Page 54 of Soulmates

Maddox laughed. “That’s what you have to say to me?” He shook his head, knocking it against Jake’s. “Yes, when I felt my soul move into you, I realized I knew how to remove the barrier. I think Cricket made it hard so I couldn’t take the easy way out and touch your skin. I had to give you my soul first.”

Jake sighed and lifted his head enough to look into Maddox’s eyes. His still blazing gold eyes. “First, I love you and I’m sorry.”

“You don’t have to be sorry. You weren’t you. I took those parts of you, and they were in me, so you couldn’t be the man who would never hurt me in a million years.”

“I will always be sorry, Maddy. No matter what happens, I will aways be so sorry.”

“That’s your choice, but I’ve already forgiven you. You weren’t you, which means it’s not your fault.” Maddox lifted his head to kiss Jake once on the lips. It sent a charge through his entire body as if his individual cells were reacting to Maddox’s affection. “Wait, you said ‘first.’ Was there something else?”

“Um, yeah. Your eyes are still glowing.”

“Oh. Well. Uh, problem for another day?”

“Yes, please.”

“I love you, Jake. Can you feel me? I feel different. Less than I was earlier today, but not in a bad way. The weight in my chest is gone. It feels like I was before—all the way before—but like it’s a different color or something. I’m filled with something different but made of the same stuff. Does that make sense? Can you feel me?”

Jake closed his eyes and reached inside. They’d been doing this so much over the past week, these meditations. He breathed in deep and smelled the decay of the swamp and the sharpness of orange rinds. “Yes, I can feel you. And ‘different color’ is a good way to describe it. It feels familiar, though, and safe. And it feels like you. Like if I could see it, it would be green and silver and red. And blue. There’s blue there.”

“Blue. Like water. Your soul is amber and blue. I wonder which one of us gave water magic to the other?”

“Does it matter?”

“No.”

“Can we lie here a while, Maddy? I don’t think I can get up right now.”

“Yes. I don’t want you to let me go anyway.”

Jake wrapped his arms tighter around Maddox’s smaller frame. Not frail, not exactly, but precious, perfect. He’d truly never forgive himself for attacking his soulmate. It was unconscionable. He would spend his life trying to make it up to Maddox. He rolled them to their sides so Maddox wasn’t crushed under Jake’s weight. They stared at each other. Maddox’s eyes still glowed but were no longer sad. Content, tired. But not the frighteningly fatigued they had been over the past week. Just tracked through a swamp tired. And oh, so beautiful. Maddox’s eyes had always been beautiful, but this golden light was something otherworldly. He looked like a fae creature right out of a fairy tale. The kind who stole you away into his realm and kept you, but you never wanted to leave anyway.

“What are you thinking?” Maddox asked.

“Honestly? That you’re beautiful.”

Maddox blushed. “It’s my eyes, isn’t it? I’m all glowy, and that’s tricked you into loving me.”

“Funny, I was picturing you as a fae being come to steal me away to live with you as your sex slave.”

“Oaf. You were not.”

“I was. But you’ve always been beautiful. That’s what I was thinking. And I was thinking, too, that this bonding doesn’t mean you have to love me or stay with me forever. We have a choice. I choose you, Maddox. I surrendered myself to you so many times over, but specifically that night. I had been thinking for months about how I was going to tell you I love you. When the challenge came, I was terrified but also relieved because I was exhausting myself with it. And I was trying to stumble my way through it when you hugged me and I felt my body sag, but it wasn’t just my body, it was my soul. I surrendered. There would never be a perfect moment to tell you after twenty-three years how much I love you. So I surrendered, and I think that’s how my soul ended up with you. I trusted you with it. And I know it turned into a disaster, but I guess I can’t be totally sorry for that part because it was true in the purest sense. I am yours.”

Maddox sniffed and brushed a tear off his cheek. “I surrendered too. That’s exactly the word for it. I was trudging around and felt what direction you were in, and I was going over and over the things Cricket had been telling us, and I wanted to puzzle it out. The way he talks about magic is a back-and-forth, give-and-take, push-and-pull. And all those wedding-like ceremonies he read through and the ones we tried. They were full of promises. And I’ve been blaming myself for not being as sure as you—”

“Maddox.”

“No, wait. Let me finish. I was blaming myself for not being able to do what you did so effortlessly, but I realized that was the problem. I was making it too much about effort. And of course, love and relationships, like magic, take effort, but not the amount I was trying to exert in understanding the Soul Exchange in order to replicate the magic. It’s not like the magic they’ve taught us. And isn’t that the point? What we’ve been taught doesn’t account for something as free and wild as this. This is something we’ve never encountered. It’s a push and a pull. It’s collaborative. And I had to stop trying to academic it to death and just trust myself and trust you. Trusting you is easy. You’re my Jake. You’ve been that for me forever.”

“Been what?” Jake almost whispered, not wanting to interrupt the flow of Maddox’s beautiful brain working.

“My soulmate,” Maddox said and traced his finger over Jake’s brow and down his nose, over his jawline. “My soulmate.”

Jake did the only thing he could do. He kissed Maddox on the damp ground.

Chapter 33

The kiss woke parts of Maddox’s body and soul he didn’t even know existed. He’d thought the kind of intensity he felt at the touch of Jake’s lips would occur at the point of the exchange. They’d even talked about it over the week at Cricket’s. He’d assumed there would be some revelation beyond the settling in his chest. Not that he was going to complain about the lack of explosion that occurred back at school. But it had surprised him that there wasn’t…more.

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