Page 88 of When We Had Forever
“Absolutely.” He turns to fix me with his gaze, and my breath dwindles. “It’s hands-down my favorite, and the most amazing thing about it is, I’d know it anywhere. I could be in...I don’t know, Mexico. Timbuktu. I could be halfway across the planet and still look up and findthatexact star, and say, ‘Oh look, there she is.’ Because distance doesn’t matter. Time doesn’t matter. Even in the daytime, when I can’t see it,thatdoesn’t matter, either, because that star is still there, still burning so brightly because it just can’t help itself. Still outshining all the others.”
An awed sound slips out. My chest works like a bellows.
“You understand what I’m saying, right?”
“I think so,” I whisper.
“It’s you,” he says. “You’re my star. My one in seven billion.”
I can’t stop myself. I reach out.
He grabs for me at the same time, and we go tipping into the sand together, his fingers in my hair, my hands fastened to his sides like I can hang on to him forever, like I can live in thisexactmoment until the sun goes dark.
His face hovers inches from mine. His skin feels like scalding silk beneath my fingertips. His rib cage expands and contracts, expands and contracts, its urgent rhythm a perfect counterpoint to the naked longing in his eyes.
“I want to kiss you so badly right now,” he says.
I inhale.Do it, I try to say, but a rogue wave chooses that moment to crest over us, drenching us with cold water and gritty sand. Michael bellows in surprise and I roll away, laughing and not quite sorry for the excuse to draw out this potent magic that much longer. When I sit up and push my sopping hair out of my eyes, a flash of white tumbles in the receding wave, and I reach for it. When I brush the sand off, I find a gleaming puka shell in my palm, complete with a hole punched through the middle.
I hold it out. “Here. Here’s your kiss. A reminder that you’re my one in seven billion, too.”
He gives me a wry smile, then takes the shell, handling it as though the fate of the universe depends on him keeping it safe. He takes off his necklace, threads the puka on, and refastens the clasp. The shell rests below the hollow of his throat, the perfect accessory to that beautiful chest.
“I’m never going to take this off.”
“You’d better not,” I say.
But the following afternoon, just before our jet takes off, when I weave my fingers through his in an attempt to ease his anxieties, I frown. The top few buttons of his dress shirt, which has already made a reappearance in preparation for our return to normality, are undone. In the gap, his tanned skin is smooth and bare.
My fingers tighten around his. “What happened to your necklace?”
“What?” His free hand gropes at his neck, and his eyes flare. “Oh. Crap. It must’ve come off in the ocean this morning. Damn it. I’m sorry.”
I try to shrug it off, but the sting of my wasted gift lances deep, spurred by the fact that Michael is already slipping away again. I canfeelit. As we taxi onto the runway, he tugs his hand away and starts fiddling with his phone. When I glance sidelong, I see him swiping through pictures of our vacation. “What’re you doing?”
“Nothing.” He brings up a shot of me after our turtle swim, taps a few buttons, then pockets the phone and faces the window. “Just seeing if there’re any good ones in here.”
“Are there?”
“A few.”
He sounds casual, but in a forced way, and something in the set of his shoulders puts him as far away from me as the moon. It seems the pictures are just that already—pictures. Yesterdays that have nothing to do with our right now.
“Are you nervous again?” I hate my pleading tone. “About flying?”
“Yeah,” he admits. “I hate this part. And to be honest, I really, really don’t want to go home.”
That last part breathes hope into me. “Nothing has to change, you know. We could still be the people we were here.”
When he finally looks at me again, I see everything I need to know—a stony hopelessness etched into every line of his face.
Nothing will change. We’ll go home and resume the same routine we drifted into years ago. He may have put work aside for ten whole days, but he can’t resist its siren song any longer.
“I wish it worked that way,” he says.
“It could,” I whisper.
His mouth twists. “Tell me something.”
