The Ends of the World (The Conspiracy of Us 3)

I craned my neck around and pulled his lips to mine. He tasted like the sea, too.

“It was earlier than the train,” I murmured.

“What?”

“When I started falling in love with you. Maybe in the water in Greece, like you? No, earlier than that. When we were standing on that balcony in Venice. Or maybe when you let me stab you at Notre-Dame so we could escape.”

He grinned and touched his shoulder, where the wound had hardly left a scar. “I find it hard to believe you were in love with me then. You enjoyed stabbing me a little too much.”

“Okay, I didn’t realize how I felt at the time,” I said, giggling. “I thought you were obnoxious.”

He laughed, low and rough. “To be fair, I was. So what we’re saying is we’ve both been falling in love with each other for a very, very long time.”

“Yeah, I think that’s right,” I whispered, and I kissed him again. Mint tea and honey weren’t going to be the only things I’d associate with kissing him from now on. It was the Louvre, and looking up through the pyramid. It was candlelight on a white wall. It was a sea breeze and the hammock on the porch of our bungalow and cool, crisp water and a whole lifetime of things we had yet to experience. It was all that and more, to the ends of the world.

“Come on,” I said, standing up.

We held hands, and stood back from the edge, and on the count of three, we ran forward and jumped. For a few seconds, we were flying, the whole world stretching in front of us. And as we plummeted toward the aqua water, I laughed—and I screamed.