Page 105 of Defended By Love

Grant shakes his head. “I mean, how close to midnight is it? I want to take my time and fuck you slow and thoroughly, but I also don’t want to…”

“Get sucked back into the reset while you’re in the middle of adding banana to the fruit salad?” I finish.

Grant laughs, showing that he’s learning to tell when I’m actually joking. “Not how I would have put it, but exactly.”

“Let’s be optimistic,” I say, pulling his body against mine and kissing him with an unhurried passion.

When Grant pushes himself all the way inside of me, we pause. With our foreheads together, our breath mingles as we whisper our declarations of love into the night.

Then, he claims me. Not in the growly, animalistic way that he’s done before, but by reaching every single part of my body and soul. And by loving every single part that he finds.

I claim him right back by wrapping my legs around him and loving him just as he is. My perfect, dorky, loving Grant.

When we come together, it’s still with touching foreheads and whispers of love because sometimes everything changes, even while nothing changes at all.

Except for my trusty watch that’s rolled over past midnight.

The day is over.

All of this is over.

It’s finally over.

And, also, just getting started.

Epilogue

-One Month Later-

I’ve lived more in this past month than I have the rest of my life—time loop exempt. Everything I wanted to do, I did. And more.

Most notably, I’ve started to enjoy my evenings. I unplug from work and cuddle with Grant. Usually, we go for dinner at his place, but then come back to mine to sleep. Rhiannon has been staying there and, even though she hasn’t said anything, we can tell a male presence is a bit much for her at times.

Wherever we are, I’m just happy to be with him.

Most of the time. Today, he’s acting weird. Different than usual weird. Less talk about different types of spaceships in popular media and more… twitchy. If I were interrogating him, it’d be easy to push him until he cracks. I could have him singing about whatever’s on his mind in minutes.

But I don’t do that because we’re in a healthy, loving relationship. Grant even wrote it on one of the blank back pages of Dr. Debbie’s book: You do not push the ones you love until they snap like a twig.

I wait patiently (not my strong suit) for Grant to get over whatever weirdness he’s going through and talk to me. I do not want to spend my Saturday tiptoeing around each other.

I go to the kitchen and start inventorying what we have food-wise to prepare to grocery shop. Eventually, I decide I’m no longer capable of passive aggressively counting produce. If he’s not going to talk, then I’m going to make him.

“Grant,” I say.

“Hailey,” he says at the same time.

My feet carry me back into the living room. Grant’s waiting in there, with love in his eyes and a tremor in his hands.

“What’s going on?”

Grant takes a deep breath and drops to one knee.

“Hailey,” he says in a practiced tone that still comes out adorably vulnerable. “It’s hard for me to believe that I could ever get someone as perfect as you, but it’s even harder for me to argue fate. Ever since the laser thing, I know in my bones that you’re the one for me. Then, there was the whole time loop thing. The universe literally brought us together to do some good in the world. Fate has shown us time and time again that we are meant to be together. So, Hailey, love of my life, will—”

He’s interrupted by a knock at the door.

We pause. Considering that I live in an apartment it’s pretty weird that someone’s knocking on the door. It can’t be just a random person passing by.

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