Page 102 of Chasing You

Her eyes widen, her pupils swallowing the ring of brown in her eyes, leaving only black and green as she stares into my eyes.

“I told you,” I chuckle lightly, “I couldn’t think about anyone else.”

Her forehead meets mine again as she sinks all the way down until I’m seated entirely inside of her. I groan at the familiar grip she hugs me with, her body holding me tightly inside of her.

“I’m yours.”

My eyes fly open, tears burning at the back of them as my heart surges in my chest. “What?”

And then she says the words I feel like I’ve been waiting an entire lifetime to hear. “I am yours, Miles Beckett, for as long as you’ll have me.”

chapter forty-two

MILES

PRESENT

“You didn’t even seethe Eiffel Tower? Are you insane?”

I just shrug, pulling a jar of cocoa from Marina’s cupboard. “I heard it’s really not all that.”

“Miles!” She looks at me wide-eyed. “You didn’t think to go find out?”

I did think about it, but the reality of my situation is what stopped me. “It felt silly to go look at something like that by myself. I’d stand there wishing I could turn and tell someone how beautiful it was and no one would be there.” It sounds pathetic, but I know I can say it in front of her.

Her eyes soften. “You really never stayed in one place for more than a few days?”

She pops the lid off the jar and begins measuring it out. I pick up the sieve, holding it over the mixing bowl and she tips the cocoa over it. “I used to. I mean, I had the summer house. I would spend a week, maybe two, there every year. I spent a week with Isla and May at their dorms in college. You can imagine just how traumatising that was for me.”

She snorts, measuring out the flour as I shake the sieve, letting the fine powder sift through the tiny gaps.

“But after everything that happened with us… No,” I shake my head, “I never really stopped to take a breath. Not until now.”

“Wasn’t that lonely?” She looks up at me, her eyes filled with sympathy.

“Yeah, princess,” I say. “It was.”

She pops up on her toes, pressing a sugary kiss to my lips. Marina has been tasting the brownie mixture at every stage to make sure it’s coming along right.

We decided today was the perfect day to tick another thing off our list, and considering it’s drizzly outside, Marina decided it was the right day for brownies.

She picks up her pink spatula that has little cherries on it and pushes the mixture around the bowl. She’s got that energy about her, the one where I can tell she wants to say something, but she’s not sure if she should.

We’ve been living in a bubble for the last two weeks, and it feels like a dream. Calling Marina mine again is something I never thought I would do, but she said it.I’m yours.And she’s said it over and over since then, like a whispered prayer, like something she’s hoping will stay true if she says it often enough.

But she doesn’t need to pray, because there’s not a chance I’m letting her slip away, not this time.

“Just say it, baby.”

“What?” She doesn’t meet my gaze, her focus completely on the mixture in front of her.

I dip my finger into the brown mixture and smear a blob of it on the tip of her nose. Her mouth drops open and she spins to look at me. “I really want this to turn out well, but don’t think I won’t waste this whole mixture making you wish you didn’t just do that.” I can’t help but grin, I love her sassy side.

I wipe the mixture from her nose with my finger and then slip it into my mouth, licking the chocolate taste off my skin.

“Don’t do that,” she says. “Don’t be hot now.”

I just shake my head. “Just say whatever it is that’s rolling around in that head of yours.”

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