The One Series by Jasinda Wilder

I need you, Ava. I am desperate. For you. For touch. For a kiss. For the scrape of your hand down my stomach. For the slide of your lips across my hipbone. The sweep of your thigh against mine in the dulcet, drowning darkness. For the warm huff of your breath on my skin and the wet suck of your mouth around me and the building pressure of need reaching release...I am mad with need. Wild with it. I cannot have you. I have lost you, as I have lost myself. And so I go in search... moreI need you, Ava. I am desperate. For you. For touch. For a kiss. For the scrape of your hand down my stomach. For the slide of your lips across my hipbone. The sweep of your thigh against mine in the dulcet, drowning darkness. For the warm huff of your breath on my skin and the wet suck of your mouth around me and the building pressure of need reaching release...I am mad with need. Wild with it. I cannot have you. I have lost you, as I have lost myself. And so I go in search. Of myself, and thus the man who might return to you, and take you in his arms. I loathe each of the thousands of miles between us, but I cannot wish them away, for I hope at the end of my journey I shall find you. Or rather, find myself, and thus…you. Myself, and thus us. I am taking the long way home, Ava. * * * Christian, I’m losing my mind, and I don’t know how to stop it. I shouldn’t be writing to you, but I am. I’m friendless, loveless, and lifeless. You’re out there somewhere, and still you’re all I really have. I hate my reliance and dependence on you, emotionally and otherwise, and that reliance is something I’m coming to recognize. I hate that I can’t hate you as much as I want to. I hate that I still love you so much. I hate that there’s no clear solution to our conundrum. Even if we could forgive each other, what then? I hate you, Christian. I really do. But most of all, I don’t. It’s complicated. Complicatedly (still) yours, Ava less

shouldn’t be in love, but baby I am I know it’s crazy, but I don’t give a damn shouldn’t want you near me but you’re inside me, can you hear me I’m praying you need me, baby say you do I’m laying in bed, dreaming of you cuz I remember you moving, gliding can’t get over you, baby I’m trying why can’t I have you, why’s it have to be so complicated the love I feel hasn’t faded I wrote those lyrics for Jonny after he walked away... moreshouldn’t be in love, but baby I am I know it’s crazy, but I don’t give a damn shouldn’t want you near me but you’re inside me, can you hear me I’m praying you need me, baby say you do I’m laying in bed, dreaming of you cuz I remember you moving, gliding can’t get over you, baby I’m trying why can’t I have you, why’s it have to be so complicated the love I feel hasn’t faded I wrote those lyrics for Jonny after he walked away.  It was never meant to be between us; I knew it, he knew it, we talked about it.  The trouble is, love never listens to logic. And for two people who have never really had a home or known love, logic is all that keeps us going: be smart, survive, do what has to be done. And, in my case, take care of my son. Forget my dreams, forget love…nothing matters but making it day by day.  But then I met Jonny, and everything changed. *   *   * I’m a vagabond. I’ve lived my whole life out on the ocean, surviving by my wits and my knowledge of the sea. I’ve never needed anyone, never stayed in one place long enough to let something like that happen.  Christian, the only person I’ve ever really cared about, goes missing and gives me a box of letters and makes me promise to take it to his wife, Ava. Problem is, when I get to her, Ava is missing too, and their condo is ruined by the same hurricane that claimed Christian. And then I meet Delta, Ava’s sister, Christian’s sister-in-law, and she changes everything.  It wasn’t supposed to be anything. Nothing was supposed to happen. We helped dig out survivors of the hurricane together, and that was it. Only…that wasn’t it. Something happened. And now I can’t get her out of my head, or out of my heart.  Even when I walk away, I can’t escape her. Especially when I hear her voice on the radio, singing a song meant for me: You walked into my life, with your dark skin and brown eyes I tried to resist you, tried not to kiss you you speak soft and you move slow you’ve got strong hands and few words but I hear it anyway, everything you don’t say I tried to resist you, tried not to kiss you but god, your lips, the way you moved your hips the way you said my name and said you felt the same the way you took my hand and kissed me in the sand less

I see us in a million montages—you and me, Ava, in a million vignettes. Visions of us.  You are beneath me. You stare up at me. You gaze, lovingly, into my eyes, and you do not look away as you come apart. I see this moment, over and over and over again… You whisper something, as the shudders wrack you, yet the words you whisper are lost to me. I want those words—they mean everything.  What is it you whisper in the moment of our most intimate completion?  My name, surely... moreI see us in a million montages—you and me, Ava, in a million vignettes. Visions of us.  You are beneath me. You stare up at me. You gaze, lovingly, into my eyes, and you do not look away as you come apart. I see this moment, over and over and over again… You whisper something, as the shudders wrack you, yet the words you whisper are lost to me. I want those words—they mean everything.  What is it you whisper in the moment of our most intimate completion?  My name, surely. What is it you whisper, Ava? Please, tell me. Whisper those sounds to me again, even just once, I beg you.  Come to me, and come for me, and come with me: I will hear those sweet, dulcet syllables blooming from your lips and I will know myself, and I will know I am home. *   *   * Memory is a harsh mistress: she embellishes the beautiful and serene, yet she also sharpens the edges of pain. All I have left of my husband, Christian, is memory. Everything else is gone. Our son, Henry, conceived and cherished and born and grown in the fertile soil of our love…he is dead. He molders six feet under the black loam of a Florida cemetery. The home we created for ourselves, in Ft. Lauderdale, is a pile of rubble, demolished by a hurricane. That home, and everything in it, is utterly gone. Even the rubble, by now, is likely cleared away. And all I know is, right now…I’m scared of letting myself grieve for Henry.  I’m scared I’ll never find Christian. And if I never find Christian, what will I do?  Who will I be? less