Page 333 of Eternal
“Jealous?”.
“Maybe,” she replies, shrugging.
Then I point to the brightest star overhead, the one that looks like it’s burning too hard to stay alive. “That one’s anAzra.”
She gasps, sitting up a little, grinning at me, but it’s… sad.
“I really like you, Damir,” she says against my mouth.
I swallow. “Thank God. Because I really,reallylike you too.”
She laughs and kisses me again. And it feels weird. Not bad weird, just... new. Strange. Like being this close to someone and it not feeling dangerous is the weirdest part.
She’s soft with me in a way I don’t think she knows how to be with anyone else. And I don’t want to mess that up, I don’t want her to ever think she has to be small again to survive.
I don’t know how to fix what happened to her, the only thing I’m sure of, is that I want to stay.
I get up, grabbing her hand and pulling her toward me, still kissing her face, and she’s smiling and I want to stay here forever, on this beach, with her.
“Let’s see if the water’s warm.”
She doesn’t answer, she lets me drag her toward the ocean, like she trusts me with everything, even this. The water swallows us fast, it’s cold, and she shivers immediately, then she laughs, her back pressed to my chest. I bite her shoulder, tasting her skin, smiling stupidly at how good I feel with her.
“I’m glad that you’re happy.”
Her head stills against me, and the waves cradle us both like they know something we don’t.
“I think I’d like to come back to the beach more often,” she says.
I turn her to face me, her legs wrap around my waist like muscle memory. “We can always come back.”
She smiles, but it’s not real, not all the way. Her fingers brush along my jaw like she’s memorizing it. She leans in, plants a kiss at the corner of my mouth, soft as a goodbye, then she wraps her arms around my neck and holds me.Tight.
She hugs me.Azrais hugging me.
My arms lock around her instinctively, and I close my eyes.
She’s only hugging me, and it’s destroying me.
“I don’t think it’ll be possible,” she whispers. “There’s still so much I have to do. I’m not... I’m not someone you build a future with. I destroy things.People.You know that.”
I hate how her voice breaks. I hate that she believes it.
“I see it,” I tell her. “That future. Withyou. We’ll come back here.”
Even if the ocean has to wash our sins clean first…
We stay there a bit longer, wrapped around each other as the ocean rocks us gently. The cold hasn’t fully settled in yet, and neither of us is ready to let go of each other. She rests her head on my shoulder, arms still around my neck, like she’s forgetting for a second, who we are.
“I didn’t think I’d like this,” she says quietly.
I glance down at her. “The water?”
“No,” she says, her voice almost a whisper. “Letting you hold me like this.”
I don’t know what to say to that, so I don’t say anything, I just hold her tighter. “I knew I’d like to hold you like this.”
She exhales against my skin. “You’re warm,” she mutters.
