Shannon interrupted as Jeremy came over. "I heard she likes pirates! She won't be friends with anyone who isn't a pirate!"

Jeremy didn't like that. "No! No! She has a castle under the water and her hair changes colors!"

"What does that have to do with pirates?"

A third child came into the mix. "She has a big ship with a glittery flag! I saw it last year!"

I leaned into the group. "Don't forget she is a skilled biscuit maker."

They lit up. "Yes! Sea biscuits for the prisoners! And cupcakes with seaweed for the bad kids who don't leave her rubies!"

Everly shook her head at me, but laughed. "What have you done, Callum Andrew?"

"You wanted me to make up a story about you, so I did."

"Did you miss the part about after I die?"

I kissed her shoulder. "Now where's the fun in that?"

"Where's my boat, Callum Andrew?" she asked as we climbed the stairs. "You didn't send it out to sea, yet, did you?"

"It's still here," I assured. "Want to swing?"

"It's the only reason I'm asking." She smiled at me, but then turned away. "You have that look, again."

I surrounded her waist with my arms as we walked down the hall, and kissed her neck. "You have that beautiful thing, again."

Very little swinging happened in the boat on that Fourth of July.

Every inch of me wanted to relive exploring Everly Anne as if I never had been given the pleasure before. We lay face-to-face, remembering each other with the tips of our fingers and soft presses of our lips. That first day I saw her in third year came rushing back as strange nervousness crept into my touch. There was no control over my hands as they tremored with need. On her hip as I pulled her against me. Under the limp fabric of her dress as I slid my palm along her bare thigh. The unfastening of buttons that kept my mouth from her breasts.

She was oddly braver.

Her hands slid north and south all at once, eager and bold, leaving me partially unable to decide where my desire craved her most. She unbuttoned my shirt twice as quickly and didn't tremble as her fingers mapped a line from the lull between my ribcage straight down to the seam of my pants.

"Everly," I whispered.

"Touch me," she pleaded, her hand sliding over mine that covered her cheek. She drew me down to her breast until my hand was fully cupped around her bare softness.

And then our dance synchronized into a harmony of feverish need. Exploration revealed the secrets of her skin through sighs of my name. The pulse point under her ear was the most musical note that filled the room while we tested and tried innocently. We undressed more gracefully than I had remembered with the women I slept with before, perhaps because everything with Everly was deliberate.

The curve of her waist and hips deserved feather traced caresses as her dress fell away. I kissed her from the pulse in her neck down to a freckle on her ankle and all the spaces that lived between.

And if it were as simple as needing something physical to fulfill ourselves this moment would have been as fleeting as the ocean's drift, but, the more we were treated with touch, the closer we were brought to the face of verity-to the power of this unyielding truth that lived in both of us. Timothy and rules were escapable, but death and love were not, and here we were running full force in both directions.

Her voice shook like a traitor to her brave hands. "I love you," she admitted, her voice so shy, as if I hadn't already known. "I love you."

"I love you, Topolina." I kissed those words across her throat, down to her ribs until she believed me, legs parted and inviting as I slid between.

My eyes pressed close with a curse. "I didn't bring you here for this. We can stop. I don't . . . I don't have anything here, Everly."

"I don't want anything else," she confessed, "Just you."

My forehead fell against hers. "That goddamn word. No."

"You," she amended with a pull of her legs scissor-locked around my back. I shifted myself forward feeling her ready beneath me, so warm and welcoming. My lips kissed between her breasts and that was when her heart told me to back up. She raced under me, labored breaths that spoke the truth, not simple anticipation. The heat of my naked body pressed against hers would have been appreciated by another woman, but to Everly, it was only trouble on the rise. I had to listen to her beyond her sighs and breathing.

Everly traced her fingers along the muscles of my shoulders, speaking to me in tight grasps and halting palms. It was the first time I ever slipped off the edge with someone else holding on to me. And nothing in the world could ever outbid that kind of nirvana.

In the clutches of euphoria I lost hold of my discipline and fell against her, heated skin to skin. She clung to my neck and panted as I drowned in the intensity of an orgasm unlike anything I had ever experienced, every fiber in my body pulsed and sparked beneath the surface, my heart pounded out a rhythm that sang from my lips into her ear an infinite string of I love you.

"Callum Andrew," she begged, palms pushing on my chest.

I fell back to reality and rolled swiftly away, a foot of space safely between us as we lay on our sides face-to-face just as we began. My fingers swept wayward strands of hair from her face and traced her cheek until she cooled and caught her breath. She rolled into my touch and then slid closer. Her flushed lips quickly became inundated with amorous kisses.