So I made my wish, and together, we blew out the candles.
“What did you wish for?” he asked in the sudden blackness as the flames snuffed out.
“I can’t tell you, it won’t come true.” Then I hesitated, because I knew it was impossible for my wish to ever come to fruition. “I wished Dane wasn’t really dead.”
“Babe…” his big hand found my face unerringly in the darkness and pushed back into my hair over my ear to cup my cheek. “If you think I haven’t wished different every time I blew out candles on his birthday, you’d be wrong.”
I sucked in a shaky breath and leaned into his hand in a silent bid for comfort.
We didn’t eat the burger.
Nova placed it on the bedside table, pulled back the covers as I scooted over, then he joined me in bed for the first time in two years.
But just as he had all the other times before, my insomniac fell asleep almost the second he wrapped me up in his heavy limbs, his face tucked into my hair on the pillow, his thick lashed eyes closed.
I laid awake for a lot longer, trailing my hand over the crisp hair on the forearm slung over my chest, staring blankly at the glow-in-the-dark garden he’d painted for me above our heads.
And I wondered how life could get any more complicated.
LILA
The most romantic moment of my life so far?
The morning after Dane’s birthday before Nova was even partially awake, he rolled over in bed, already reaching for me. He tucked me against his hard chest, buried his nose in the crook of my neck, tangled up in my hair and sighed.
He sighed like there was no place on earth so safe and warm as the meeting of our two bodies in this bed.
And then he fell back to sleep, his fragrant, sleep-hot skin heavy against my side.
I memorized everything about that moment. The tap of rain on the wide windowpane, the cool, rough texture of the linen sheets under my back, and the quality of the weak morning light filtering through the clouds like milky honey.
I remembered everything.
And nothing before that moment came close to being so profound, not even when another man got on one knee and proposed to me.
Because what Nova did that morning?
It wasn’t studied or planned. It was natural, an extension of feeling he didn’t have the wherewithal in sleep to stifle.
It said in ways I might never hear aloud that he loved me.
Not as much, never as much, as I loved him.
But in that moment, it was enough.
I didn’t linger in bed even though the sight of his endless inked skin called to me. I wished I had the privilege to lie there and trace it all with my fingers, feel the slight ridge of black outlines, the rise of the scar from his knee surgery in high school.
But I didn’t.
There was no way I was going to wait around for him to wake up and realize what he’d done in the drunken dark, lulled by nostalgia and alcohol into doing something he was certain to regret.
So I slipped out of bed, quickly showered, dressed, and got the hell out of there.
It was a Saturday, so normally, I should have been able to avoid him all day, but my phone pinged as I grabbed a tea from Honey Bear Café reminding me I had a tattoo appointment that day.
With Nova.
I bit my lip as I stared at my phone, deliberating whether to cancel, no show, or suck it up and go, preferably with backup.
“Uh-oh,” a familiar, husky yet smooth female voice broke through my thoughts. “I recognize that look.”
“Uh huh,” a lighter, sweeter voice agreed from slightly behind and to my right. “It’s that look you all get when you’re in the thick of it with an alpha.”
I rolled my eyes even as a smile stretched my lips. My arms already opening for a hug, I turned around to greet Loulou Garro and her little sister, Bea. The latter immediately stepped into my embrace, her cloud of pale gold hair sweet as freesia in my nose and just as silken as its petals against my cheek.
“Hey, girl,” I said as I gave her a squeeze.
She stepped back to smile widely at me, her eyes huge and so dark a blue they almost looked black from afar. I grinned even bigger when I noticed her white, frilly blouse and super short pink skirt. The girl was nineteen now, but she still dressed like a girly girl in bows, pinks, and lace. It was a stunning contrast to the woman I knew was obsessed with true crime podcasts and horror films.
In comparison, her older sister, Loulou, was as womanly as they came. Her lush curves on her lean form were dramatic, the red pop of her mouth full and well-formed in a face you could’ve seen in a magazine. She wore a leather jacket with a white sundress and kickass combat boots, barely older than a teenager rockin’ her youth, but already a mum to the two biker babies in matching Hephaestus Auto onesies.