“Do it now.”
“Okay.”
And that quickly, she hangs up. I wait, still trying to keep my speed under the radar, while watching the time tick down on the phone’s GPS.
Twenty minutes out.
I answer on the first ring, this time another number. “No one’s recording me now,” she whispers. “I escaped the cruise ship and ended up in Miami. I used a connection I had at the paper and flew straight to Morose. I… I had a feeling that’s where you would go, and I had to find you.”
My hands shake. She did? She had the same thought I did? Of course, she did. We grew so close together on that island, it only makes sense our logic and reason arrived at the same conclusion.
“I’m almost there,” I whisper, not trusting my voice. I’m already a fucking emotional mess, just hearing her voice again.
“We have to get to him first,” she whispers.
“We do.”
“I’m in a hotel room,” she says. “I’m with a friend. We have to do this together.”
I nod, before I realize she can’t see me. I agree with her, though. We do.
She gives me the location of where she is, and I drive the last fifteen minutes like a man possessed, consumed with only two thoughts beyond all else: find my girl, and find Morose. It seems almost surreal that she’s here now, that I’m going to find her. A part of me wonders if the hands of fate will keep us apart. We’ve been through so much, it’s hard to believe that we can actually be reunited again.
But I heard her voice and I’ve made up my mind.
Today, we find Morose. Today, my girl is back in my arms.
She told me to meet her in the back alley of the hotel where she’s staying. There’s a large, decrepit dumpster and car after car. I park the stolen one at the furthest end of the lot, my whole body fraught with nerves, on edge, like an addict in need of a hit.
I need Harper.
On that island, she became a part of me. I saw into the deepest recesses of her mind and heart. I love the woman I found there. She saw me at my worst and best, and loves me as I am. No one has ever loved me the way she does, and I’ll spend the rest of my life making it up to her. I didn’t know what was missing in my life until I found her. Until she became mine. Until she loved me.
I walk to where she said she’d be, at the very edge of the lot, looking for her. I don’t see her at first, and a fatalistic part of me wonders if we were set up somehow. So much has been plotted against us. Would it be that easy?
But then I know. She’s here. She’s here, and she’s mine again. I hear footsteps. Her footsteps.
I turn to her as she walks to me. If ever I took this woman’s beauty for granted, I deserve the harshest punishments. For there’s no woman on this earth more radiant than Harper.
Her eyes glow like moonbeams, feasting on me. I don’t know what I’ve done to deserve her looking at me like that, but I vow to spend the rest of my life earning the adoration she bestows on me like a blessing. I swallow the lump in my throat, because I swear, I’m about to cry like a damn fool, but she deserves better than that.
Her vibrant auburn hair is tucked in a messy bun at the top of her head, her creamy, pale skin glowing in the light of the sun. She’s wearing a simple pair of jeans and a pale green V-neck t-shirt, but I swear she’s a fucking goddess in this moment, all curves and full lips and eyes that dance with laughter and joy.
I see this all in just a split second, for in the next, she’s running, full throttle, her hair falling from the messy bun and tumbling round her shoulders in wild waves. Just like her. Just like my girl.
When she reaches me, she jumps on me, a full body tackle I brace for. And then my hands are in her hair and her legs are wrapped around me, her mouth is on mine and she’s kissing me as if she’s been waiting for just this moment her entire life. There’s a wet saltiness in our kiss that takes me a moment to decipher: tears, both hers and mine.
“Christ,” I muttered. “I wasn’t gonna cry.”
“Me neither,” she sniffles.
“Well at least I’m not bawling,” I say to her, wiping the two manly tears away from my eyes while she weeps her heart out, and she laughs her beautiful, carefree laugh that’s a balm to my soul.
“Christ, woman, I love you.” Her eyelids flutter closed as if she’s basking in the words. “I love you,” I repeat, kissing the damp, pink apples of her cheeks. “I love you,” I say again, kissing her chin and her shoulders and neck and every inch of her that I can.