“It’s 9 p.m., and I love you. In five years, I will love you. Ten months ago, I loved you. When I’m 80 years old, sitting on our porch in a big white house by the lake, watching the sunset with you beside me, I will love you. I just hope you’ll be there for all the time I will love you.” He reached for my hand and brought it to his chest, pressing my palm over his racing heart. “You feel that?”

I smiled a little. “Yeah.”

“It’s yours.”

I let out a breathless laugh, half-expecting him to take it back. “You sound like you rehearsed that.”

“I didn’t,” he said. “You just make it easy to mean it.”

And despite everything, I believed him.

I believed every word.

But somehow, I knew that no matter how tightly I held on, I couldn’t hold onto him forever. He would slip through my fingers, just as the light of day slips into the darkness of night.

Because I fell in love with a shadow, believing it could hold me, when in reality, shadows are meant to disappear.

43

BLAKE, 1999

18 years old

Every great mind has tried to define love. Plato called it a ‘grave mental disease,’ Shakespeare portrayed it as both agony and ecstasy, and Einstein admitted that gravitation is not responsible for people falling in love. But if I were to put it into words, I’d say love is the one equation that refuses to be solved, the one force that can’t be measured yet dictates the movement of my entire world.

“Wait, wait, wait,” Beverly said, snapping me out of my thoughts. “Let me make sure I’ve got this right,” she went on, trying—and failing—to hold in a laugh as she looked around. “You made fun of Reese for taking me to a nice dinner on a date, but your grand plan for me is to take me to a tattoo studio?”

She had one hand on her hip, the other tucked into the sleeve of my hoodie—the one I had thrown over her last night after driving her home. The sleeves were too long on her, covering most of her fingers, but she still somehow managed to look obnoxiously pretty. And she was about to mock the hell out of me.

I exhaled through my nose. “Dinner is predictable, B.”

“Right.” She nodded, barely holding in another laugh. “Well, nothing says romance like a needle stabbing ink into your skin.”

I ignored her and pushed open the door. “Get inside.”

She giggled. Actually giggled. “You are such a hypocrite.”

“Yeah?” I caught her hand before she could move past me and pulled her back, my grip lazy. “You wanna go to dinner instead?”

Her mouth opened, then closed.

That’s what I thought.

I tugged her inside, guiding her toward the counter where an artist was flipping through designs.