Page 150 of Cross the Line
“Your mom’s right,” I murmur, sliding my arm across his chest to trace my fingertips along his jaw. “You’re stuck with us, Hotshot.”
“There’s no need for you to be restless and tense,” Eli adds.
“Hello… my family is feral and?—”
“They love you,” Eli says simply. “To me, that makes them perfect.”
“Ditto.” I brush my thumb across Jayden’s lips, letting him suck it into his mouth with a playful bite.
I giggle, even as my insides wrench with too many emotions to catalog. I know, biologically, Eli and I have families, but the only thing binding us to them is shared DNA.
“Okay,” Jayden rumbles, excitement roughening his voice as he checks the time on his phone and opens a telescope app. “It’s gonna happen any moment now.”
A light dusting of snow falls over us, then tapers to a whisper. The breeze rustles the trees a few feet away.
When the flurry stops, the sky deepens; the stars sharpen—brighter than I’ve ever seen them, even in Havenview’s dead of night. The sky feels low and heavy with glitter, like we’ve slipped into heaven.
Then a bright flash tears across the dark. Another. And another. Stars rain down around us.
It’s epic. It’s…
“Wow,” is all I can manage as my emotions brim over, swallowing sense.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Jayden hums.
“Yes,” I reply as Eli sighs, sounding as overwhelmed as I feel.
We’ve seen shooting stars before, but nothing like this. Nothing this plentiful. Nothing this breathtaking.
“The Geminid meteor shower is my favorite. You can watch it all night without worrying it’ll be gone in a blink. And if you ask me, it’s richer than the summer Perseids.” He sucks in a quick breath and lifts his phone with the telescope app open. Jayden zooms in. “This is the Gemini constellation. You have Castor and Pollux at the heads, and the twins’ arms wrapped around each other. Do you know their story?”
“No,” I murmur, while Eli shakes his head.
“They’re half-twin brothers from Greek and Roman mythology. During a battle, Castor, the mortal brother, was slain, and Pollux was so heartbroken he begged Zeus—Jupiter, for the Romans—to make his brother immortal. He had to sacrifice half his own immortality, so Zeus transformed them into the Gemini constellation.” Jayden chuffs fondly. “Mom likes to tell us that story whenever Kailey, Isla, or I have a fight. To remind us that, as pissed as we might be in that moment, we would always be more heartbroken if anything ever happened to one of us.”
“Does it work?” Eli chuckles.
“A treat. Every single time.”
“But it’s a myth. It’s make-believe…” Faith has thrummed in my veins since birth, but that doesn’t mean I believe every story.
“Yeah, but listening to Mom usually takes the edge off.” There’s mirth in his voice as he zooms the app out to highlight the surrounding constellations—Canis Minor and Major with Orion to one side and Lynx to the other. “It reminds me that, as much as I could kill them in that moment, I’d sooner kill for them every other moment.”
He sets his phone on his stomach and pulls the blanket higher. One hand tightens on my hip while Eli’s mirrors it on the other side.
The damp from the flurry and the crisp breeze sends a shiver throughme. I burrow deeper between them, clasping my hands over their entwined ones and holding on as tightly as I can.
And if there were ever a moment to prove nothing else matters but us, this is it.
They’re my home. My heart. My soul.
My heaven.
CHAPTER 40
FINLEY
It’s past two in the morning when we get back to the cabin. Honey and rosewater linger in the air with the warmth of holiday spice. The lights are off except for the family-room tree, bigger than the one in Jayden’s apartment. Its glow spills down the hallway, mapping white bootprints across the floor.
