I smiled.
“Lillie!” I tore myself from Henry and made my way back up the stairs to greet her the same way everyone had greeted me so far today: with a hug she deserved. “You made it. I thought you said you couldn’t get time off work?”
“I couldn’t… but I’ll deal with that fallout next week. You guys were more important.” She chuckled, pulling back as she held onto my arms. “This place looks amazing, Phoebe. Just like you.”
“You’re being too kind again.”
“No such thing.”
When we first came face to face almost a year ago, there’d been an awkwardness, naturally, more from me than her. She’d been such an important part of Henry’s story, I couldn’t helpbut wonder how she’d take to me, but to her credit, Lillie had welcomed me with open arms, and so much had been said with that one smile she’d given me.
I’m okay, I promise. I want you to be, too.
Since then, she’d been like the sister I never had, her feelings for Henry gone as soon as she saw us together.
“I’ve never seen him smile the way he smiles with you,”she’d whispered, and that had been all it had taken for her to fit into this unexpected life we’d created.
As I turned to look at the others, with my arm around Lillie’s waist, I met Henry’s gaze, and the world stopped. He beamed up at me with such love and such pride, it should have made me feel somewhat embarrassed.
Instead, I soaked it all in.
Before Mykonos, I’d thought being selfish was a bad thing, something to avoid, and that indulging my own fantasises instead of thinking of others would lead to an unfulfilled life. As it turned out, being selfish had led me to getting everything I’d ever wanted with the man I’d never dared to dream of. The man who turned out to be better in reality than any Reed Easton ever could be in fiction. I never had to give him up.
There were already too many highlights to our story to remember. There’d be no last page to turn until we took our final breaths in this life and found each other all over again in the next.
Of that, I had no doubt.
We belonged.
HENRY
One week later…
“I still can’t believe you pulled this off without me knowing,” Phoebe said as she stood in the middle of the apartment, turning around slowly and taking it all in as though she hadn’t spent some of the best nights of her life in here already.
Istill couldn’t believe she’d stuck around and agreed to love my moody arse for the last year, and now here we were, back in Mykonos together, celebrating twelve blissfully happy months of us. Instead of voicing that to her though, I pushed my hands into the pockets of my swim shorts and simply took her in—this woman who’d stumbled into my life, grabbed me by the balls, and brought me to my knees without even trying.
Phoebe had grown even more beautiful since then, if that were even possible, but seeing her standing in front of me in that same white bikini she’d worn the first time I saw her, and those damn denim, cut-off shorts…
It was enough to take my breath away.
“Henry?”
I blinked back into the moment and looked up from her smooth, tanned legs to meet her sparkling eyes, her perfect smile making my heart beat even faster than it already had been from the moment I’d seen her step out of the bedroom.
“Hmm?”
“Are you okay? You’ve been acting weird since we woke up this morning.”
“Yeah. Fine.” I cleared my throat.
She saw straight through my bullshit the way she always did and stepped closer until she could rise up on her toes and press the back of her hand to my forehead. “Huh. No temperature, so you’re not getting ill.”
I pulled her closer to me, so her tits were pressed against my body. “I said I’m fine.”
“There he is.” She beamed up at me.
“Never left you, smart arse.”
