Lately, Tia was having more and more trouble believing that her life was, well, her life. And this was one of those moments. She stood in her bare feet and a long t-shirt, gazing into Elijah Bird’s refrigerator for something for the two of them to eat for breakfast.

When nothing particularly called her name, Tia decided that the birds were out, the sun was shining, there was a salty lick of ocean on the air and this morning was a morning for ordering in breakfast.

Not something she’d ever done before, but what the hell? She pulled a diner menu up on her phone and put in an order. And then she took the opportunity to go back to the bedroom and get a healthy dose of grumpy morning Eli. One of her all-time favorite versions of Eli. There was nothing cuter to her.

And she wasn’t disappointed.

“Grrmmmph,” Eli groaned when she snuggled into his warm, naked side. But he threw an arm around her and snuggled her right back.

Tia couldn’t help but giggle at his hibernating bear impression.

“Grrrrrmmmmph,” he growled again. “What are you giggling about?”

“Just that you’re such a grump in the morning. It’s cute.”

“Cute?” He cracked an eye, scowl still firmly in place. She’d woken the beast. “Cute?”

He growled again and rose up on his hands and knees, his eyes still mostly shut. Caging her in, he collapsed, pinning her down with his weight and nuzzling into her. “I’ll show you cute.”

“Oof!” Tia wriggled against his weight but couldn’t help but smile, wrapping her arms around his back and giving him the light back scratch she’d learned he liked.

“Alright,” he mumbled, his five o’clock shadow scratching at her skin. “You’re forgiven for waking me up. And now, coffee.”

He rolled off of her and walked, naked and unabashed into the bathroom. He emerged a few seconds later with a quizzical expression on his face, basketball shorts on, and a toothbrush sticking out of his mouth.

“Was that the doorbell?” he asked, around a huge amount of toothpaste. That was another thing she’d learned about him. He was a real glutton when it came to toothpaste.

“Yup,” she sprang up from the bed. “I ordered in some breakfast for us.”

“Wait!” he called after her, spitting out the toothpaste and racing after her. “I’ll pay!” He grabbed his wallet from the dresser.

Yet another thing she’d learned about Eli. He didn’t like her to pay for almost anything. Unless it was expressly categorized as a gift. That was the only way he accepted almost anything from her.

“I already paid,” she told him as he skidded up to the front door. She flung it open and accepted the food from the delivery boy, whose eyes went round at the sight of Eli. The kid clapped his mouth shut, going bright red—typical shy fanboy—and handed the credit card receipt to Tia for signing.

“No fair,” Eli told her as she signed the receipt. “You paid for it before I even wo—”

His voice cut off and his eyes went round as quarters as he stared down at Tia’s signature on the receipt. He snatched it out of her hand before she could hand it to the delivery kid.

“Eli!”

“This is your signature?” he asked her, something in his eyes wild and racing.

“What?”

“This is your signature?” he stared at it like it was a map to the Holy Grail.

“Yes,” Tia responded, one eyebrow raised. She gently yanked the receipt out of Eli’s fingers and handed it back to the delivery kid. “Thank you,” she said, closing the door. She wasn’t sure what the hell was going on with Eli but she was fairly certain she didn’t want the delivery kid listening in.

“I can’t believe it,” Eli whispered. His golden eyes were huge and searching her entire face, like he was desperate for answers she was hiding there.

“What is it, Eli?”

“I just can’t believe it.” Eli paced away from her and paced back, like a big, shirtless, prowling cat. He ripped a hand through his hair and made it stand on end. Seeming to be at complete loose ends, Eli just dug in the pocket of his basketball shorts and pulled out his wallet, handing it over to her.

“Uhhhh.” Tia stared down at his brown leather wallet in his hand, completely confused as to why he’d just jammed it into her hand.

“Open it,” he said hoarsely. “Look behind my driver’s license.”

Tia did as he said, taking just a moment to smile at the grinning photo of Eli on his almost expired license. He looked much younger, so much closer to the boy she’d had a crush on in high school. The picture made the teenager in Tia’s heart sigh.

She slid it out of the plastic sleeve only to find a carefully folded and very creased piece of yellowing paper. It was almost fuzzy with time. She gave him a quizzical look as she handed back the wallet and began to unfold the paper.

And then the world just up and fell away from her. Tia’s eyes became even rounder than Eli’s as tears instantly sprang up, clouding her vision. Clouding her view of something she’d never thought she’d see again.

“My note,” she whispered, blinking around the tears. “The note I left in your yearbook. You—you kept it?”

“Kept it? Tia, I’ve treasured it.” His eyes were wild, his jaw set and ticking. Somehow his hands had ended up on her shoulders, clasping her tightly like she might just disappear.

Tia’s eyes fell away from his intense gaze and they landed on the thin, faintly pink scar that she’d stitched up herself. Her eyes teared again and this time she wasn’t completely sure why.

“Dear Elijah,” Eli said, his voice deep and full of vibration as he quoted the letter from heart, his eyes never leaving hers. “I waited four years to say this to your face, but I guess this’ll have to do. Elijah, I don’t know you very well, but I love you. I know that sounds funny to say, because how could anybody love somebody without knowing them? But the thing is, you have a light. An energy. And I’m a science person. I don’t believe in stuff like that. But I look at you and I have to believe. You’re so good, Elijah, on the inside, that I can see it on your outside. Your good heart glows. I can see your future as clearly as words on a page. You’ll be successful and brilliant. And if you ever find yourself doubting it, just walk over to a mirror, smile at yourself and allow yourself to see what I see. Your light. Your energy. Your goodness. Love always, Tia Camellia.”

One of his fingers brushed over her lips when he said her name. “I can’t believe it says Tia Camellia,” he whispered. “All these years I’ve wondered and wondered at that horribly scratched signature. I about went crazy over it. And all this time it was you.”

Tia knew that she should say something. Anything right now. But she found that she absolutely couldn’t. There was cotton in her throat. She swallowed against the feeling again and again. “Eli,” she whispered. It was the best she could do.

Suddenly Eli unhanded her and slipped the note from her fingers, tracing his thumb over the messy signature. He carefully folded the note back up and slid it behind his driver’s license.

And then he turned to her, his chest heaving as the morning light cut shadows across his abs, his shoulders. His eyes were dark and bright at the same time, his hair mussed and his basketball shorts rode low on his hips.

Tia stood completely still, like an owl on a branch, as Eli chucked the wallet to one side and lunged forward. He picked her up, seemingly effortlessly and her legs went automatically around his waist.

They were eye level with one another from the way he held her and he didn’t tear his eyes from hers as he strode through his house toward his bedroom.

Tia was trembling, shocked and pinned and totally unsure what to make of all this. He was reacting so strongly, so viscerally. She hadn’t thought at the time that he would even care when he read that note.

“I didn’t think it would be cruel to scribble my signature.” She bit her lip.

“Cruel? It wasn’t cruel. It drove me nuts, but nothing about that note was cruel, Tia.” He got to the bedroom and almost tossed her down on the bed. Again, he paced in front of her while she drew her knees up. Eli tore a hand through his hair.

“That note wrecked me when I found it in my yearbook. It was so similar to something that my mom used to say to me. She used to call me firefly because she said I lit up like one. That I made my own light.”

Tia sucked in a breath.

“And then to read it in a note like that. One that was so loving. So sweet. God, it was almost like having my mom speak to me through a stranger. It made me cry the first time I read it. And I had to keep it with me. To know that there was someone out there who felt that way about me. Who loved me. Who saw my light. God.” For a second Eli crouched down onto the balls of his feet and laced his fingers over the back of his head. “I convinced myself that it didn’t matter that I didn’t know who wrote it. That the important part was just that somebody out there felt that way. But it did matter. It does matter. It was you, Tia.”

He rose now, slowly, and Tia thought again, helplessly, of a jungle cat. His eyes flashed and melted at once. Gold, bright and searing.

“It was you, Tia,” he repeated. “Do you even know how many times you’ve told me you love me through that note? How many times you wrote me that word? Thousands. You’ve told me you loved me for sixteen years. Over and over I read that note, just to hear you tell me that you love me.”

He took two quick steps toward the bed and crawled forward so that Tia was underneath him again, caged. He breathed hard and looked all across her face, like he was trying to memorize her, like he could barely believe she was there. “It’s gonna take me a long time to catch up to that, Tia.”

What? Was he saying what she thought he was saying?

“So, I might as well start now,” he said in a voice so deep her fingers curled into the sheets. “I love you. Tia, I love you. I’m so in love with you that I’m lost in it. All my old internal compasses don’t fucking work anymore, because they all point to you. I love you.” He dropped his head and slid his lips over hers, instantly hot and warm and melting. Tia knew she was being branded. And not by him. But by her own heart. “I love you,” he whispered feverishly against her. “I love you.”

Tia arched into the words, felt something crack all around her. It was a cocoon, one she’d hidden in for almost her entire life. Eli’s mouth went to her throat, hot and melting her from the outside in. The world was hot and bright and Tia knew that she was just moments away from an entirely new life. That if she took this step outside of herself, there was no going back. Eli was changing her, each desperate I love you he planted on the skin of her collarbones, over her sensitive, arching breasts.

He shouldered her knees apart and fell on her with his mouth. He devoured her, swallowed her whole. She almost didn’t recognize the man between her legs. All his smooth, effortless demeanor was gone. He was incensed, on fire, jerky with the desperate need to show her, to make her believe.

When the first spearing tendrils of pleasure rolled through her body, Tia knew that she wasn’t turning back. She could pull back and recede back into that cocoon, but she wouldn’t do it. Not now that she knew what waited for her outside of it.

Eli.

He was a part of this terrifying new world. And she was going to be exactly where he was. Tia grabbed Eli by the hair and yanked him up from her.

“I love you,” he gasped, as she used all her weight to flip them over. She hovered over top of him for a second before she sunk down over him, taking him inside of her, and meeting him in the bright, bright world of love.

Their mouths were fused and gasping as they gripped and slipped against one another. She was dimly aware that they were moving the bed, inching it across the floor. She was dimly away that they were destroying one another, and creating something new in the process. She was dimly aware that there was no getting out of this alive.

When she couldn’t hold out any longer, when she knew that she was going over the edge no matter what, all Tia could do was whisper one word into his mouth.

“Eli,” she whispered. “Eli.”

And that was enough to tumble him over the edge along with her. The two of them, clinging and straining, plunged together, over a waterfall, into the abyss, into the world.