Page 139 of The Long Way Home
“What’s so funny?” I ask, my heart catching in my throat.
He stops laughing, but there is still a smile on his face. “You truly don’t know,” he says quietly, “how long I’ve wanted you.”
I blink, caught somewhere between confusion and the reckless ache to believe him. Before I can find my footing, he adds, almost offhandedly, “Can I show you something?”
I nod my head. He shifts, pulling his right leg up onto the dock beside him. My eyes catch the first tattoo immediately. It is a date. One I recognize immediately. Josh’s birthday. I trace the numbers with a finger, as if touching them could summon him back, could somehow make him tangible again.
And then I notice another one next to it. It is smaller and faded. A tiny little outline of the sun.
“You wanted to show me that you have Josh’s birthday tattooed on your thigh?”
“No, but yeah. I got it after he died.” His hand brushes his leg absently. “It felt right putting his memory there.” He chuckles again. “I already had my favorite person tattooed on my thigh, so adding my best friend felt right. ” My throat tightens at the phrasing.Favorite person.I don’t understand.
He shifts again, angling his leg slightly. “But that’s not the one I wanted to show you.” His finger hovers, then taps lightly beside the date. “This one.”
My eyes follow the motion, settling back on the sun. My heartbeat starts doing something erratic.
“This one,” he continues, voice quieter now, “I got two weeks after I met you. September third, to be exact.”
“Why would you get a sun tattooed on you?”
He exhales. “Josh and I made a stupid bet one night after drinking. The loser had to get a tattoo.” A faint, almost fond smile ghosts his mouth.“When I lost, I didn’t want something I’d regret in five years.” He shifts closer on the dock, knee knocking gently against mine. “I knew it was going to be permanent. So I wanted something I knew would still mean everything to me, no matter who I became as time passed.”
I frown, my fingers hovering over the ink, tracing the shape without quite touching it. “I don’t understand.”
His mouth curves. He tips his leg closer, closing the distance himself.
“Sun—ny.”
My heart stumbles into a rhythm I seem to only feel when I’m with him. My eyes lift to his, and I see it there. The unflinching devotion I’ve spent a decade imagining, now illuminated in the curve of ink, etched into his skin.
“I have been in love with you,” he murmurs, voice low, unwavering, “for over a damn decade.”
The words hit me full force. Twelve years. Before funerals. Before hospital rooms. Before the world split open and left us sifting through the aftermath.
“I loved you when everything was easy,” he goes on. “When Josh was still alive. When our world was loud and reckless and full. I loved you when you thought no one noticed you. I loved you when I had no reason to believe love was something that lasted.” His eyes soften.
“I loved you when he was taken from us,” he admits, jaw tightening. “I loved you when I watched you fall in love with someone else. I loved you when you hated me.”
My chest aches, sharp and sweet all at once. I’ve spent so long questioning whether I’m worthy of being chosen. Whether what I feel is just survival dressed up as hope. And here he is, dismantling every fear with devastating care.
“This—” he gestures between us, then toward the lake, toward the past, toward everything we lost, “—this didn’t create what I feel. It just stripped away my excuses. Grief didn’t make me love you, Rach. It just made it impossible to keep pretending I don’t.”
I want to speak. I want to tell him how this lands in me, seeing him stripped of defenses makes my chest ache in the mostexquisite way. It finally feels like something ancient inside me has finally been named.
But the words refuse to line up.
So instead, I lean closer. My forehead finds his shoulder, and I let the quiet hold what my voice can’t. Because in this soft, glowing stillness, I understand something with startling clarity. Love like this doesn’t demand proof. It doesn’t rush toward confession. It simply exists. A pulse. A breath. A lifetime written in ink. And I am utterly, irrevocably swept into it.
“I’m glad you’re here with me, Rhett,” I say finally.
His arm tightens slightly around me. “I’m not going anywhere, Sunny,” he says, and this time his voice is softer. “Not this time.”
I turn my face and press a kiss to his cheek. “Can I have a few minutes alone?” I whisper. “I just want to sit here and look at the water. I promise I’m okay.”
“Of course, Sunny.”
He stands, quiet as he came, and walks back toward the house. I stay where I am, feet dangling above the lake, the sun low and gold and fading on the horizon.
