Total pages in book: 143
Estimated words: 130275 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 651(@200wpm)___ 521(@250wpm)___ 434(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 130275 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 651(@200wpm)___ 521(@250wpm)___ 434(@300wpm)
She was here.
She was actually here.
“Cael—” She went to say something, but I spoke before she could.
“It was so hard, Sav.” The adrenaline from tonight was waning, and fatigue was settling in.
Savannah inched closer, and I turned to her. She was already watching me. I couldn’t take my eyes off her, like she was some mirage I had conjured up in therapy and if I looked away, she’d disappear.
“I’m here,” she said. But it was like my heart needed to understand she wasn’t some fever dream. My girl was in Boston; we were here together. Ready to start our lives together.
I inhaled deeply and said, “It was so hard. But I had to get better. For you, for us, I had to—”
“No,” Savannah said, shaking her head. “Not better, Cael. You were healing. You were grieving. There is no better or worse to that. It just is. Your heart was broken, and you were mending it, day by day. And you have succeeded.” She put her hand on my cheek and made me meet her tenacious blue stare. “You never needed to get better for me. You were always enough. Even when you were deep in the trenches. You were always enough.”
Hell, had there ever been anyone who had fought for someone more than this girl had fought for me?
“I’m the luckiest guy on the planet. Do you know that?” I said and kissed Savannah’s cold cheek. I closed my eyes, just feeling her against me. “I get to live my life with you, Peaches. I get to give you my heart—as patched up and as scarred as it is.” Her lip wobbled, and I ran my thumb over it, blue eyes shining. “You have it, and I get to have your beautiful heart and soul in return.” I pointed at myself. “Luckiest guy.”
“We both are,” she said and smoothed my hair back from my face. It was still damp from my post-game shower. Savannah smiled, and I knew I’d give her the entire world to make her stay that way. “We are alive, we are stronger, and we are together. That’s what makes us lucky. That …” She trailed off and looked up at the stars beginning to shine.
I followed her line of sight, then asked, “That what?”
Savannah turned back to me. Her dimples popped as she smiled, and I wanted to commit how she looked right now to memory. “That we have walked a rough path to get to this happiness. And because of that, we will never take our life together for granted.” My heart pounded. Because everything she said was true. Savannah kissed the back of my hand. Over my tattooed heart. She ran her hand over the black ink, then looked back at me and said, “We have lost. We know what it is to grieve and miss someone so badly we can’t breathe. But because of that loss, we will love deeper, support each other further, and show up for one another harder. Loss teaches us how to cherish love. That is our future, Cael. Loving one another in the best way we know how—completely.”
“I love you, Savannah. I’ll never stop telling you that.”
She smiled. “And I’ll never stop accepting it.” I laughed, and Savannah followed, the heaviness breaking apart into light pieces around us.
When our laughter fell away, she said, “I have something for you. But I don’t know if it’s a good or bad thing. I don’t know if I’ve done the right thing.”
The trepidation in her voice was evident. “Nothing you could do would be bad, baby,” I said. Yet the worried expression on Savannah’s face remained. She searched my eyes, then put her hand into her pocket. When she raised her hand, in the center of her palm, was Cillian’s goodbye to me, his apology scribbled down on my treasured old Bruins ticket. The one that I had destroyed in Japan.
Only this ticket had been carefully reconstructed with golden lacquer. My breathing came heavy as I stared at this beautifully patched-up ticket lying in Savannah’s gentle hand.
“I found it when you left.” Her voice was quiet and filled with emotion. “When you’d gone … I went in your hotel room just because …” Savannah swallowed. “I saw your note to me, and then I saw this on the floor, ripped up. When I placed the pieces back together, I realized what they were. I immediately took it back to my room and fixed it back together with the kintsugi kit Aika had given us.” She blinked then, meeting my eyes. “I’m sorry if I overstepped. I just thought—”
I crushed my mouth to Savannah’s, cutting off whatever she was about to say. She had done this for me. She had taken my biggest regret and made it right. And she had made it more beautiful, because she had fixed it out of love for me. Out of love for my brother, who she had never met.