Page 113 of Unlocked Dive
Echo
It takes us an extra half hour to make it back to Big Top with the bags of ice because Coen insists on a detour to the Navarro overlook, where he proceeds to wreck me in the backseat with one of his out-of-body blow jobs. Which meansof courseI have to return the favor.
By the time we get back, the Edison lights are glowing like mammoth mutant fireflies under the twilit trees, and laughter spills out of the open tent flaps. A wave of nostalgia hits me, and my fingers twine with Coen’s in the gloaming.
“Good graduation gift?” he asks with a soft smile.
“The best. Is it weird that I lived here for less than four months, and it still feels more like home than the house I grew up in?”
“I think we rewrote the definition of ‘home’ when we found each other.”
I guess we’re both feeling a little sentimental tonight.
“Sap,” I tease, even though I love this side of him. I love all of his sides—every layer peeled back as his guard came down over the last four years, revealing another piece to enchant and ensnare me.
Like his surprising competitive streak at PvP video games. Or how he loves to mother hen the shit out of me when I’m sick but turns into a miserable, cranky toddler if he gets so much as a cold.
And the way he still goes all growly and possessive every time we hit a club, only to become sheepishly attentive as he tends to my bruises in the inevitable aftermath.
Twining my arms around his neck, I part his lips with a warm swipe of my tongue and kiss him until Shilo comes to find us.
They’ve put together a private show to celebrate the end of my four years at Cici. It’s small and intimate—just the family taking turns on stage while I sit on a bench piled with cushions, holding Coen’s hand. Milla, seventeen and striking on the silks. Shilo and Cheyenne with an almost whimsical duo hoop routine. Hals and Josha making everyone gasp with a knife-throwing act that’s only slightly less terrifying than it is impressive.
“Didn’t want to join them this time?” I whisper to the man at my side.
“Just wait,” he replies, and I’m still gaping at him when he disentangles himself from my arms and starts to unbutton his shirt.
“What are you doing?”
“Giving you your present.”
The opening chords of Pink’s “Glitter in the Air” fill the tent, and with a last wink, he vaults onto the stage, all feline prowess and masculine grace.
Fuck. Me.
It’s the same routine from the first time I saw him, swimming to the surface of my screen in black and white. But this time…
Coen Baardwijk, shirtless on the rope in living color, dancing through the ether above a dark stage.
For me.
The final move is a slow wheeldown into a flared dismount that leaves him kneeling at the edge of the mat, eyes locked on mine. I’m standing rapt at the edge of the stage, hands poised for an ovation that never comes, because the music fades and he starts to talk.
“Baby, when you found me, I was lonely and lost. I’d let the people I thought I loved put me in a cage and convince me I deserved it. Then you crashed into my life and showed me love could give more than it takes—even when it’s messy and complicated—and taught me to see myself through your eyes. You set me free while rebuilding yourself, and even in the midst of your own pain, you never tried to clip my wings. You’re an absolute miracle, and I want nothing more than to spend the rest of my life learning to deserve you.
“Will you let me be your husband, Echo Wash, and fly off into the sunset with me?”
In the breathless silence of the dark tent, his words hit my chest like a fucking sunrise.
“Yes, Coen. Fuck, of course. Yes, please.” I’m laughing as I leap onto the stage and launch myself into his arms. “Every word for yes.”
Milla darts from the wings to place a small velvet box in his hand.
“I get a ring?”
“You get everything.” He slides it onto my finger like a promise made real—I’m his, and he’s mine, and I can shout it to the stars for the rest of my life.
The platinum band sparkles in the stage lights, inlaid with onyx and aquamarine. The colors of a young man fighting his way back from the brink of destruction. The colors of the tattoo over another man’s heart.
