41. Stevens

FORTY-ONE

Stevens

I vow to fiercely love you in all your forms,

now and forever.

~ The Vow

W e’re heading toward the door when my mom shouts out, “Next time, I’ll have Stevens’ baby books out for you, Alana.”

“Okay!” I shout back. “We’re going now.”

Alana stops mid-stride. “I’d love to see Stevens’ baby pics next time. And you know what I’d love even more?”

My mom steps out onto the porch. “What’s that, dear?”

“I’d love to know his first name. We called him Ren as a boy. What is that short for?”

Dustin steps out next to our mom and says, “Ooh! Ooh! I know!”

I put my hand on the small of Alana’s back. “Okay see you later. Love you, family. Bye.”

Dustin calls out, “Clarence! Like the angel in It’s A Wonderful Life !”

I playfully cup my hands over Alana’s ears so she won’t hear him, but she already heard.

“Clarence?” Alana’s laughing.

I look back at the porch. My mom has her hand over Dustin’s mouth and he’s acting like he can’t wriggle free.

“You think that’s funny, huh?” I ask Alana as I open the gate and lead her onto the sidewalk.

“It’s hilarious! I love your family.”

“They’re a handful. You’ve got the paparazzi. I’ve got these crazies.”

“I like your crazies.” She smiles up at me.

“I’ll keep them.” I smile down at her. “I’m pretty sure they’re in love with you already. And not Alana Graves. Just you.”

“So soon?”

“Yeah. They’re like that. My mom basically adopted Ben when she found out his family lives all the way in the Midwest.”

“Wow. My mom might not even claim me after this fiasco.” A note of wistfulness creeps into Alana’s tone.

“I’m guessing she’ll get over it in time,” I assure her. “Once she sees I’m not going anywhere.”

She doesn’t answer that. I hope I’m right. Family needs to stick together. I understand her family functions differently than mine, but they’re still family.

“You can borrow my family while you’re waiting for your parents to come around.”

“I think I’d like that.” Alana laughs. “So, Ben is basically your adopted brother.”

“Tell me about it. I already had Dustin. Now I have Ben too. You’d think Mom could have adopted someone more chill like Kai.”

“So … Clarence.” She smiles up at me.

“Yeah. Ren comes from Clarence. It’s a family name. Lucky me. I couldn’t have been born into a family where the hand-me-down name was something like Alex or Conan.”

“Conan? Like the barbarian?” Alana giggles .

“You don’t think it fits?”

“Conan the merman. It has a certain ring.”

We laugh and I reach for her hand. She slips her fingers between mine. Our palms nestle together. And then we walk in the silence that settles between us until we’re at her front porch.

“Thank you,” I say, tugging her in toward me.

Alana looks up at me and brushes her fingers through my hair. “For what? For dragging you into a life where you’re under the magnifying glass? Where you have to sneak through a resort to escape the paparazzi, and you can’t run your tour business without being swarmed by reporters?”

“No.” I smooth a hand down her arm. “I chose this life. You didn’t even have the luxury of choosing it because you were raised to walk right into your role. But I am choosing it—choosing you. I mean, thank you for allowing me in. For giving me a chance to actually know you. For letting me love you.”

Alana stands on tiptoes and brushes a kiss across my jaw.

“Love me?”

“Yes. I love you. I’m hoping that’s obvious, but in case you were wondering, now you have no doubt. I’m seriously in love with you. You were not what I expected, and it’s beyond what I can wrap my head around how we found one another. All that only adds to the fact that I’m yours. My heart belongs to you. ”

“I’m so grateful for you,” she whispers. “There really aren’t words.”

“There are words. We’ll always find words. After all, words are how I found you.”

She smiles softly at me. She doesn’t have to say she loves me. I know it. Declaring it is extra. She showed me her love by being willing to give us up just to ensure I didn’t have to endure public scrutiny and intrusion into my private life.

“Stevens?”

“Yes?”

She brushes her hand along my cheek and runs her fingers through my hair.

“I love you too.” She stares up at me. “I’ve never said those words to another man. I guess I’ve been saving them for you.”

Here we are, two of the most unlikely people to find one another, and yet life kept weaving our stories together. We both seem caught up in this moment full of something just shy of magic. I don’t know who kisses who first, but our lips brush so tentatively—a soft touch of skin to skin, feather light, testing the waters.

Alana lifts her hands and grips onto me. Then she gently leans away from me, but she doesn’t release her hold on my shoulders. Her eyes sparkle in the moonlight. I run the back of my hand down the side of her cheek and under her jaw. I hold her chin and study her beautiful face. Neither of us says a word. We stare into one another’s eyes, a feeling of awe permeating the space between us.

I’ve watched Alana kiss on the big screen. She’s played the part of a woman in love and I've studied her image, twenty times larger than life as she gave herself to whomever her leading man was at the time. Her kisses on film always appear real, passionate, engaged, believable.

I lean in and capture her mouth again. I linger there, our lips soft and gentle. This kiss between us isn’t anything like the ones I’ve watched her give her co-star in a movie.

She’s tentative, careful—not hesitant, but somehow unexpectedly fragile.

This kiss is real. She’s choosing me, taking a walk out over the Grand Canyon on the glass cantilever bridge. She’s on a free dive, leaving all gear on the sand and going deep into the salty water with nothing but her own lungs to sustain her. This . This is trust. She’s trusting me.

Alana’s hands gently squeeze my shoulders, as if she’s afraid I’ll stop or leave, or maybe she just needs something to hold on to while waves of emotion ripple and swell between us. My hands hold her to me in answering assurance. I’m here. This is worth the risk. We are worth the risk .

I feel the moment she releases whatever held her back. The war inside her ends and she surrenders to the pull between us. She smiles against my mouth and I kiss her through the smile. Our connection deepens and I lose track of myself, time, and thought. Everything is her, and she is everything. I only know how she feels in my arms, the tug of my hair in her soft fist, the delicious scrape of her nails down the back of my neck.

She tilts her chin up and I take the unspoken invitation, running my mouth along the column of her neck, peppering kisses along her jaw, lingering on the soft curve at her hairline, and lightly nipping her earlobe before kissing my way back to her mouth.

I am moving at the speed of a barracuda now, and I need to reel myself in before I take things too far. I place one last kiss on her lips, and then I tug her toward me, burying my face in her hair. She smells of the expensive perfume she always wears, and that now-familiar scent that’s all her.

Home. She’s becoming my home.

I thought I might lose her when everything blew up with her mother and the press. But now I know. Alana’s everything to me. Each of us might not be able to fend off the paparazzi or the public on our own, but together we’re strong enough to endure whatever comes at us.

We hold one another. I smooth my hand down her back.

I’m overwhelmed with hope and thoughts of a future with Alana—a future we’ll build together.

“I love you, Graves,” I say the words into her hair, following them with a kiss to the top of her head.

“I love you, too, my merman.”

~ THE END ~