Page 125 of Cross the Line
“I’m going to need more than a nod, Sunshine.”
“I trust you.AndI love you. So damn much that I am constantly terrified of losing you.”
“You don’t have to be. I want to be here. To be with you and Fin and—” He pauses, emphasizing his next statement. “I made you a promise, and I’m doing everything I can to keep it. That’s why I’m still seeing Connie. Talking to her makes room for more of you and Fin.” A soft smile bows his lips. “Out with the dark and in with the light.”
I chuckle at his remark, only for my quiet laugh to be cut short when he tells me, “It’s not a joke, Jayden. I’ve chased the light all my life, feeling like I didn’t deserve it or that I was damned to never have it. Until you.”
“Me?”
“Yes, Jayden,youare the light.”
“Eli…”
“You are everything I was indoctrinated to worship. Eternal sunshine. Took me a while to figure out that one person’s light is not the same as the next’s. That I don’t need to chase what’s already right in front of me.”
Sucking in his long, warm exhale, I hold it in. Letting his air pound through my veins until I’m buzzing.
“Stop fretting over losing me. Okay? I’m working so hard on being here, in the moment with you and Fin.”
His nose nudges mine, and my hands grasp his jaw so that we’re holding each other's faces as I say, “You were mine the second you walked into my life with that sullen, weary look on your face. I was hooked in an endless free-fall. An unmatched longing to know you from the inside out.”
“You know me better than that.”
“Like the back of my hand.”
“Annoyingly,” he retorts with a stomach-flipping grin.
“I’d never felt the urgency to be so close to someone until that day Coach brought us into his office. I guess now I know why.” I’m looking at Eli, he’s looking at me.
Hazel to dark chocolate—the kind you have to go back for.
“I think my heart recognized yours. The same way it recognized Fin’s. You know? Like… like?—”
“It was born with a claim,” Eli whispers.
I nod, because that’s what our love feels like—a fundamental claim. An affection that is part of our DNA.
Something we didn’t ask for; we’re simply lucky to be blessed with.
***
“Come on,JJ, pass the damn puck!” Isla yells from the far side of the lake.
The game’s grown heated enough that her helmet’s on the bank with Kailey’s hat, gloves, and scarf.
Slamming her stick on the ice with a vicious growl, she spins to block Kailey with a pushback that earns her a hard shove. As I slap the puck Isla’s way, she and Kailey get into a rowdy spat.
The instant the puck hits a divot and lifts, I race toward my sisters.
I know I won’t get to them in time.
My slapshot is going to get one of them in the face or on the head.
Shit, shit…shit.
I raise my stick and launch myself forward, trying to deflect the pucksomehow. Eli lunges forward, too, stick extended. For a beat, I think he’s got the girls when I land with a hard crash.
“Duck!” he yells as he takes them out, andmyshot tagshim.
