I rolled my lips together as tears pooled in my eyes.
“I don’t know if you still do,” he continued, shrugging. “Hell, I don’t know that I deserve it. But, I love you, too, Jasmine. I have loved you since the first day I saw you walk through the hallways of school that had felt like a prison to me until you came. I loved you when I wasn’t supposed to, when you were my little sister’s best friend, when I claimed you for my own at the worst possible time, and then broke your heart because I was too scared that I couldn’t be the one to help you through everything you were facing.” Tyler got choked up at that, his lips quivering a bit as he regained his composure. “I loved you from across the country, in secret, for years, praying for the day I’d get to see you again and explain everything, and somehow also praying in the next breath that I’d never see you again.”
My heart splintered in my chest, because I knew the exact feeling he was trying to explain. We were shackled to each other like prisoners, but if someone handed one of us the key, we’d hide it and pretend we never had any other option.
“Loving you has been torture,” Tyler said, stepping fully into me now. His hands swept away from his pockets and reached for me, eliciting a wave of chills over my entire body when his skin finally made contact with mine. He palmed my arms, holding me just above the elbows with his dark eyes searching mine. “But it doesn’t have to be anymore.”
My next inhale was shaky, and I went to speak but Tyler beat me to it.
“I couldn’t tell you not to get on that plane because I knew I had to take care of so many things before we could be together — truly together — without anyone or anything else between us. I had to explain things to Azra. She deserved that from me. And I had to talk to Morgan, and to Mom and Dad, and, if I’m being honest, I had to sit down and have a long talk with myself, too.”
Hope flittered in my chest, but everything inside me warned me not to give in to it.
This can’t be real.
This can’t be real.
“Jasmine,” Tyler whispered, tugging until I uncrossed my arms and let him hold my hands. His thumbs traced the cool skin of my wrists, just like that day at the rehearsal, and my eyes traced the hazel flecks of gold in his eyes. “I couldn’t stop you from getting on that plane, but I’m here to put you on another one, instead. I can’t let you go this time. I can’t make you hate me, just like you could never make me hate you, because the truth is we have belonged to each other since we were teenagers, and I think if anything, the last seven years and especially the last month have shown us that nothing will ever change that. Not time, not distance, not trying to love other people. This,” he said, motioning between us. “This isn’t effortless love, but it is real love — and I refuse to let it slip through my fingers again.”
My next breath was on a smile and a sob and a laugh and a grimace of pain all at once. I shook my head, tears blurring my vision. “I don’t… I don’t understand. What are you saying, Tyler?”
The right side of his mouth crooked up, and he stepped even closer, his hands sliding up my arms, over my neck, cupping my jaw and framing my face with his eyes flicking back and forth between mine.
“I’m saying that you are spectacular, Jasmine Olsen, and that I love you with everything that I am.” He pressed his forehead to mine, and my hands wrapped around his wrists, holding him tight. “Please, come home. Come back to New Hampshire. Come back with me.” Then, he pulled back, his eyes catching mine again. “Be with me.”
An ecstasy like nothing I’d ever felt before in my life washed over me like a tidal wave, sucking me under, stealing my next breath and any words I could have said in return. So, I wrapped my arms around his neck, and I tilted my chin, and I said yes with every single piece of me.
I said yes with my hands in his hair, with my lips warm against his, with my heart and soul that had been plucked out of me years ago and given to him, wrapped in a little gold bow. I said yes with a promise to never let anything stand between us again. I said yes with fear behind me, beneath me, unable to touch me again. I said yes with an ache that seared as much as it filled, that broke as much as it mended, that told me more than anything that there was no other option but this one.
I was his.
And he was mine.
Tyler wrapped his arms full around me, pulling me into him so fiercely that my back arched, and I felt that embrace like a magical force pulling every shattered piece of me back together. In the next instant, my feet were in the air, Tyler spinning us around as the sun rose over the lake and the birds chirped their good mornings.
It was a moment suspended in time, one that felt like a dream and like the only real sliver of life I’d ever truly lived at all. The fog lifted, the horizon clearer than it had ever been, and for the first time in my life, I felt purpose running thick and heavy in my veins.
With his arms around me, I could do anything.
With his arms around me, everything was whole.
His arms were my home.
And now that we’d crossed space and time to find it, I would never leave again.
Tyler set my feet back on the ground, but still, I floated, soaring high with his promises and our future surrounding me like clouds of silver. I kissed him again, saying yes with everything that I was, and then we shut the door and locked the key.
Welcome home.
The only light in my apartment when Tyler and I tumbled through the door was a sliver of gold from the rising sun, slipping between the break in my curtains and casting a glow over my bed. The rest of the studio was dim and quiet, and I heard the steady beat of Tyler’s heart as I locked the door behind us, sliding my hands over his chest and up to pull his mouth to mine.
His hands were on my waist in the next breath, blindly backing me up until we bumped into the edge of the bed. When we did, everything slowed, from the ticking seconds of the distant clock to the way his lips moved over mine, the way his tongue curiously swept in and out of my mouth, the way his hands roamed and discovered, folding over every valley and curve of my body.
This wasn’t the bruising, claiming fit of passion and lust we’d found ourselves in on the Cape. There was no need for it now. Neither of us required proof to know that we belonged to the other, and so we took our time, as if we had all we ever needed.
There was no rush.
We had forever.
Time felt like music in that moment, each note slow and beautiful, melodic and sure. We peeled each other’s clothes off between deep, sensual kisses, and then Tyler lowered me back onto my bed. He took his time with each kiss, each trace of his tongue, each drag of his fingertips over my skin as he lowered until his head was between my thighs. And at the first slick of his tongue over my clit, I arched into him, surrendering to the passion, losing myself in the man I thought I’d lost forever.
We spent hours worshipping each other’s bodies, exploring and discovering like it was the first and the last time all at once. It wasn’t enough to make me fall apart with his mouth on me, or for me to swallow his first orgasm while I bent on my knees for him. We had to take more, we had to take it all, we had to have each other in every possible way until there was nothing left for anyone else ever again.
Sometime in the late afternoon, when we were in a dream-like state between being awake and being so physically exhausted that all we could do was lie there and hold each other, I balanced on my elbows, looking down over Tyler in my bed. His eyes were hooded, lids heavy, hair mussed and muscles ebbing and flowing as his hand rubbed my lower back.