Ransom watched the boat speeding by the lake house. He barely blinked when it passed and I wondered if he was thinking of the last time he’d been out on that water. It was nearing sunset and the lake dwellers were returning from their day in the sun. Their loud shrieks of laughter and the heavy thump of distant music disturbed the song he picked out on the Hummingbird and kept his attention long enough that I nudged his foot to bring him back.

He moved his chin up as if to ask “what” then smiled at me when I glanced at the strings. “You stopped playing.”

“Sorry, baby,” he said, leaning over in his chair to kiss me. “You wanna stay here tonight or go back to your place?”

“I don’t care. Up to you.”

Ransom grinned and that sweet smile transformed when I licked my lips. “Don’t say shit like that, sweetheart. ‘Up to me’ could get you into a lot of trouble.”

“I like trouble sometimes.”

“Really Miss Dean’s List? I don’t think so.”

I pulled on his neck when he came closer, setting the guitar in the chair as he left it. “I remember a couple of weeks back, I showed you just how much trouble I could be when I got out that corset and mask…”

That vivid image shown in Ransom’s face, in the quick roll of his eyes and the low muttered groan. “Jesus, baby, don’t remind me,” he said, kneeling in front of me to get closer. “My parents are inside.” I nodded, but didn’t stop running my fingers along his collarbone. Ransom kissed me, let his mouth linger on my bottom lip. “With my baby sister and brother.” I nodded again and brought my foot up to the inside of his thigh, just beneath his cargo shorts. “And Leann and Will and…shit…”

Ransom’s tongue met mine and he held my face as he took my mouth. I’d never get tired of his kisses or how every touch he gave came with an effort that was fierce. We were getting just a little carried away, him sliding against me, me slipping my fingers under his shirt and then suddenly a cold spray of water doused us.

“Motherfucker…”

“Ransom!” I heard Keira shout, but her son ignored her, jumping up from the ground to chase after Tristian, who had chucked a dripping water hose against the patio tile.

“I am going to throw you in the damn lake,” Ransom shouted after him.

“Catch me first, asshole. You linebackers have zero speed,” Tristian taunted, jumping around the fence, moving quicker than Ransom who got his shorts hung up on the gate latch. Tristian laughed as he headed back toward the patio, looking a little too smug, not paying attention to where he was running, more focused on keeping out of Ransom’s reach. He didn’t see me step away from the patio or pounce when he got close. But Tristian went down, landing flat on his back and I moved quick, pinning his arms flat against the tile with my knees.

“Aly, sugar, I didn’t know you wanted me,” he joked.

“Non,” I said, putting more weight on my knees so that Ransom’s cousin couldn’t move. “You wish. I’m just holding you until Ransom gets here.”

“What? You got no spunk? Gotta let your man handle things for you?”

“Oh, I got plenty of spunk.”

“I don’t know, you’re kind of little…”

“Keep talking…”

“Sometimes I wonder if Ransom crushes you when he bends you…”

When I flicked Tristian’s nose he struggled, still unable to get his lanky frame even an inch off the ground. And when he laughed, looked far too smug, I pinched his nosed and covered his mouth. “Why don’t you save your breath and just say ‘Aly, will you kick my ass now?’ That would be less of a hassle.” I had a hell of a lot of lower body strength and Tristian was no match for the hold I had him in.

“Is he dead?” Leann asked from the open patio doorway. Keira stood next to her with a five month old Makana on her hip, smiling at me sitting on top of her little cousin.

“Not yet. I’m working on it, though,” I told her, hearing Ransom laugh behind us.

“Okay. Just…I don’t know, no blood.” Leann’s wave was dismissive, like it didn’t bother her that I had her son pinned to the ground. “I don’t clean up bodily fluids.”

“See?” I told Tristian, batting my eyes when he glared at his mother. “She likes me more.” I’d told him that two months ago when Tristian had returned from his semester abroad. He hadn’t believed me.

“You gonna stop with the water attack anytime my boyfriend kisses me?” I asked him in a faux threatening tone. Tristian mumbled something against my hand. “Oh, sorry, forgot.” I lifted my hand a miniscule amount from his mouth and leaned down so I could hear what he was saying. “What was that?”

“I said, if you two stop making out all over the place, maybe I’ll stop hosing you down. I mean, Kona and Keira are bad enough, but you two? It’s embarrassing…Jesus.”

When Ransom finally made it back to the patio, he helped me up, brushing a hand over my ass, and beaming at me, proud that I could hold my own with a trickster like Tristian.

“Tristian, be cool,” I told the now freed cousin. “I mean, I know I took your boyfriend from you.”

“That is not funny,” he said, throwing his middle finger over his shoulder as he walked inside.

“It’s a little bit funny.”

My apartment looked different than it had six months ago. It was not nearly as neat. Oversized hoodies and CPU gyms shirts, all too large for me, draped along my sofa and three pairs of boat-looking tennis shoes littered around the dresser. I set them neatly near the door, though I knew Ransom would move them, he always did.

The faucet sink in the bathroom sounded and I could hear the small little groans Ransom made as he washed his face and cleaned his teeth. But then the track on my MP3 player shifted to something that made me smile and I danced around the room as Rihanna sang about being in nothing but her skin—no heels, no shirt, no skirt—and I moved right with her, shaking my hips, shimming as I picked up after my boyfriend.

I pulled down my t-shirt, smiling at the soft black material and the white letters that read Ransom Groupie. He had the shirt custom made for me a few months back when he’d grown tired of me wearing Keira’s Kona Fangirl tee. Turns out anyone can have a teespring account and my boyfriend used his to remind me I was his girlfriend, not his father’s.

Ridiculous man.

A few more turns, a quick hip shake as I chucked a left over pizza box next to the trash and I stopped in a turn, stilling as I spotted that large linebacker leaning against the bathroom door.

“Now that is a sight.” He laughed at my eye roll and moved toward me, hands lowering on my hips as he pulled me close. “I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of watching you dance.” He kissed my neck and I sighed, loving how warm his mouth felt against my throat.

“You might. I can get loud with all the leaping and stepping,” I told him, smiling against his lips when he moved us around, dancing slow.

“Nope. You’re my Fred,” he said, lifting me up to guide my legs around his waist. “I’ll never get tired of you.”

Ransom moved us to the bed, sliding up my body when he fell on top of me and I swear there was something awed in his expression, something that warmed my stomach with just one brief glance. “What?” I asked and he pulled one of my hands to his face, grazing a kiss in the center of my palm.

“I was just thinking maybe Fred isn’t such a good name after all.” The bed shook a little as Ransom adjusted next to me, as he pulled on my waist to get me closer. “Fred seems so informal.”

“Does it? Should we change it to something like Rupert? Or Reginald? Those sound formal.”

That smile didn’t move from his mouth, but he lowered his lips before he shook his head. “I was thinking maybe we just call it what it is.”

“Wi? What do you think it is?”

How long had I waited for him to tell me he loved me? How often did I lie in this bed and wish he was next to me for more than just sex? With Ransom’s expression shifting, I found it hard to believe that this was real. I’d have never thought he’d look at me the way he was just then—like the world somehow moved between us, like one kiss, a single stare could bring a happiness neither of us had ever dreamed could be true.

“Chrysalis,” he said, but it came out so soft that I may have heard him wrong.

“What?”

Inching closer, Ransom brushed his mouth against mine, and a little smile tweaked the corner of his mouth. “You make this thing inside my chest - this little critter I thought had died a long time ago - want to break out his bad ass new wings.” Ransom leaned back on the bed, pulling me closer, and his eyes were so soft, full of what he felt for me, that I swear I glimpsed heaven in them. As he pulled my palm to his chest, holding it steady, he grew serious. “Aly, you make him want to fly. You make me want to fly. I don’t think there’s a better word to describe what we are, sugar.”

There was something similar that lived in my chest. It had been born the day I met him, it had grown, despite being confined. It had been a long time to carry something inside you that you feared may never be set free. But in that smile, those kisses, in every single touch, every single look, he gave me more than a million “I love yous”.

“Wi,” I told him, moving my fingers back to his cheeks. “There’s another word for it.”

Ransom lifted his eyebrows in a silent question.

“Everything. We’re not Fred, cheri. You’re my everything and I am yours.”