Page 259 of Lost Then Found
He drops his weight over me, one hand braced beside my head, the other cradling my cheek like I’m something precious. He buries his face in the curve of my neck, his breath hot and uneven, lips dragging along my skin.
“I love you,” he says, his mouth pressed against my throat. “So damn much.”
I slide my fingers through the back of his damp hair, still catching my breath, my heart threatening to crack wide open.
“I love you too,” I whisper, soft and sure, like it’s the easiest thing in the world to tell him.
And it is.
He lifts his head at that, eyes searching mine like he’s still soaking it in. Then he gives me that smile—the real one. The one that tugs at the corners of his mouth and pulls his dimples deep, like I’m the only one who gets to see it.
He leans in and presses one more kiss to my lips. Slow. Full.
Then, gently, he pulls out of me, and I whimper at the loss—at how empty I suddenly feel without him.
Before I can even fully register the fact that my lungs are working again, Boone rolls onto his back, and I somehow end up going with him, sprawled across his chest like I’m boneless. My legs tangle with his, and my cheek lands against his skin—which is still warm and damp—his breath coming in these quick, shallow bursts.
His arms curve around me without a second thought—a familiar weight, a silent understanding. There’s a rightness to it, a feeling that in this messy aftermath, I somehow fit perfectly against him. Like maybe this is exactly where I was always meant to land.
I press a lazy kiss to his collarbone and grin against his skin. “If this is the reward for firing someone, I might start doing it recreationally.”
Boone lets out a bark of laughter—loud, real, the kind that comes from deep in his chest. It rumbles beneath me and I swear I can feel it in places I shouldn’t.
“Jesus,” he mutters, still breathless. “You’re a menace.”
“Yourmenace,” I mumble, eyes slipping shut, a ridiculous smile still plastered across my face.
A beat passes. Then his voice comes low, right near my temple. “Next time, I’m leaving the apron on.”
I snort. “Please do. Nothing gets me going like kitchenwear that says ‘Whisk Taker.’”
Boone laughs again and his hand tightens on my hip, just slightly.
I bury my face in the warm spot between Boone’s neck and shoulder and let the laugh slip out of me—unsteady, caught halfway like my chest still doesn’t know what to do with this much joy.
His skin is bare against mine, his laugh still soft in the space between us.And there it is—that fragile, shimmering feeling, the kind that whispers of forever when you least expect it. Not the grand, sweeping kind you brace yourself for, but the sneaky sort, the one that slides in under the radar and dismantles you piece by piece, leaving you gloriously, irrevocably undone.
His arm tightens around me, hand spreading across my back like he’s holding something he doesn’t want to lose. Without thinking, my lips find the hollow of his throat, a reflex as natural as breathing, settling right over the frantic thrum I still feel there, a ghost of a race run just for me.
And then I just breathe him in.
Warm skin. Clean soap. A hint of mint.
Boone. Just Boone.
This is it. All I’ve ever wanted.
This, this messy, imperfect tangle in the worn cotton sheets, the echo of a shared, ridiculous joke about a stained apron still dancing in the air—this is the quiet revolution I hadn’t even known I was fighting for. A love that doesn’t announce itself, but instead settles deep. A slow burn that has somehow infiltrated my very bones, rewriting my DNA.
If the universe decided this was the full stop, if I could never have more than this exact moment—his uneven breath against my hair, the comfortable weight of his limbs—then I will have lived a life that’s impossibly rich. A treasured, ordinary kind of heaven.
Boone presses a kiss to the top of my head, and somehow, it feels like he knows.
So I close my eyes and let the moment hold me.
Just a little longer.
Chapter 30
