Page 114 of Unforgivable

“How can you know that this early on?” Rhys whispered softly.

I turned on my side to face him, reaching out to cup his cheek. “Because I don’t need more time to know you’re the one I want. You need to hear me and hear me good, Evans. You. Are. Everything. My world starts and ends with you. This blood in my veins, this heart in my chest, these bones in my body. All of it is yours. I don’t want another day on this earth that isn’t right next to you.”

Tears flooded his eyes, pooling on his lashes and threatening to fall. “Is that even healthy?” he joked on a watery laugh.

“Probably not, but I don’t give a fuck,” I told him honestly. “You’re the love of my life, Rhys. And one day, you’ll be my husband. But I can be patient. As long as I can call you mine until then.”

Rhys covered my hand on his cheek with his own, his tears trailing a wet path down his face. I leaned forward to lick up one of the salty streaks, and Rhys shuddered against me. “I love you so much, Cal. I don’t know what I’d do if I hadn’t met you.”

I kissed him again, his tongue reaching out to mine. I deepened the kiss, exploring every crevice and cementing the memory of his taste in my mind. I wanted it permanently seared into my brain, although I never planned to let a day go by where I didn’t steal a kiss from him. We reluctantly broke for air, but we stayed close, just soaking in the moment.

“I think I was always meant to meet you, Rhys,” I confessed quietly. “I…I know how it sounds, but I think my mom sent you to me. Just this gut feeling I have that you were always meant to be mine.”

He leaned back enough for our gazes to meet, and I knew the question before he even asked. And I had my answer. “And are you mine, Callum Hawkins?”

“Always. I’ll be yours for the rest of this life and the next.”

CALLUM’S EPILOGUE

ONE MONTH LATER

“Come on, put your back into it! We’ve gotta get to the top before the sun comes up, so hoof it, Evans!”

“Cal, I swear on Jonathan Bailey’s perfect bubble butt, that I will toss you over the side of the mountain,” Rhys threatened breathlessly, trudging up the steep incline ten feet behind me. Admittedly, he hadn’t been getting to the gym to run the last couple months because I had my own cardio in mind for us, so the hike was a bit harder on him than expected. But once he saw the view, he’d thank me. Hopefully with another orgasm. The two from last night almost made me blackout from pleasure.Ah, to be young, in love, and relentlessly horny.

“Sweetness, if we don’t get there in the next…oh, five minutes, you would have woken your cute ass up at three-thirty this morning for nothing,” I warned him, picking up the pace slightly. The hike had been gradual at first and a nice warm-up, but the trail inclined steadily up the remaining half-mile. Coincidentally, that’s when Rhys’ stamina steadily declined.

“Ugh, why did I convince you to do this to me, you sadist? I thought you loved me. This is not love. I should be back in our soft bed being brought coffee and a scone,that’slove! Why do people do this?Why is hiking a thing? My brain can’t function this early at this altitude…just leave me here and remember me fondly.”

“You know, I can always tell when you’ve been hanging out with Fin too much. You tend to get a bit more…theatrical,” I mused, looking back at his glaring face. Even sweaty, out of breath, and flushed, Rhys was the most beautiful creature to me. Those bright eyes, those full pink lips, that lightly freckled skin. And my lucky ass got to wake up to it every day now. Rhys moved in with me less than a week after I asked him. There was nothing holding him back with Micah gone, and Griffin was out the week after that.

He’d apparently ended up in the same building as Fin, a fact he didn’t discover until recently when he ran into Fin and his ex…no-longer-ex boyfriend in the hall. As if it couldn’t get any better (for me, of course, because Griffin hated it), Fin’s apartment was right next to his. Yeah, I’d gotten an hour long ranting phone call from Griffin about that, and then another thirty minute long lecture from Rhys for being a little too entertained with both our friends’ misery. Fin evidently wasn’t a fan of the living arrangement either. Oh well, it was nothing a good fucking into Rhys’ codependent couch couldn’t fix.

“We’ll see how theatrical you get when you’re forced to carry my depleted, comatose body back down the trail when I pass out, Hawkins,” Rhys grumbled, and I chuckled at his grumpiness. We’d spent four days exploring Olympic National Park, and this was the first of three days planned for Mt. Rainier National Park before heading to Seattle for the remainder of our trip. Rhys had grouched like this during all our outdoor excursions at first, especially in the mornings. It had annoyed me initially, but seeing him become so enchanted by the views and experience of what we were doing had any irritation blinking out of existence.

That’s how it usually went with us. We’d occasionally be frustrated or annoyed by something the other one did or said because we were only human, but it never lasted long. I’d see Rhys smile or I’d pull a laugh out of him somehow, and everything else would fall away. I guess that was what really struck me the most. It wasn’t that we were so in love that we had no problems, but it was more that our love was strong enough to overcome any issue we faced. My feelings for him went deeper than petty annoyances or bad moods. It helped that my therapist was working with me on my anger management, so I didn’t feel as hopeless against it as I once did.

Rhys had been crazy supportive of my therapy, and he’d even come to a couple of sessions with me to learn how to help me through it. It led to some tough conversations on my end about learning to recognize triggers and what I could and could not control. Ultimately, it brought me and Rhys closer together, a feat I didn’t think was possible.

“We’re almost there…hah! This is it! Rhys, come here!” I urged him, and he jogged the last several yards around the bend to catch up. When he reached my side, his gasp seemed to echo around us in the silence. I pulled him in front of me and slipped my arms around his waist, resting my chin on his shoulder to take it all in. The sky was a wash of pink, orange, and red, the clouds hanging low on Mt. Rainier looming directly in front of us. The sun had just begun creeping up over the mountain’s right side, and the warm glow lit up the valley of trees that blanketed the saddle between the two peaks on either side of us.

“I feel so small,” Rhys whispered, and I peeked over to see his vibrant eyes staring in awe at the vista before us. “It’s kind of…surreal to be this close to something that immense and realize just how tiny we really are. Like, all of this was formed hundreds of thousands of years before us and it will be here thousands of years after we’re gone. We’re only this little blip in its history, no longer than the blink of an eye. You know, Micah told me about this old bridge he and Bash had stumbled across as kids. Bash had said it wasn’t the bridge that was part of their story, but rather they became part ofitsstory when they discovered it. I like thinking this makes us part of the mountain’s story now. This sweet, perfect moment in time that we get to share with it. I wonder how many stories like ours the mountain has seen over the years?”

“Feeling a bit philosophical this morning, are we, sweetheart?” I teased, but I couldn’t help the grin that spread over my face. Rhys’ mind fascinated me and I was obsessed with the thoughts he shared with me, no matter how outlandish or strange they could be. I would never grow tired of moments like these with him. I squeezed him to me tightly, savoring the beauty of the view and the feel of Rhys in my arms.

We stayed like that for several minutes, watching the sun crest the rocky ridge and spill down the mountain and over the valley. Eventually, we decided to make our way back down the trail to Reflection Lake to eat breakfast and set up for our next hike. When we made it back to the lake, I hauled our food out of my pack while Rhysset out a blanket for us to eat on. We talked for almost an hour, enjoying the breathtaking scenery of the alpine trees and Mt. Rainier towering over us, reflected in the water’s surface.

“Dad called yesterday. He said the plea deal is going through,” I shared softly, not wanting to wreck our peace with news ofher, but needing to process it. Rhys’ fist clenched and he took a harsh, angry bite of his apple, munching on it loudly.

“It’s not fucking fair,” he bit out, brows furrowed as he frowned up at Rainier’s snow-capped peak. My lips twitched at his curse, not used to it outside the confines of the bedroom.

“That’s one for the swear jar, Sweetness,” I joked, but his glare swiveled to me and I let out a deep sigh. “Look, we all knew this was a possibility going in. It was a long shot to begin with to bring charges against her. It’s been years and there’s no real proof.”

“I hate it though! After everything she did to you, she gets a measly eighteen months in prison. That’s practically nothing!” he ranted, his face scrunching up in outrage.

“Don’t forget the ten thousand dollar fine. I bet she hates that more than she’ll hate the orange jumpsuit,” I replied.

“How are you so calm about this? I mean, you didn’t even get to take her to trial and testify in public about how she hurt you! You deserved to tell your side.”

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