I spent the day on site at a listing, working with the stager in an attempt to fill the rooms with furniture so the place wouldn’t look so big and uninviting. It was almost a relief to get back to the office. I kicked off my shoes and sat back in my chair, a little relaxed until I began reading emails and discovered that three potential clients had decided to go with other agencies because of the vandalism to our signs all over town.

Damn, damn, damn!

I called one client, a residential customer, and tried to reason with him, but he wasn’t having any of it. The commercial client, however, agreed to a meeting tomorrow. If I could just convince him that things weren’t as bad as they seemed, maybe he’d come back. The third wasn’t picking up his phone, so there wasn’t much I could do there.

What did they say? Two out of three wasn’t bad? I got one.

“Trouble in paradise?”

My heart soared at the sound of Gentry’s voice even though I tried not to show it. He’d gone home after he dropped me at the office this morning, promising to get a few hours of sleep. He looked refreshed, or maybe it was just that the dark colors of his clothing made his skin such a warm, healthy color that he couldn’t look sickly in them.

“Aiden leave?”

“No, he’s still around somewhere.” Gentry stepped into the office and crossed to my desk, plopping down in one of the chairs set in front of it. “Were you hoping to get a few more minutes alone with him? Because, I have to warn you, his girl is something of a hellcat. Rumor has it that she faced down two of these motorcycle dudes alone.”

“Is that right?”

“Kicked one in the nuts when he tried to rape her.”

He was clearly impressed and I knew the story was meant to encourage me. All it did, though, was scare the crap out of me.

“They attacked her?”

He tilted his head slightly, his eyes moving slowly over me. “You don’t have to worry about that, Ami. No one’s going to hurt you with me around.”

“Who’s going to protect me from you?”

He sat up, a cloud passing over his face. “Amelia—”

“I guess you don’t need a ride home?” Aiden was standing in the doorway, watching us. I wondered how long he’d been there and what all he’d heard. But his face was unreadable.

“I’ve got it,” Gentry said, climbing to his feet.

Aiden looked from Gentry to me, then back again.

“Remy’s gathering everyone together Friday night for a family dinner. You should come, Amelia. Bring Noah.”

Gentry dropped his head as if the pattern on the carpet was suddenly very interesting, making it impossible for me to gauge his reaction. I hesitated, feeling like there was something important resting on my answer.

“I’m not family. I wouldn’t want to intrude.”

“You’ve always been family,” Aiden insisted. “Besides, Noah is and everyone is anxious to meet him.”

“Don’t push her, Aiden,” Gentry said in a genial tone that had dangerous undercurrents. “This is all very new to everyone. Maybe she’s not ready.”

“And maybe if you hadn’t been such a damn fool, we wouldn’t be in this position.”

I jumped up and moved between the brothers, afraid for a moment that they would come to blows. Aiden was glaring at Gentry and Gentry was vibrating with tension. I touched his chest, holding him back next to my desk as though I could actually control him if he should want to fight with his brother. It was a position that wasn’t unfamiliar to me, but one I never imagined I would be in again.

“I’d love to come to dinner, Aiden,” I said, my eyes never leaving Gentry. “Tell Remy I appreciate the invite.”

Gentry shook his head. “Ami, they’re just trying to interfere in something they don’t even understand.”

I shook my head. “He’s right. They’re Noah’s family and he has a right to know them.”

His eyes narrowed slightly, but he nodded, backing away from my touch. He moved around the desk like he needed the space, like he couldn’t stand to look at me in that moment.

Aiden shook his head, clearly frustrated. I didn’t completely understand what was happening here, but it really wasn’t something I felt like I needed to understand. It was between them. They could keep it there.

“I need to leave Joan a note, then I’ll be ready to go.” No one seemed to hear me, but it didn’t really matter.

I went to the lobby and searched through the receptionist’s desk for a sticky notepad, my thoughts so lost on Gentry and his brothers that I touched the same pad three times before realizing it was exactly what I was looking for. I pulled it out and grabbed a pen, squatting beside the desk to use it as a writing surface.

Please call Matt Rutledge in the morning and remind him of our lunch meeting at 1.

I was signing my name when the front windows of the building imploded, glass shattering all around me. I must have cried out—I think I remember crying out—as the room suddenly burst into flames. I fell back on my ass, my hand landing right on a huge shard of glass. I remember how the blood looked in the light from the flames.

Gentry called my name. I was beside the desk, out of view of anyone coming from the hall. I tried to call out, but the room was intensely hot and my throat was burning. He found me anyway, glass crunching under his boots as he reached down and scooped me up into his arms. I wrapped my arms around his neck, my pulse pounding in my head.

“Fucking bastards! It’s another Molotov cocktail!”

It was Aiden, I think. His voice was very close, but it seemed to be coming to me over a huge space.

“Deal with the fire. I have to take her to a hospital. She’s got cuts all over the damn place!”

“No, take her to Carson. It’ll be safer.”

“Is she up to this?”

“Yeah, she’s good.”

“What about you? Can you handle this?”

“I got it. You go.”

We were moving again, the night air suddenly rushing around me. Then I was in the car, vaguely aware of blood smears on the leather. I watched Gentry climb behind the wheel, blood on his face, his hands.

“You’re bleeding.”

He glanced at me. “No, babe, it’s your blood.”

I wasn’t even aware of my wounds until he said it. Then pain began to make its way through the fog of my thoughts. Pain in my thigh, my hip, pain in my hand, my shoulders. I groaned as he put the car in gear and sped out of the parking lot, the car bouncing as it hit the pavement. Pain flashed through me, an overwhelming amount of pain that brought a little strangled scream from my lips.

“Hold on. We’ll be there as quick as possible.”

He touched my knee and, for some reason, that seemed to soothe the pain a little. But the drive was a long one and the bumps and jerks allowed me to count the number of places on my body that contained pieces of glass. I was still counting them when he slammed on the brakes in front of the guesthouse at the back of his family estate. A woman with short hair and an intense stare came to the door, holding it open as Gentry carried me up the steps.

“Put her on the kitchen table. The light’s better in there.”

She bent over me as soon as I was lying, her soft hand brushing the hair from my face. “You’ve got glass imbedded in half a dozen places on your back and thighs. I’ll go as fast as I can, but it’s going to hurt like hell when I pull it out.”

“Just do it.”

She smiled. “You’re my kind of girl.”

She helped me onto my side and I felt the material of my dress suddenly part up the back. Then the worst pain I’d ever felt—even worse than childbirth—shot through my upper thigh as she went to work. I think I blacked out a little halfway through, but I managed to keep my sanity despite the screams that built in my chest and swirled around inside my head. Gentry sat beside me, holding my hands, worry making those gorgeous blue eyes even bluer.

“Do you remember that summer between our sophomore and junior years of high school?” he asked as Carson worked. “Do you remember how we hung out in that room at the back of the house, listening to music and pretending we couldn’t hear Brent and that cheerleader up on the balcony?”

“That’s when I introduced you to Garth Brooks.”

“I saw him in Las Vegas a few years ago.”

“You were in Vegas?”

He nodded, his attention diverted to whatever it was Carson was doing to the small of my back. I groaned and he turned his attention back to me, caressing my face lightly with the tip of one finger.

“That was the summer your mom left.”

“That was the summer you told me you always wanted to kiss me.”

“Yeah. And you told me I was an idiot because I waited too long.”

“Almost.”

“Almost.”

“You were always a day late and dollar short, Gentry Stone.”

“But I always showed up eventually.”

I started to smile, but Carson chose that moment to pull a particularly large piece of glass out of my shoulder. I groaned, squeezing my eyes shut and tightening my grip on Gentry’s hand. He moved closer, pressing his lips to my forehead.

“You’re so strong, Ami. Just hold on a few minutes longer.”

I heard footsteps just a second before Brent’s voice filled the room. “Is she okay?”

“What do you think?” Gentry demanded at the same moment Carson said, “She’ll be fine. A hundred stitches or so, but she’ll survive.”

“What the fuck happened, Gentry?”

I opened my eyes to watch the heat fill his face, but he never took his gaze from mine, never tried to pull away. He just ran his free hand over the top of my head and moved close again, whispering close to my ear, “You’re going to be okay.”

When Brent didn’t get an answer, he stormed out of the room. It wasn’t but a few minutes later when Carson touched my shoulder.

“I’ve got it all. You should go upstairs and wash up, clean out the open wounds as much as you can.”

“Thank you.”

She nodded as she pulled the gloves off her hands. “I’ll write you a scrip for antibiotics just to be on the safe side, and you’ll want to come by next week to have the stitches removed.”

I tried to move to sit up, but pain flashed through me again.

“You’ll be pretty sore for a few days, too.”

“Yeah.”

Gentry stood, pulling his hand free from mine. I moaned softly, thinking he was leaving me. Instead, he scooped me up and carried me to the back stairs, taking me to the master bedroom where there was an updated shower that was all marble and chrome. My dress fell to the floor the moment he set me on my feet, torn to shreds by the glass and Carson’s surgical scissors. Without a word, Gentry gently removed my underwear before reaching into the shower to start the water, his touch so kind that it nearly broke my heart.

Once I was in the shower, he disappeared, leaving me to cope with what had just happened alone. I could feel every stitch Carson had put into my body, could feel the wounds that were unstitched, left open to heal on their own. I felt like I’d been thrust through a meat grinder, the amount of blood in the rinse water frightening. I could only imagine what I’d looked like before her care.

I stood there for a long time, tears coming and going, a sort of despair taking up residence in the center of my chest. I suddenly just wanted out of there, wanted to be surrounded by my own things. I wanted to go home.

I dressed in clothes I found in the closet, a pair of yoga pants and an oversized t-shirt. My hair fell in strings around my face and I just left it, not really interested in standing in front of the mirror even for the short time it would take to comb it out and twist it into some sort of braid.

I could hear them arguing as I came down the stairs.

“She needs to stay here! What if they come after her again? What if this was a targeted attack?”

“What if it was just a coincidence and we tip our hand? You don’t think they know how to find us? You think they don’t know about this house?”

“We can’t invite trouble here, you know that. You have your own reasons for not wanting them here, Gentry.”

“I want her safe.”

“You think we don’t?”

I stepped into the living room to find Aiden, Brent, and Gentry glaring at each other like mortal enemies, Carson standing off to one side with her hand pressed to her lower abdomen like she was in physical pain brought on by their arguing. None of them noticed me until I spoke.

“I’m going home.”

“Amelia, you should stay here.” Gentry came to me, his hands taking mine, careful of the stitches Carson had placed in the palm of my left hand. “It’s safer.”

“What about Noah?”

“He’s well protected at your dad’s house.”

I shook my head. “He needs me. I need to be with him.”

“Ami—”

“She’s right, Gentry,” Brent said. “She’s just as safe there as she is here.”

“She’s safe here. Besides, look at her, she can barely move.” Gentry gestured toward Carson. “Shouldn’t she be close to a doctor?”

“There’s not much more I can do,” Carson told him. “She just has to heal.”

“But—”

“Gentry,” I said softly, suddenly too exhausted to argue with much vigor, “I want to go home. Please take me home.”

He clearly wasn’t happy with the idea, but he nodded. For the third time that night, he scooped me into his arms and carried me outside. The Mercedes was next to the front steps, the passenger side door still open, the dome light illuminating the blood smeared on the seat. He turned and Brent tossed him his truck keys without need for conversation. Gentry carried me there and settled me on the bench seat, carefully strapping me in before closing the door. I sank down against the door and closed my eyes, disappearing until we were parked in front of my house, Gentry’s hands kind on the sides of my face.

“You have your keys?”

I reached for my bag, but it was still sitting behind my desk at the office. I gestured vaguely toward the front of the house. “There’s a spare in the statue.”

“Still?”

“Old habits…”

I felt his smile more than saw it. He climbed out of the truck and I followed suit, moving very slowly as movement pulled at the stitches along the back of my thigh. Gentry was back in a second, sliding his arm around me.

“It’s okay,” I assured him. He hesitated, but he let me go in favor of unlocking the front door. I managed to get up the steps, but the pain was exhausting. By the time I got into the living room, I was more than ready to fall onto the couch.

“How about a drink?” Gentry suggested.

“Please.”

He opened the doors that hid the bar in one corner of the room, searching through the bottles for what he wanted.

“Do you realize the last time I got into this thing, we were minors?”

I smiled at the memory. “Yeah. We weren’t supposed to be here. We were supposed to be at that lame dance at the church hall.”

“We kept staring at the windows, afraid your dad would pull up at any moment and catch us.”

“He nearly did as I recall.”

Gentry chuckled as he carried two tumblers filled with a healthy amount of bourbon to me on the couch. “We were going out the back door while he was coming in the front.”

I smiled, remembering the panic I’d felt that night. “If he’d caught us, you would still be hanging from the rafters in our attic.”

“I’m sure I would.”

He chuckled again as he took a seat close to me, watching as I took a gulp of the burning liquor. It hurt going down, but it felt so good as it bloomed in my belly. I closed my eyes and sighed.

“Not as much fun when it’s legal.”

I looked up at him, caught the spark in his eyes. “A lot of things aren’t.”

He kissed the tip of my nose, then sat back, his glass between both his hands in his lap. “I’m sorry this happened to you tonight. It shouldn’t have.”

I swallowed more bourbon before I focused on him again. “You can’t control this.”

“But isn’t that why you went to Jack? Why we’re hanging out in the first place?”

“Is it? I thought you were coming around because you wanted to be with me.”

His eyes cut to mine. “Am I that obvious?”

I giggled, the bourbon going straight to my head thanks to my empty stomach. “You’ve always been obvious to me, Gentry. I could read you like a book since we were twelve.”

“Twelve? I thought you could read me even before that. You knew when I stole that cookie in Miss Wilson’s class.”

“That was kindergarten!”

“Exactly.”

I laughed right out then, sitting back against the couch. Pain flashed through my body, every little cut, every stitch, burning like a son of a bitch! I got up and wandered over to the bar, pouring myself more bourbon, taking a long sip before topping it off yet again.

“You should probably take it easy with that.”

I turned and focused blurrily on Gentry. “I think I’ve earned the right to drink too much tonight.”

He inclined his head. “I have to agree.”

There was a streak of dried blood on his jaw. It looked like flakes of paint, reminding me of the summer my dad hired the Stone boys to paint the real estate offices. The walls of the lobby still wore those coats of paint, though I supposed it was all bubbled now from the heat of the fire. I shuddered a little at the thought.

I lifted the glass to my lips as I wandered around the room, ignoring the tightness in the back of my thighs. There were pictures in this room, a lot of pictures of me. None of Noah. That had bothered me when I first came back, but I wasn’t surprised. My dad wasn’t impressed with the fact that he was a grandfather. I think he blamed Noah for the rift between us. He couldn’t possibly see that it was his fault. He was the one who pushed me away instead of embracing this new direction in our lives.

“What power is it that he has over me that even though he refused to speak to me for ten years, I still came running the moment I learned he was sick?”

“Your dad?”

“Yeah. Hadn’t heard from him since the day he told me to leave, yet he calls me up like we’d just talked last week, told me he was sick and he didn’t think he could take care of himself anymore.”

“Just like that?”

“By the time I got here, he didn’t know me. Said I was lying when I called myself his daughter.”

“I’m sorry. That must have been hard.”

“I don’t know what was harder: hearing from him in the first place, or coming home.”

“But this is your home, Amelia. You will always belong here.”

“Do I?” I turned to look at him, stumbling a little as I did. He was off the couch in a flash, his hands steadying me with a gentle touch to my arms. “Nothing has felt right since I’ve come home. Nothing but this.”

He brushed his hand over the side of my face. “I know exactly what you mean.”

“Too much has changed, Gentry. Sometimes I wonder if coming home was really the right thing to do. I could have moved him up to Nashville. I could have closed the real estate office, sold everything off. We would have been okay.”

“But you would have been alone, surrounded by strangers.”

“Isn’t that where I am now?”

His thumb moved over my chin. “Am I a stranger?”

I stared into his eyes for a long moment. It hurt so much to see the same things in his eyes, in his face, that I used to take for granted. And confusing. How could he look at me that way and admit to me the things he had last night all at the same time?

I pulled away, finishing what was in my glass and making my way back to the bar for more. He came up behind me and slipped the glass from my hand, setting it on the shelf beside the bottles.

“I think it’s time for you to go upstairs, Ami.”

“I wish you wouldn’t call me that.”

“Why not?”

“Because you and your family are the only ones who ever called me that.”

“Isn’t that a good reason to call you that? To remind you of what we shared?”

“Maybe I don’t want to remember.”

I moved from his touch and headed for the stairs, miscalculating how close I was to one of my mom’s straight-backed chairs. I walked right into it, crying out as pain from one of my many wounds burst through me.

Without a word, Gentry scooped me up into his arms once again, carrying me up the stairs like I weighed nothing more than a feather. I hated that I felt so safe in his arms, hated that this seemed so normal to me. Didn’t every girl have her ex-boyfriend come and carry her around after some asshole firebombed her office?

He carried me to my bedroom, still full of knowledge of intimate things about me, about my family, about my home. And why wouldn’t he be? We’d spent plenty of time in this room when we were young, playing games in the little sitting room when we were small, making out on the bed when we were older. He even snuck in and out of the window multiple times the last two years of high school. Those has been some pretty interesting nights! But we’d never made love in that bed. That part of our relationship didn’t come until college and I never really took up residence in this room after that.

Not until now, of course.

How ironic that we would find ourselves back here. Back to one of the places where it had all started.

He lay me gently on the edge of the bed, dragging my arms away from his neck. I put them right back, tugging him close to me.

“Don’t go.”

His eyes were dark with a need I recognized and reciprocated more than I’d ever wanted him to know. But after the night we’d had…I simply couldn’t let him walk away and pretend that it was okay. Not tonight. Not this time.

He moved close, his lips brushing mine so gently it broke my heart. “You’re hurt.”

“Then be careful.”

He groaned, lifting me slightly to make room for himself on the bed. I moved into him and we began to kiss, his hand moving low over my hip. But then he hit one of those stitched places and pain shot through me, bringing a little scream from my lips.

“Sorry.”

He moved his hand, sliding it under the borrowed t-shirt, his fingers dancing over my ribs. But then pain flashed through me again when he slid his hand underneath me, when he tried to pull me tighter into his embrace.

“Sorry,” he muttered a second time.

When I cried out a third time as his hand wandered over the palm of my injured hand, he pulled away.

“This isn’t a good idea. I’m hurting you.”

“Then don’t touch me.”

“How do you—”

“Take off your clothes and I’ll show you.”

He cocked an eyebrow, but he stood and did as I said, undressing with no fanfare even though it proved to be quite the erotic show to me. There were faint bloodstains on his chest where my blood had seeped through his dark t-shirt, but I could almost pretend they weren’t there as I focused on the two new tattoos he’d gotten since I’d last known him. One was the dates of his parents’ deaths, one over the other, across his ribs. The other was a blue anchor adorned with a teeny wreath of pink roses over his heart.

My heart swelled at the sight of that anchor.

“What is this?” he demanded, grabbing the sketchpad out of my hand.

“None of your business!”

“I thought we didn’t have secrets.”

I groaned. “It’s stupid, really.”

“Tell me.”

“Mr. Watson—my economics teacher—told us to come up with a logo for a fictitious company. That’s mine.”

“An anchor?”

“The anchor is strong, unbreakable, but the wreath suggests softer qualities.” I shrugged, aware of the blush burning my cheeks. “I thought it would be a good logo for the real estate office someday, when Daddy makes me his partner.”

“You have it all figured out, don’t you, Ami?” Gentry handed the sketchpad back and slipped his arms around my neck. “It’s a good thing, too, because I still have no fucking idea what I’m going to do with my life. All I know is I want you, my gorgeous blue anchor.”

“You remembered,” I said, brushing my fingers over the tattoo.

He took my wrists in his hands and pulled me close. “I remember everything about you, Ami.”

I reached up on my tiptoes and kissed him, pulling away before he could touch me again, before he could brush his hands over any more sensitive places.

“The pants, too, Mr. Stone.”

He smiled as he worked his belt, the sight one of the most erotic things I think I’ve ever seen. I moved around to the other side of the bed so that he wouldn’t be tempted to reach out for me and tugged my borrowed t-shirt over my head. My bra was still lying on the floor of the master bedroom back at the guesthouse on his family’s estate, covered in blood and glass. My breasts fell full and free, my nipples already tight with need. Gentry groaned as he paused in his own undressing, watching me as I worked the yoga pants down my injured thighs. I was naked before him, my body on bold display as I gestured to him.

“Undress, please.”

“You’re a tough lady, Ms. Wilde.”

He dropped those cargo pants on the floor, stepping out of them after some struggle with his heavy work boots. Then the boxer briefs and socks disappeared, exposing him in all his naked glory. They say women aren’t as aroused by the naked form as men are, but I could have argued with that theory right then. I couldn’t imagine anything more erotically beautiful than his ropy muscles, his broad shoulders and narrow hips, his heavy thighs. All I could think about as he stood there was how desperately I wanted to touch his skin, how I wanted to taste it and feel it against mine, how incredible it was going to be to have him inside me again after all this time.

“Bed,” I barked, unable to offer more instruction because of the need that was suddenly impeding the normal functioning of my throat.

Gentry did as he was told, climbing into the center of the bed and lying flat on his back, only a pillow between him and the bedsheets. I walked back around and snatched up his belt, freeing it from the loops of his pants. When I crawled onto the bed, he reached for me, but I pushed his hands away, creating a loop in the belt and sliding one hand into it.

“Kinky,” he said as he snapped at my breast, drawing one nipple into his mouth and nibbling at it as I struggled to slip the belt through the slats in the headboard.

“No touching.”

“I’m not touching. I’m biting.”

I groaned, but still managed to secure his hands above his head. I slid back, trying not to look at his face, trying not to see the naked desire in his eyes. It was hard to ignore, though.

I started with that tattoo, running the tip of my tongue over it. It was his turn to groan, jerking his shoulders in an attempt to get at me, but failing. I moved slowly down, teasing his nipple before moving to his ribs, tracking my tongue, my finger, over the numbers that were permanently etched there, the pain those numbers represented. He groaned again, the sound like music to my ears. His legs moved below me, his knees drawing up as he tried to direct my movements. But I wasn’t going to be told where or what I was to do next.

This was my game. He’d been playing games with me since he came home, but now was my turn.

I touched him as I moved lower and lower down his body, tasting him and touching him, my nails scratching a pattern into his skin. I found the fine hair that led down to his erection and played with it, running my fingers around in it, tugging at it until he cried out. And then I followed with my lips, sliding my mouth along that path until I found what we’d both been looking for.

He tasted like salt and sweat and a million things I could hardly describe. And tasted familiar. I’d never been with another man in the ways I’d been with Gentry. There’d been kisses, a few fumbles in the darkness. But never like this. I couldn’t imagine ever wanting to be with another man in the ways I’d been with Gentry.

“Ami…”

He whispered my name and made it sound like an endearment. He moved his hips, the groans coming faster and faster from his lips. I wanted to believe no other woman could make him feel the things I made him feel, but suspected that was a naive thing to believe. But in that moment maybe it was something unique for him, something special.

He jerked at the belt holding his hands in place, shaking the entire bed.

“Let me go, baby. I want to touch you!”

I ignored him, lingering a few moments longer with my exploration. But my own body was threatening to betray me, the need growing so large in my lower belly that I could hardly stand myself. I squeezed my thighs together, trying in vain to relieve the pressure, but it wasn’t helping. I wasn’t a teenager content to go home with whatever the female version of blue balls was. I was a grown woman who hadn’t been this close to release in far too long.

I bit my lip, holding back both a grimace of pain and a moan of anticipated pleasure as I straddled him, wrapping my hand around his moist erection. He stared up at me, his eyes hooded with a level of desire that I don’t believe I’d ever seen before. I leaned close, kissed him. He responded with a hunger that threatened to devour us both. At the same time, I guided him to me, allowing him to tease my clit before I straightened and slowly settled down against him. It’d been so long…I closed my eyes, pain and pleasure so intermingled that I couldn’t tell which was which.

“Oh, hell!” he cried, yanking at the belt holding his hands again. “Let me go, baby!”

But I was already lost, finding my own rhythm, finding that spot that made all of this make sense. And it wasn’t hard. My body was so ready for him, so ready for the release only he could offer. I could feel his eyes on me, could feel him watching me with an intensity that I could feel like a physical touch. When I opened my eyes, it was to lock with his, to lose myself in everything about him. The physical was just one part of this. The rest was…indescribable.

It didn’t take long for my sore, broken body to reach the heights of pleasure. When it did, I rode that wave quietly. And then I collapsed against him, making him wait a moment before I released him from his restraints. He immediately slipped his arms around me, conscious of my wounds, but just barely. He sat us both up, his hands finding a safe spot on my hips to encourage me to move again, encouraging me back to those heights. My body came back to life quicker than I’d expected, the pain from my wounds not as big a factor as we’d both been afraid they would be.

“I love you,” he whispered against my ear when he reached his limit, when he tipped over that edge. I held on to those words harder than I should have, tears spilling from my eyes as I wrapped myself around him, not willing to let him go again. We sat like that for a long time, his arms around me, my body wrapped around him. A long, long time.