Page 141 of Honey Pot

“Loving you before felt like being in a tidal wave and no one could hear me screaming for help. Seeing you here, happy… It was a shock to the system and suddenly I was just that little girl again, wandering around in your shadow. I couldn’t breathe around you but I figured out pretty quickly that I couldn’t breathe without you either. Julien had been easy, comfortable—” I swallowed. “But he never gave me that feeling of running in the grass barefoot under the sun, with the blades tickling my feet and fresh air burning my nose. He lacked the shock that tumbling down the hill into the frigid creek water provided. Cael… Julien never made me feel alive, he just kept me numb enough to not feel the absence ofyou.”

Cael watched me as I spoke, never taking his eyes off me as I explained my feelings. He made me feel like the entire world even at my most vulnerable. He brushed his nose against my jaw, a permanent smile on his lips.

“I thought I was doing right by you leaving. Your Dad came to see me, and the argument was sound.” I tilted my head back to stop the tears that threatened the corners of my eyes, and Cael pressed an encouraging and delicate kiss to the base of my throat. I hummed and collected myself. “He had been taking the letters, Cael.”

I had expected surprise, perhaps outrage or anger even from him but instead, he nodded softly and said, “I know.”

“You knew he wasn’t sending them?” I asked him, confused by the confession.

“Well I had a suspicion…It didn’t matter if you got them or not, it wouldn’t have changed anything. They would have just made you sad; he would have lied about keeping them but they kept me sane even sitting in my Dad’s desk drawer for the last seven years,” Cael explained with a light smile.

“I read them,” I told him. “All of them, and you’re right. They did make me sad, heartbroken and angry. I didn’t know how to fix it, Cael, how to make up for seven years of silence.” I chewed on my lip, but he brushed his thumb over it to stop me. “But then Ella called.”

“Of course she did.” Cael pushed into my grip and stole a kiss like he couldn’t resist the urge any longer.

“She understands you,” I said, and he nodded. “When she said you were sad, I—it triggered a memory of that day. How determined you were to make sure that I wasn’t sad anymore, even though it wasn’t your fault I was. I couldn’t letusgo until you knew that I loved you back. I’m just sorry I couldn’t figure out how to love myself and you at the same time.”

Cael covered the guilt I felt in quick little kisses that peppered my throat and jaw in fireworks that fizzled beneath my skin and lit a fire in my belly. His fingers trailed over my body, wrapping around my wrist and bringing it to his lips as his eyes burned the brightest shade of blue.

It made my heart ache.

“Don’t apologize, Clem,” he whispered against my skin. “I’m grateful for the time you took to become–” He filled his chest with air and a proud smirk formed on his lips as he looked me over. “You.Beautiful, brilliant, confident you. I should be the one groveling, I was so determined to hold true to the past out of fear of losing someone else the way I lost Mama, but you aren’t her and I shouldn’t want to live in the past. I should want a future, for myself, for us.”

I smiled and took his face in my hands. “I like the sound of that.”

“Yeah?” Cael let out a relieved sigh and wrapped himself around me in a tight hug that weighed down all my worries and fears. “But what about your job?”

“I quit and got fired I guess…” I laughed and leaned my head back. “One of the interns got a hold ofthetape.” I raised my eyebrows at him and smirked.

“Likethe tape?” His eyes went wide when I nodded.

“Probably the most embarrassing conversation I’ve ever had. I swear he wasbarely eighteen and had never even used the word sex in his entire life.” I laughed, turning beet red.

“Well I hope he had fun with it.” Cael snapped his teeth at me, tugging on the collar of my shirt, exposing the skin so he could kiss a fuzzy line across my shoulder. “How did he get his hands on it?” Cael stopped and looked up at me.

“I might have left it in the box on purpose…” I shrugged, my confession turning into giggles as his fingers found my ribs and stomach.

“That’s my girl,” he praised as his hands roamed up my shirt, but I pushed him away. “Clementine,” he purred my name.

“Not in your Dad’s office.” I licked my lips. “I’m not that wild.”

“It was worth a shot.” He kissed me with a smile.

I brushed back some of his messy blond hair, taking in the features of his face I had committed to memory. His short sloping nose, his hardened jaw, and his high cheekbones. And also the new ones that I never had the time to appreciate. The tiny scar above his cupid bow upper lip and the one that dug into the tail end of his right eyebrow. The lines around his eyes and the more recently sun-stained freckles that kissed the bridge of his nose.

He was even more beautiful than I had remembered.

“I do love you, you know that right?” He said in the silence as if he was uneasy by it.

“Every form of you, no matter how many times you change, you’ll always be my Clementine.”

“For better or worse?”

“I do,” Cael teased with a Cheshire grin, his chin tipped to me and throat exposed.

“Save it, Loverboy.” I kissed him and ignored how the words‘I do’gave me butterflies. “Oh, and one more thing.” I cupped his face and stared down at those big blue eyes. A wish had come true that day on my thirteenth birthday, I was as happy as I could ever be.

“Happy Birthday.”

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