can’t stay inside more than a few hours because I’m addicted to the outdoors. She knows when I’m thinking about her in ways I desire because she blushes every time I look at her like she’s the only woman in this world…because to me, she is.
I’m obsessed already and so fucking fucked.
She makes me smile just by breathing.
I’ve had to fight erection after erection. Smile after smile. The urge to rip her clothes off and take her against a tree whenshe pulled me down on top of her. I’m attracted to her in every way I thought I couldn’t be with another person. I want to be inside her, not just physically, but in the way I learn everything about her. I want to meet her parents so they can tell me stories about her growing up. I want to know all her secrets and ambitions, because I want to be someone she can trust and lean on for support. I crave her insatiably, desire her as much as my lungs need their next breath. The way the moon yearns for the sun. We’re two different people, and I’ll keep chasing her even though my attraction to her may hurt us both. She’s too enchantingly perfect, and she doesn’t even realize it. Her body is a temple I’d worship on my knees all night if she’d let me. She’s a rare stone. Her husband lost a diamond. He let a rare diamond slip through his fingers while he chased after coal. He doesn’t know what he had…But I do.
Liam is a fucking moron who doesn’t deserve her.
I want to make her mine in every single way, because I know she loves it here. She’s a city girl, but her soul lights up brighter here, where there are no buildings, no busy streets, no overcrowded cities. She belongs here in Alaska. I’ll make her see that before the roads clear.
Coraline has, and will always be, like morphine to me since I first pulled her out of that wreckage, bloodied and weak. And now, after only a few sunrises and moonfalls, I’m a fucking fool for her. I’ve seen the world and been to over twenty countries throughout my career as a SEAL. And there is no one—not a fucking person like Coraline. No one has even come close to what she does to me.
She is the one I want.
Does this make me crazy?
Probably.
But what I feel for her wouldn’t be real if it didn’t break my sanity. At forty years old, I don’t want to waste my time anymore. I’ve never felt an instant connection to anything oranyone, but I feel it whenever I’m with her. Coraline doesn’t just see my scars, she sees me. She doesn’t pity me; instead, she listens to what I have to say. She spent hours with me in the unforgiving Alaskan wilderness, where it’s the most fatal time of the year. Hell, it almost killed her.
She’s a fighter.
She’s still here. Warm. Breathing.
And I need to have her completely without scaring her away.
There’s a reason for everything. I’m not a man who believes in hope, and I don’t believe the stars align for you to meet your soulmate. No, all of that is bullshit for people with naive hearts.
I believe you want something, you’ll have to fight for it, and if that means being calculative, then so be it.
I want her.
