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He laughed, blinking at me through tears.

“This is real?” I asked.

He nodded. “It’s always been real.”

I let out a happy sob.

I could feel it in everything suddenly. The way he touched me, the energy coming off him, the look in his eyes. And then I realized that I had always felt it. This was his quiet. The silence that I couldn’t decipher. It was me.

I was hit with a meteor shower of realizations. I could touch him. I could sleep in his bed and cuddle him on a couch and hold his hand for no fucking reason other than I wanted to. I could kiss him…

He must have been thinking the same thing, because his eyes dropped to my lips.

He put an exploratory hand out to touch me, like he wanted to test that he could. It hovered for a second and then he slipped it gently into my hair at the nape of my neck and put his forehead to mine and closed his eyes. His breath tickled my lips an excruciatingly long moment before he let his warm, soft mouth connect with mine. Every inch of my body came alive.

He kissed me like everything he had was being poured into this beautiful, tender, gentle thing. He folded around me, warm and strong, and I knew I would always remember this living room. The dim lights and the smell of vanilla candles and the limp air mattress by our feet. “Clair de Lune” playing softly from a speaker on a bookshelf, the simple white T-shirt and sweatpants he was wearing that smelled like his body and his soap and Jacob.

I wanted to feel him. I wanted to explore his body like it belonged to me. I wanted to know him with all my senses, with my hands and my eyes and my mouth. I wanted to hear his heartbeat and smell the warmth that clung to his skin.

And he wanted that too.

I couldn’t believe it. It was real.

I started to tear up.

Jacob pulled away and looked down at me. “What’s wrong?”

I couldn’t even speak, I just shook my head.

He brushed the hair off my forehead with a soft thumb. “What? Tell me.”

“This is what it feels like to be truly loved. I’ve never felt it before. And I didn’t even realize it until just now.”

He smiled at me gently. “Yes. This is what it feels like.”

And we stayed there holding each other, inseparable, immovable, tangled like a tree that had grown into a chain-link fence.

Chapter 42

Jacob

No fair, you’re leaning,” she said, smiling up at me, biting her lip.

I was leaning. She was right.

Briana had her back to the wall in the hallway of the hotel, and we were playing the game where we stood as close as possible like we wanted to kiss. Lieutenant Dan sat at our feet. We were waiting for Jewel and Gwen to come out so we could walk down to the ceremony. It was the wedding day.

I stood about an inch from Briana in my suit. She had on a green cocktail dress and heels.

“You can’t kiss me,” she teased. “I have my lipstick on.”

“Can I do this?” I asked, my voice low, leaning down to press my lips to her bare shoulder. “Or how about this?” I moved to her collarbone. “Or this?” Her neck.

She was already out of breath. “You better stop,” she whispered.

“Or what?” I said, my lips so close to her skin I could practically feel her pulse.

“Or you’re going to have to take me back to the room,” she breathed.