He didn’t just take my breath away, he was the air in my lungs and I had no words, just tears. Cupping the sides of my face, he brushed them away with a smile. The more I looked at him, the more I loved him. Like a movie, everything—all the pain we had gone through just to get there—played in my mind, and I realized maybe it wasn’t just love between us, but fate.
“Okay,” I finally managed to say, letting go of my suitcase.
“Thank you,” he whispered over my lips, and I knew the moment his lips were
on mine…it had to be fate.
It had to be him.
Eli
Neither of us had said a word since leaving the airport, and it wasn’t as easy as taking her hand and running off. She had to pick up Taigi and postpone—not cancel—her trip. She promised to call Sebastian in the morning and I would have been lying if I’d said I was fine. Part of me felt like I was only delaying the unavoidable.
“I’ll get some wine,” I told her when we stepped inside my flat. She didn’t reply, just took a seat on the couch as Taigi curled into a ball at the base of it. Leaning over, she stroked his fur softly. Grabbing two glasses and two bottles, I moved back over to her, sitting right beside her.
“Are you trying to get me drunk?” she said softly, the corner of her lips turning up.
“Yes,” I admitted, and she finally glanced at me. The look in her brown eyes was different from what it had been at the airport, proving maybe she had just said yes because she was caught up in the moment. “We have our best conversations when we are in the process of getting drunk.”
Uncorking one of the bottles, I filled her glass and then mine before leaning back into the couch behind me.
Again, silence.
It was killing me. She wasn’t the silent type; she was a rambler and I liked that about her, so I guessed it was up to me.
“What are you afraid of?” I asked as I drank.
“You can’t be serious,” she replied, still not drinking, just staring at the glass.
“But I am. I want to hear it. Everything going through your mind. Even the things you think I’ll judge you for thinking. The one thing I love about us, Guinevere, is that we talk, we laugh, we tease each other, we laugh more, and we drink. Before being my girlfriend, you were my friend; I love that.”
She drank, not a little bit, but her whole damn glass, the wine even slipping out the corner of her mouth. When she was done, she inhaled deeply and wiped her mouth.
“We’re going to hate each other,” she confessed as I refilled her glass. “Not in the beginning. We’ll try to be understanding, but eventually I’m going to get jealous. I’m going to see you and your daughter and feel like the odd man out. Which is horrible, Eli. She’s your kid. I’ll know that, but I’ll still be hurt. You’ll feel guilty and then annoyed because I’m not going to be happy or I’ll start avoiding you because of it. Slowly we will wear each other down until…until we’re fighting all the time, fighting because we love each other and don’t want to let go, but realistically know we should. I can see it so clearly, me not seeing you because of work and then when I do you have to be with your daughter. Besides, I still have things I want to do with my career too… I’m selfish, Eli. I don’t like that I am, but I don’t want to share you with Hannah or your daughter or anyone. I feel like they are standing between us, like they are the thing between us… I want to spend some time getting to know you and being with you. Those are the things I’m thinking about.”
I finished my first glass and started to refill, my mind racing to the point that I was starting to get a headache.
“In your books, how would the hero and heroine work this out?” I questioned.
Her mood lightened up and she even giggled. “The heroine would have gotten on the plane and we’d have to wait for book two to see them struggle to fix everything later.”
I had missed hearing her sound cheerful. “Who do you think would play me in the book to movie version if there was one?”
“Tom Hiddleston,” she said without even a moment of hesitation.
“We look nothing alike Guinevere.”
“I know!” She grinned, reaching for the bottle. “But he’s hot and I’d happily play myself, thank you very much.”
I rolled my eyes. “Yeah good luck with that.”
“A girl can dream.”
“If you are going to dream about a man fucking you in the shower and on the bed, in your parents’ basement, it needs to me.”
Her eyebrow rose and she looked ready to challenge me. “And if I don’t?”
“The moment I feel you hot and bothered beside me, I’ll happily remind you one thrust at a time.”