awe by Chanel as my art history professor. But once he’d brought me home to meet his parents, she and I had fallen in love over shared interests. Art. Photography. Activism. His dad, Emmanuel, was equally lovable. An older version of Brett with a wide smile, dark eyes, and a charisma his son had inherited. As a professor of economics, he and I were not fated to cross paths academically, but we dueled it out as partners in spades. He’d been the only family member to take a chance on me in the almost deadly card competition, and I hadn’t let him down. We’d held our own.
I felt slightly guilty over how well I fit into their lives when I hadn’t allowed Brett to become embedded in my family in the same way. Not only because mine lived hours away, but because I was enjoying every moment of this life that had nothing to do with my famous dad or my superstar brother.
The day Brett had proposed, we’d drank champagne and eaten cake, and then, finally, we’d made it to his room where my reckless thought had rushed out of me.
“Let’s get married before you go.”
He’d laughed and then kissed me senseless, but when I’d pushed him away and told him how serious I was, he’d smiled, a glorious smile as if our world had just been enveloped in a golden halo, and I’d known I’d won.
When we’d told his parents the next morning, they’d cautioned us about jumping in too fast. They’d asked me to talk about it with my parents first, but I’d already set my mind. I went into my very best Wednesday Addams mode with a fierceness I was known for, and they’d all gone with me.
Brett’s hand soothing on my back brought me back to where we were at, on the side of the road, with all my fears coming to life, regardless of the fact that I’d already made him mine. Some of the tension had left his face at my passionate insistence that marrying him was what I wanted, but I needed to wash away the doubts that remained.
“I love you,” I said. “It’s all that matters.”
He nodded. “It should be all that matters, but we’ve had this discussion before…it may not be all that does.”
He wasn’t as tall as my brother or my father. He was barely six feet on a good day, but when I was only five foot two, I still had to stretch to place a soft kiss on his lips. After, I stepped back, rubbing my thumb along his jaw as if I could swipe away his worries with just my fingers. I watched my pale skin coast along his dark depths, loving the contrast like I loved all the contrast in every photograph I’d ever taken.
Uncle Lonnie said it was my specialty.
Showing contrasts as beauty.
“I’m sorry my not telling them will make this harder on you,” I said, which was the truth. I didn’t want to make his life―our life together―harder, but I already had.
“I could have told you no,” he replied, leaning his cheek into my palm, grinning at me. “I could have demanded we wait. I probably should have.”
I grinned back. “You, tell me no? In what alternate universe?” It was a tease, because I’d been the one to tell him no repeatedly when he’d first asked me out.
He laughed.
I loved his laugh as much as his smile. I put my lips on his again, and this time, he held me to him, kissing me slow and steady, drawing it out, not racing. Not pounding, not demanding. Instead, infusing me with peace. Calm. Kissing Brett was like meditating. Like finding my inner core and then slowly being touched with gentle waves that rocked me home.
Being lost in Brett was the one place where the nonstop buzz in my skin seemed to disappear. The entire world stopped, and I could breathe without the need to fly.
“Remind me,” he said softly, looking into my eyes and not letting me look away.
I grinned. The first time Brett had said those words, I’d been puzzled, and I’d rolled my eyes as he prompted me through each memory as if they weren’t his memories, too. But now I loved that he used it as a way of grounding me in the most important thing―us. Because reliving our story, how we got here, made the rest of the issues in our life seem small. It settled my thoughts and slowed the