Page 159 of Illusory

“What are we watching?” I asked, unable to keep the excitement from my voice.

“Ever After.” His mouth curved into a grin as he filled up the glasses with champagne and then handed one over to me. “I have it on good authority that it’s one of your favorite movies.”

My vision blurred as I tried to hold back the waterworks.

Memories of that late-summer night during my trip away with Tessa flashed through my mind. Dominic had come to visit me, as he had so many times before, but it was around the time that he had started pulling away from me—physically anyway. I didn’t know it then, but he had only just discovered that Trace was alive and well and had been trying to talk to me about it. To warn me.

But of course, being my stubborn self, I refused to hear him out, thinking he was trying to drudge up the past when it was still too painful for me to talk about then.

We’d stayed up until the sun came out talking about everything and nothing. I’d mentioned in passing that Ever After was one of my favorite movies, though we hadn’t stayed on the topic long enough for me to think the detail had even stuck.

“You remembered,” I said, warm tears trickling down my face.

He reached out and swiped at my cheek with his thumb, brushing away a tear before doing the same on the other side of my face. “I remember everything, angel.”

My heart fluttered at his words, at everything he’d said and done tonight. “Thank you for this. I couldn’t have dreamed up a more perfect gift.”

“This isn’t your gift.”

“It’s not?”

His smile was soft then, almost bashful, but his eyes shone with a depth of love and adoration that made my chest tighten. “Your real gift is way up there with the moon, love,” he said, ticking his jaw up towards the sky.

I followed the direction of his gaze and shook my head, not understanding. “You mean the stars?” I asked as his words to me the other night surfaced in my mind.

He nodded, his gaze roving over me as if he wanted to etch me into his memory. “I named them for you.”

“You…named a star for me?” My throat constricted as I looked up at the indigo sky, my eyes impossibly blurry as I canvased the firmament. “Which one?” I asked, my voice tinged with excitement.

He chuckled softly, the sound as warm and rich as velvet. “The whole constellation, angel.”

My gaze snapped back to his. “But there’s dozens of them.”

“Indeed,” he said, his eyes filled with something deep and unspoiled, “and now they all carry your name.”

There were no words in that moment to describe the wholeness I felt inside. It was as if all the pain, the heartache, the loss and sadness that had haunted me for so long had been gently erased, patched over and healed. I could feel the weight lift from my shoulders, replaced by something warm, something real.

As the opening credits rolled in the background of the starlight drive-in, I pressed my hand against his chest, the steady beat of his heart beneath my palm grounding me in the moment. Without another thought, I leaned in, closing the space between us, and kissed him—long, hard, and full of everything I couldn’t put into words. I pulled away, breathless, wondering what in the world I had done in my life to be this lucky.

* * *

By the time we had made it back to the Blackburn Estate, I was practically floating in through the door on a cloud I never wanted to come down from. What Dominic and Trace had done for me…I had never in my eighteen years of life had a more perfect day. As macabre as it was to admit, if Fate decided to strike me dead right then and there, I would happily go to my death feeling completely fulfilled and loved. That somehow, despite the short venture, I had lived a full and happy life, and I knew I had only the two of them to thank for that.

“You’re back,” said Trace, smiling as Dominic and I walked into the living room hand in hand. “So, how did the movie and stargazing go?” he asked, surprising me with hisquestion as I crossed the room to him and flopped down onto the sofa beside him, sighing as our soulmate bond took flight under my skin.

Not only did Trace know all about Dominic’s birthday plans for me and appeared to be perfectly fine with it, he also seemed genuinely interested in knowing how our evening had gone.

Resisting the urge to pinch myself because this day was surely a hallucination I’d dreamt up, I decided that if it was, I really didn’t want to wake up from it anyway. “It was perfect. This whole entire day was just…perfect,” I said again and then smiled up at him as he wrapped his arm around my shoulder and tugged me in close to him.

“Good,” said Trace, his hypnotizing blue eyes warm with affection as he gazed down at me. “You deserve nothing less than a lifetime of perfect birthdays.”

My heart swelled at his words, and I found myself leaning further into his embrace, relishing the solid comfort of his body against mine.

“My date was better though, right?” he whispered close to my ear, his dimples popping on both sides.

“Trace!”

“It’s okay. You can admit it. He can’t hear us,” he said, though we both knew Dominic could hear us perfectly fine.

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