Page 47 of Echoes

There was a small table beside one of the chaises lounges, where they placed the food and the wine that Felicity poured for them, and they sat down next to one another.

“Toast?” Felicity held up her glass.

“Sure.”

“To us,” Felicity said.

Rosie gave her a nod with a smile, and they clanked their glasses together, took a sip, and set them back down. Rosie decided to take a chance then.

“Can you stand up for a second?” she asked.

“Yeah. Everything okay?” Felicity stood and turned to face her.

Rosie turned herself until she was lying back on the chaise and spread her legs.

“Can you sit here?”

Felicity smiled a little before she nodded in response, and Rosie waited for her to move to sit in front of her. She waited further for Felicity to lean back into her before her body relaxed for what felt like the first time in forever. Then, she wrapped her arms around Felicity’s middle and held on to her.

“This escalated quickly,” Felicity noted, leaning back farther into Rosie’s body.

“Did it? I feel like it’s been about ten or so years in the making,” she replied as she breathed in Felicity’s scent.

It mixed with the salt from the water that moved in with the breeze, and Rosie was in heaven. If there was an actual heaven, this was it, and it was here, with Felicity in her arms, in this house on the edge of the water they both loved.

“Yeah? You feel that way, too?” Felicity placed her arms over Rosie’s.

“Definitely,” she said. “And I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“For making us wait this long to have it.”

“You don’t have to apologize for that,” Felicity said as Rosie’s chin went to the woman’s shoulder and rested there. “Maybe we weren’t ready for this back then,” she suggested. “I thought I was, but you weren’t.”

Rosie wasn’t sure how to tell her that maybe she was, but she’d taken the wrong path because some device she’d found in the ocean had given her a vision that had scared her into going backward and not forward.

“Maybe,” she said instead. “But I’m here now. Is that okay?”

“Of course, it’s okay. Do you know why none of the relationships I had these past few years ever worked out?”

“No.”

“I was still in love withyou,” Felicity revealed. “I knew you were with Ami – I’d lost you to her myself – but I still couldn’t push you out of my mind. Whenever I was on a date with someone else, I’d remember sitting in your house, just talking about work and getting all excited because you understood that part of me. I’d think about us sitting in your den, both of us reading silently. We didn’t even have to talk, and I still felt so connected to you. I knew I couldn’t have you, but I wasn’t ready to give myself to anyone else the way I had so completely given myself to you. I loved you.”

“Do you still?” she chanced.

“Yes,” Felicity said. “And I don’t know.”

“What does that mean?”

“That I loved the you I knew back then, and I think she’s in there still, but we haven’t spent that much time together. Despite being trapped in one room on a ship together, things kind of got in the way there. I kept my distance because you were married, and I knew if I spent too much time with you, I’d be right back where I started.”

“So, can we, I don’t know, start over?”

“I don’t think we can ever just start over,” Felicity suggested. “We can start from here, though. How long are you here for before you need to go back to check on the house?”

“Until it sells,” she answered. “I have someone coming in and cleaning it once a week. The realtor is working on an open house, but my stuff is out of there already. She has staging furniture in there now. Most of what I had, I sold or donated, and the stuff I wanted to keep is in storage, so I’m basically a nomad right now.”

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