Every Second With You

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Three Months Later

Harley

A girl builds a sandcastle as high as the sky, its towers reaching the clouds. The sand glitters and the clouds glow with a radiant white light that ignites the sky into sapphire.

“You finished it,” I say, as I stare mesmerized at the final illustration in Trey’s sketchbook for me.

“I told you I would,” he says proudly, kneeling next to me, watching over my shoulder as I look at the pictures spread out in front of me on the blanket. Hope is sound asleep in my lap as I sit cross-legged on the beach, the salty tang of the ocean waves nipping in the air.

“I love it so much,” I say, tracing the final image once again. He illustrated all of the stories from my grandparents’ cards, creating a fantastical tale of a city girl who was out of place amidst the skyscrapers, then found her way home to the sand, where she lived out her days underneath the bluest of blue skies. “I kind of feel like we made a book together,” I say, under my breath.

“Because we did. My art, your words.”

I lean back against him, and he loops his arms around me. “Our story.”

I can feel him smile as he plants a soft kiss against my shoulder, then as he brushes my blond strands away, and kisses the cherry blossom tattoo he inked on the back of my neck for my twenty-first birthday a few weeks ago. The perfect gift.

“We’ve made other things together, too,” I say as Hope stirs, stretching out her little arms, lifting them to the sky, then curling up once more as the sun beats down on my beach baby, her breath soft against my legs.

She belongs to us. But she belongs to others, too. To my grandparents, who help me take care of her. To Trey’s mom and dad, who came out to visit her a few weeks ago. His mom cooed, and cried, and sang songs, and played with her in the sand. I email her pictures every day, and every day she asks for more. More photos, more stories, more baby.

I turn to my husband. “What will we tell her someday?”

“What do you mean?”

“When she asks how her mom and dad met,” I say twisting around to look at Trey, at his green eyes with the gold flecks sparkling. “What will we tell her?”

He sinks down on the blanket across from me, lacing his fingers through mine. He always holds my hand. He did as my friend, he did as my lover, and now he does as my husband and father to my child.

“That’s easy,” he says, running a fingertip across my palm that sends warm sparks through me. “We’ll tell her the true story. That there is a place called the ugly beautiful, and that’s where her mom and dad met.”

My heart thumps faster. “And that’s where they live,” I say, quickly adding to the story.

“And we’ll tell her that sometimes people meet in the toughest of circumstances, and the strangest of places, and there’s no reason why they should be together, except that they can’t not be.”

“And if anyone asks if she’s heard the story of a guy and a girl who were so broken at love that they never should have happened, she’ll say ‘yes, and I know why,’” I say, reaching out to touch his beautiful face, to map the scar on his cheek. “Because it was mad love, crazy love, insane love. Because it was hard love, good love, true love. Because it was the real thing, and a love like that can’t be stopped. A love like that is inevitable.”

“It lasts forever, for always, because of the love they have and the way they love. And how they learned to love together. Fierce and true.”

“And I’ll tell her that’s how I feel for her dad.”

“And I’ll tell her that’s how I feel for her mom.”

“And that’s how we feel for her.”

As the water lapped the shore, then rolled back out to sea, we were finally where we wanted to be: with family, by the ocean, under the sun, on our terms, loving fierce and true.

THE END…