Page 156 of The Otherworld

“I like your ending much better,” I confess softly, tracing my finger over the curve of her neck. She’s so beautiful, lying here in my arms—the lamplight gilding her skin, glowing in her wild hair.

I look back up just in time to see a tear slip down her cheek.

“Orca, please don’t cry.”

She presses her eyes shut, another tear sliding down her face. “I’m not. I just… I just keep thinking.”

“About your mom?”

She nods, her voice returning threadbare. “I almost wish Papa’s story were true. I almost wish… that she wasn’t alive.” Orca opens her eyes to look at me with a flinch of shame. “Does that make me a bad person?”

I shake my head, reaching up to brush her tears away. “No, Orca. It makes you human.”

A tiny, aching sob stumbles out of her, breaking my heart in a single breath. “It was so hard, Adam…”

“I know.”

“I feel like I lost something close to me,” she rasps. “But I can’t have, because I always thought Mama was dead. I couldn’t even remember her from before. How can you lose something you never had?”

“Because you loved her. Even though you couldn’t remember her, you loved the person you thought she was.”

Orca nods, thinking about it while I gently dry her cheeks with the backs of my knuckles. At last, she sniffles and says, “But she didn’t love me. I wasn’t wanted. I wasn’t worth staying for.”

“You were,” I insist, cupping her face in my hands. “You’re worth more than all the riches in the world, Orca. If your mother can’t see that, she’s in the wrong. She’s the one who lost something. She lost you. And she has no idea how poor she is because of it.”

Orca manages a sad, trembling smile. “You’re just saying that to make me feel better.”

I stare at her, my heart engulfed in so much passion it terrifies me. “Is that what you think? After all this time, do you really not know how beautiful, how priceless you are to me? God, if only you knew how much I’ve battled with myself to not want you… To let you go and be free to find yourself. I didn’t want you to make the same mistake your mother did, marrying an older man, not knowing what you really wanted. I didn’t want you to wake up one day and regret your decision. But now I realize… I can’t let you go. From the moment I first met you, I never wanted to leave your side. I love you with every breath I take, Orca. You’re like a wildfire I can’t put out—you’ve consumed me, body and soul.”

Orca’s eyes dart back and forth between mine as I lean in close and capture her lips. She relaxes into my kiss, her hands sliding up around my neck as the world falls away. Just like that, there is no guilt for the past or fear of the future. There is nothing but the feeling of her lips moving over mine, her pulse racing under her skin. The rest of the world doesn’t exist.

Orca is my world.

I run my fingers through her hair, drowning under the spell of her intoxicating beauty as she pushes deeper into my kiss, drags her fingers down my chest, clutches handfuls of my shirt.

Her tears keep coming, falling onto my face as she rolls on top of me, her body pressed against mine. She kisses me like she never has, waves of emotion rushing out of her with every breath. I can feel her unraveling in my arms, the pain as sharp and real to me as if her heart is trapped in my chest, and mine is trapped in hers.

It’s the most intimate, vulnerable feeling I’ve ever experienced.

Orca presses her forehead to mine, out of breath. “Adam, I will wake up every day knowing I’m exactly where I should be—right beside you.” She spreads her hand over my chest, over my heart. “I promise I will never stop loving you.”

“And I’ll never stop loving you,” I vow, burning inside with the passion I feel for her at this moment, the passion I will feel for her until the day I die. “I promise.”

She sinks back onto her side, her fingers resting on my neck as she watches me. “I have to go back home tomorrow,” she says. “I have to make things right with Papa. I realize now how much I must have broken his heart when I left. Just as Mama broke his heart all those years ago.”

“Don’t blame yourself, Orca. You didn’t know.”

“But now I do. And you were right, Adam. Nothing matters more than the love of your family. I was too foolish to see that, even a week ago. But I see it now. And as much as I want to stay here, with you…” She smiles sadly, tracing her fingertip over my jaw. “I want to be with my father. He needs me. And I need him more than I ever knew.”

I catch her hand in mine, kissing all five of her fingertips. “I’m proud of you, Orca.”

She sniffs, wrapping her arm around me and nuzzling her face to my chest. “Will you fly me back home tomorrow morning?”

I nod, holding her close and breathing her in one last time. “Of course I will.”

* * *

I read to Orca until she falls asleep in my arms, which is precisely what I was hoping for. She needs a good night’s rest after the hellish day she had. It takes a lot of self-control not to let myself doze off beside her, but I know how disastrous it would be if someone found us tangled up in bed together come morning. So after some awkward maneuvering, I sneak my arm out from underneath her without waking her up. I turn off the bedside lamp, leave one last kiss in her hair, and return to my own room.

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