Page 79 of Best In Class
The boat drifts in a hush between cypress and sky.
“Exactly what I got. I thought I’d burned every bridge back to you. But now….” He looks over at me again. “Now I don’t care how many I have to rebuild. As long as they lead to you.”
The words strike at my walls, demolish them.
“I realized,” he continues, quieter now, “that all this time, I thought I left you behind for something bigger. For ambition. For opportunity. But the truth is, none of it mattered if I couldn’t share it with you. It was all just…scaffolding.”
The boat creaks gently as he rows.
He’s opening up—reallyopening up. And it feels like something fragile yet heavy placed right into my hands.
I want to hold it.
I want to run.
“I don’t know what to do with that,” I whisper.
“You don’t have to do anything,” he assures me. “Just know it.”
I look down at my lap, where my fingers twist together like they’re trying to knit nervesout of fear.
“I’m still scared,” I admit.
“I know.”
“But I want you.” I lift my gaze. “That hasn’t changed.”
His expression softens—equal parts reverence and relief. “Then that’s enough…for now.”
“Really?”
“Yes, Moonbeam.” He maneuvers the boat, oars slicing clean through the water.
I watch him, the way his arms move with ease and control. How he still calls methatname, like it’s stitched into the muscle memory of his mouth.
“My love makes no demands,” he pauses just as the trees begin to thin, and the marsh opens into a small inlet sheltered by overgrown reeds and hanging moss. “It may, however, try and manipulate by using Mama’s fried chicken, though.”
And just like that, he lightens the air, breaks the tension that silence and years apart widened into something seemingly unbridgeable.
I laugh. “Miss Abigail’s fried chicken has a lot of power.”
“Tell me about it!”
Dom guides us into the quiet, lets the boat drift, then slips the oars back into the hull.
The silence that follows feels sacred. I watch as he reaches down and drops a small anchor into the water. It lands with a soft splash.
He’s brought me to a hidden cove off the marsh. It’s wrapped in willow and cypress, the branches bowedlow.
The low sun filters through in long golden bars, turning the water into liquid glass.
A pair of white egrets lift from the reeds.
It’s beautiful. Private. A secret tucked inside the wilderness.
“It reminds me…of our spot,” I whisper.
He nods, eyes on mine. “Yes. Can’t go there, so I thought I’d bring it to us.”
