“Not bad. Kinda sore where the AK hit me in the face, but otherwise, I’m all right. How are you? I heard about Mandla. I’m sorry. Truly.”
“Don’t be,” Fenton says, eyeing me out of the corner of his eye. “I think everything’s going to work out just fine. Just the way it should. You know, like we discussed.”
“With the rudo,” Brady grins, looking at me.
“I’m starving,” Presley whines to my mother, saving me from embarrassment, and heading into the kitchen. “Can I have a taste of that artichoke stuff we made earlier?”
“Absolutely, doll.”
We all trickle into the kitchen, my father behind me and Fenton and Brady taking up the rear. They’re talking like old friends, the ease in the room better than I ever imagined. I exchange a small smile with my mother who I know feels the same thing.
“The world works in mysterious ways, doesn’t it?” Mom whispers, handing a plate to Pres.
I watch my father, brother, and my love discuss some baseball statistic, filling Brady in on the homerun race. My cup overflows.
“It sure does, Mom. It sure does.”
Fenton
2 weeks later
The water ripples, swirls, trickles past the boat as we drift in a nameless harbor in a nameless country. I’m sure they have names. I’m even more sure Ivan, the captain, told me what they were . . . and I’m one-hundred percent confident that I don’t give a damn what they are.
The cool drink, some fruity concoction that tastes like rum and strawberries that Brynne proudly whipped up in the galley, melts in my hand. The sun warms my skin, an occasional bird calling out the only sound other than some pop band my girl has playing over the speakers. All in all, it’s perfect. And it would be perfect without the drink, without the bird, without the music. It would be beautiful without any of it, as long as Brynne was around.
She rearranged my life. I don’t know how, but that twinkle in her eye I saw the first time I saw her lock screen was a calling to my soul and I didn’t even know it. She changed everything, making things clear, bringing things full circle.
Someone told me once that love blurs things and I get that now. It makes things that were once important not so much anymore. It makes things that might’ve been on the back burner now the most important thing in the world. It reinvigorates you, puts passion back into your work. It refills your tank, pours fuel into your reserves and with it, you realize how many holes you had draining it.
She’s that for me.
Brynne Calloway is the love of my life.
She comes around the corner, a drink matching mine in her hand, a tiny pink bikini tied around her. It covers basically nothing and I know she’s wearing it just to rile me up. It works.
I’m getting better about it, but I can’t help it. I pull my sunglasses off my nose and peer up at her.
“How’s your drink?” she grins.
“Did you walk around the entire boat like that?”
“Like what?” She looks down at herself, running a finger dampened with the sweat from the glass down her stomach. “Like this?”
“Yes, like this.” I pull her onto my lap, catching her lips with mine. I remind her she’s mine, that regardless of how much she taunts me, plays with me, regardless of who she lets see her in a fucking string bikini, at the end of the day, and every hour in between, she’s my girl.
“I like it when you’re all pissy,” she giggles, bringing the glass to her lips. She toys with the straw with her tongue, making my cock harden.
“You’re going to get fucked.”
“What’s new?” she sighs, but ends it with a laugh. “How much more do I have to do to get you to lay me out right here again?”
“Well, being that lunch is just about to be served, that’s not happening. No one is seeing what’s left of you behind that scrap of fabric.”
She sweeps her lips against mine and settles back against me. We watch the boat float along the waves, the beach of the island just in sight.
“It’s been a great couple of weeks,” she breathes. “I’m so glad I came with you.”
“I wouldn’t have come without you.” I kiss her shoulder, her skin hot against my mouth. She smells all vanilla-y and I want to lick her, suck her, eat her like a fucking dessert. “And you’ll never come without me again.”
She laughs at my innuendo. “They always said you know when you know, you know?” she grins.
“What? You lost me.”
“People. They say that. That when you meet The One, you know it.”
“I knew it when I saw you.”
“Did you?”
I nod, kissing her shoulder again. “I didn’t know I knew it, but I did. I know it now.”
She laughs, the sound music to my ears. It always will be. It’s the sound of fulfilling my goal, of making her happy. It’s all I want, really, at the end of the day.
“I knew it, too. Maybe not that first day. That day I just wanted to fuck you.”
“Language, Brynne.”
“Yes, it’s language,” she winks. “But in Vegas, I knew. You were just so kind and smart and sexy.”