One Last Thing...

Andy didn’t move from the window for a long while after Claire left him, her words and her warmth settling into his bones like a final warning before the weather breaks. The other women had left, and the Master’s Suite, when not filled with their laughter or the odd loneliness of its Host, felt cavernous. Even the air seemed to pull away, unsure of what to do with so much exposed space.

He closed the curtain partway, shutting out the ocean’s glare. His reflection in the glass was washed-out, a ghost in a thrift-store shirt and wrinkled slacks. If he squinted, he could almost convince himself he looked like someone worth saving.

Andy didn’t notice the low thump of footsteps at first. He assumed it was the aftershocks of the party: Liesa’s echoing laugh, Emi’s trailing giggle, Marissa’s dry commentary lingering as an auditory aftertaste. But the next sound… a clink of glass, an exhale not his own… broke through the drone.

He tensed, every muscle defaulting to animal alert. Then: a cough. Short, deliberate, almost comic in its timing.

Andy turned around, expecting to find Dawn scavenging for leftovers, or maybe Arabella waiting with some new rule to torpedo his mood. Instead, sitting on the very edge of the couch, as if ready to sprint for her life, was Erin.

She’d changed clothes—no, that wasn’t right. She was changed. She wore a dress: midnight blue, sleeveless, and tight enough to make him stare, then regret staring, then look again. A round window cut over her chest artfully displayed her cleavage. Her hair was out of its ponytail for once, falling in careful, straight sheets around her face. The deep slit of the dress showed off her legs, crossed at the knee, and revealed more skin than he’d ever seen her show in public without wearing a bikini, even during the spring break trip to Miami.

The effect was… Andy had no words for the effect. He only knew it hit him like a punch: lust, and surprise, and something else, a shock that she still had the power to rearrange the air just by being in it.

He opened his mouth to say something casual, but his throat made a noise like a squeezed balloon. Erin grinned—really grinned, not the smirk she wore for camouflage, but the real, bare-toothed grin he remembered from the winter they fell in love.

“Scared you,” she said, voice low and conspiratorial.

He felt the heat climb up his neck. “You did,” he admitted, then tried to recover. “Wasn’t expecting anyone to still be here.”

Erin made a show of looking around the empty suite. “Technically, I’m not. I’m a ghost. I’m haunting you.”

He laughed, a real, sharp sound. “You’re the least subtle ghost I’ve ever met.”

Erin shrugged. “What can I say. If you’re going to haunt someone, you might as well make it memorable.”

He walked toward her, trying to keep his eyes above the neckline of her dress. “Is that what this is about?” he said, gesturing vaguely at her outfit.

She glanced down at herself, then met his gaze, unblinking. “I bought it in the Annex. Figured if I ever had a chance to see you again, it might come in handy.”

Erin: 3500 BP - 200 BP = 3300 BP

Andy couldn’t decide if the comment was supposed to be funny or tragic. He compromised by sitting on the opposite arm of the couch, a safe three feet away, and folding his hands in his lap.

“You know,” he said, “I assumed you were still going to rip my head off the first chance you got.”

She tilted her head, pretending to consider. “I did plan on it. But then I thought, maybe I’ll try something different for once. See if it works better.”

He grinned. “Who are you and what did you do with Erin?”

They sat in silence, the old gravitational pull asserting itself. Andy felt the weight of six years compressing into the few inches of couch between them, all the words they hadn’t said hovering in the humid air.

Finally, Erin broke the seal. “I asked the girls to leave me alone with you,” she admitted. “I told them I needed to talk with you.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Did you bribe them, or just threaten ****?”

She smirked. “Both. But mostly pleading. They agreed. Said it was only fair.” She uncrossed her legs and then crossed them the other way, a motion so smooth and practiced it was almost ritual.

Andy waited, but she didn’t speak right away. Instead, she picked up a glass of water from the coffee table, drank half of it, then set it down with a precision he recognized from their old life. She turned to face him, tucking her left leg under her so she could close the gap a bit.

“Okay,” she said. “Can I ask you something, and can you not lie, and can you not make it weird?”

He nodded, too nervous to joke.

She said, “Once and for all. Why did you freeze me out, back then? After we graduated. I don’t mean the week of the breakup, I mean for months. Almost a year. I could’ve handled a clean break, but you just…” She trailed off, then tried again. “You left a you-shaped hole in my heart and then pretended you didn’t see it.”

Andy closed his eyes. There was no way to duck the question, and no way to answer it cleanly. He tried to think of a metaphor, a parable, something Claire would have admired, but all he could do was tell the truth.

“There’s something wrong with me,” he said. “There has been since I was thirteen.” He kept his eyes shut, focusing on the memory of old carpet, the smell of rain on concrete, the way the world changed after a funeral. The footbridge. The hungry waters. Laura’s tear-streaked face. Her glorious blue eyes, red-rimmed. A hand, swallowed by the raging river.

Her coffin, surrounded by flowers.

He opened his eyes and looked at Erin, who was watching him with a stillness that was worse than anger.

He tried again. “There’s a girl—was a girl. Her name was Laura. She was my… I don’t even know how to say it. My other half, basically. Since birth, or nearly so. We grew up together. We were inseparable. Everyone joked we would get married as soon as we turned twenty-one.” He took a deep breath, but to his faint surprise, he found he could go on. It hurt like hell, but he could. “And then she died. And I don’t know if I ever really left that day. I just kept going through the motions. Even when we were together, I was only half there. I think maybe I wanted you to be the other half, but you weren’t her, and that wasn’t fair to you. Or to me.”

Erin blinked, once, then twice. “You never told me that,” she said slowly. “About her.”

He nodded. “I know. I never told anyone.” He closed his eyes for a moment. “Emi knows. She knew us before Laura’s ****. And Marissa knows, because I was able to tell her during our sessions. But no one else. I was scared if I said it out loud, it would make it more real. Like she’d really be gone for good, if I let myself mourn her.” He shrugged, helpless. “I thought if I kept moving, eventually I’d catch up to myself.”

Erin considered this, then said, “So, when you pushed me away, it really wasn’t about me?”

He **** a laugh. “It was all about you, but not the way you mean. You were too real. Too good at seeing through me. I think I loved you more than I wanted to admit, and I was terrified of what would happen if you realized I was still in love with a ghost.”

She made a sound—a kind of snort and sigh mixed—and put her elbow on the couch back. “That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard,” she said, but there was no heat in it. “You know that, right?”

He nodded. “It’s not even the dumbest thing I’ve done.”

Erin’s face softened. She looked away, tracing a finger along the seam of the cushion. “You know, I spent six years after the breakup trying to hate you. But I couldn’t, not really. It just turned into this… thing, inside me. Like a scar tissue. Every time I thought I’d moved on, it just pulled me back. And I’d get mad at myself, for being that weak.”

Andy shifted, the admission cutting deeper than any accusation could have. “You’re not weak, Erin. You never were. I was the weak one.”

She let the silence ride a moment, then turned back, her eyes shining but dry. “But I don’t want to be the strong one anymore,” she said, voice barely above a whisper. “I don’t want to be the one who puts everything back together when it breaks. I want to be the one who gets to fall apart, just once.”

Andy nodded, unable to speak. He reached over, tentative, and touched her hand. She didn’t pull away.

She said, “Sam told me you beat yourself up for a year after we broke up. Is that true?”

He laughed, not because it was funny but because it was the only way not to cry. “It’s not true,” he said. “It was closer to a year and a half. And I never really got past you. Never dated anyone since.” He squeezed her hand, feeling the old current spark back to life.

Erin squeezed back, hard. “Good,” she said. “Because I need you to know, I never really got past you either. I tried, but I think… I think I wanted you to hurt as much as I did, so I could justify staying mad. But it never really worked.”

She inhaled, shaky. “I think that’s what you feel about her, too. About Laura. Like if you keep holding on to the pain, you’ll never have to let her go. But maybe that’s not what she’d want. Maybe she’d want you to let someone else in.”

Andy thought about that—really thought about it. The truth was, he didn’t know what Laura would have wanted. She’d never had the chance to say.

He met Erin’s eyes, and for the first time in years, the old connection was clear and unbroken. “I don’t know that I can ever let her go,” he admitted. “But I’m learning that I don’t have to, to let someone else in. That there’s room in me for more than one loss, or one love.”

Erin nodded, her posture collapsing into relief. “You’re not a bad person, Andy.”

He laughed, the weight in his chest finally shifting. “That’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”

She smiled, then sobered. “I need you to know, I don’t expect you to be perfect. I just want you to be honest. Even when it sucks. Especially when it sucks.”

He nodded. “I can do that. I want to do that.”

She leaned in, forehead to his. “If you ever ghost me again,” she whispered, “I will kill you.”

He grinned, meeting her intensity. “Deal.”

They sat that way, breathing the same air, until the past faded and the future opened like a new scar, raw but ready to heal.

Erin pulled back first, her cheeks flushed. “You know,” she said, “I was going to try to seduce you tonight. I had this whole plan. But I think I like this better.”

He looked her up and down, letting himself feel the want this time. “I’m not saying you can’t still try,” he said, voice low.

She smiled, wolfish. “Maybe I will.”

She stood, pulling him up by the hand. “Let’s go outside,” she said. “I want to see if you still remember how to talk about nothing for hours.”

He followed, the touch of her hand familiar but electrified by all the new space between them. She took him to the lower level, and as they stepped onto the balcony, the wind caught her hair, and for a moment, Andy thought of Laura—not as a ghost, but as a permission. An invitation to try again.

He squeezed Erin’s hand, harder this time. She squeezed back, and in that squeeze was forgiveness, and hope, and something like love.

Maybe not the old love, or the first love. But something new, and strong enough to survive the next morning.

They stood at the glass, side by side, and looked out at the world.

They lasted three minutes on the balcony.

Not even three, if Andy was honest with himself. Maybe two, before the old voltage, the charge that had lived dormant in every awkward glance since the reunion, reignited so hard that it burned through six years of scar tissue in one go.

Erin leaned against the rail, hair streaming behind her like a flag, and she looked at him—not over, not past, but directly at him, eyes the color of lake glass and twice as deep. He knew what she was going to do before she did it, but he waited, just to prove to himself that he could.

She moved first. Of course she did.

The kiss was tentative for the length of a breath, as if both of them remembered too well how easy it was to set a fuse and not know what it was wired to. But after that, the fuse lit. Erin pressed in, hard, and the noise she made at the back of her throat was the same one that used to undo him in their old dorm room, the sound that made it clear she was in control, but only barely.

Kissed the Master! +1 VP

Andy tried to keep his hands on her waist, polite, above the line, but she was already working the buttons on his shirt, muttering obscenities when one stuck. He laughed into her mouth, the laugh muffled, and that just made her grip him harder.

They stumbled back through the sliding door, but now he was the one pulling her, walking her in, not letting the kiss break. He half expected to trip and crash to the ground, but the only thing that crashed was the back of his knee against the arm of the couch. He tumbled down, and she straddled him instantly, never losing eye contact.

“You okay?” he whispered, because he had to ask.

She nodded, hair curtaining their faces. “Don’t stop.”

He didn’t. He let his hands move up her thighs, up the silk of her dress, and for a second he thought he’d hallucinated the feel of bare skin. But no, she really wasn’t wearing underwear, and the realization hit him like a shot of whiskey.

He ran his hands up her back, finding the zipper, and she shimmied her shoulders so it came free. The dress fell around her waist, and she was bare-chested underneath. Not because she wanted to seduce him—though that was part of it—but because she’d always hated the feel of bras, and he loved that she hadn’t changed.

Her nipples were already hard, and he cupped one breast, thumb brushing the peak. Erin shivered, hips grinding down on him. She rocked, once, twice, and he felt himself getting hard through his slacks, felt the heat of her wetness soaking right through both their clothes.

Master touched her Boobs! +2 VP

Erin did not wait. There was no seduction, no slow tease, no nervous laughter. She slipped her palm under the band of his belt, fingers working so deftly that Andy barely noticed until she had it unbuckled, the button popped, zipper down, and then—her hand encircled him, squeezing, making him gasp out loud. She grinned, savoring the sound, and in one smooth, practiced motion, somehow managed to free him from boxers and slacks at once. For a moment, they both stared at his cock, standing hard and ready, as if it had been waiting those six years for exactly this.

She raised her eyes to his, measuring. “Still fits,” she said, stroking him.

Andy barked a laugh, the last of his tension shattering. He reached for her, pulled her in, and they kissed again—messier this time, teeth clashing, a battle for territory neither wanted to win. Her hands never stopped working him, and his own slid up her sides, over the faint ridges of rib and muscle, up to her neck, where he held her like she might try to leave. But she had no intention of leaving. Erin was not breaking this time.

She knelt on the couch, straddling him, thighs on either side of his lap. The dress slid up, pooling at her waist, and there was nothing beneath except skin, flushed and already wet. She caught him watching, and her face was pure challenge. “Are you going to stare or are you going to fuck me?” she asked.

He almost choked on the word. “Both?”

“Good answer,” she said, and then, without slowing, she reached down, lined him up, and sank onto him in a single, devastating stroke.

Andy’s whole body jerked. The sensation was so overwhelming, so immediate, that it erased every other sense for a second. He felt every inch of her, the heat, the wetness, the way she clenched around him like a fist. For a heartbeat, the world collapsed, and all he could see was her face, head thrown back, mouth open, one hand bracing on his shoulder, the other clutching the back of the couch for leverage.

He had forgotten what it was like with her. The way she attacked every sensation, refusing to let herself get lost in it until she was sure you were lost first. But that was the old Erin—the one who always surrendered last, who’d never let go until she had proof you could handle her at her worst. This Erin was different. She rode him, yes, but she didn’t check herself, didn’t hold back a single moan or gasp or “fuck—yes” as she moved, grinding down, then rocking forward, taking him deeper.

He braced himself with both hands on her hips, fingers digging into muscle, and let her set the pace for a while. It was almost a test, he realized, a dare to see if he could keep up, if he could match her push for push, need for need. He could. He had learned how to want her from the best possible teacher.

She leaned forward, hair curtaining both their faces. He could smell her, that sharp, clean scent, the barest trace of perfume, and something wild beneath it. She laughed, low in her throat, when he shuddered inside her. “You always did finish too soon,” she murmured, but there was no judgment—just heat.

“Prove it,” he said, and thrust up into her, hard.

She gasped, then smiled, slow and dangerous. “Gladly,” she breathed.

They moved together, gradually working up to a frantic, bruising rhythm. The sofa creaked, but neither cared. Erin’s nails raked his chest, leaving red tracks. He retaliated with bites—her shoulder, the line of her jaw, the tender spot below her ear. Each one drew a new sound from her, a growl, a yelp, a laugh that bordered on hysterical.

He remembered all the old tells: the way her left thigh quivered when she was close, how her breath went silent just before she came. He watched for them, and found them, but this time, instead of slowing, she doubled down, riding the edge like she was chasing something she’d never caught.

She was talking now, too—no more banter, just honest, **** requests. "Harder. Don't stop. Don't you dare stop." He had no intention of stopping. He'd have stayed like this for eternity if his body hadn't started to shake with effort. He met her tempo, thrust for thrust, sweat slicking their skin, and something broke loose inside him. The old grief and shame, all of it, fell away, replaced with a hunger that was almost joy.

He felt her tighten, a ripple running up from her core, and then her entire body went rigid. Her nails dug into his shoulders as she convulsed around him, each wave stronger than the last. Her scream caught in her throat, transforming into a series of broken, animal sounds. Tears leaked from the corners of her eyes as she shuddered violently, her thighs clamping around him with bruising ****. The orgasm seemed to tear through her endlessly, leaving her gasping for air between aftershocks that made her collapse against him, only to arch back again as another wave hit.

The intensity of her release triggered his own almost instantly. Andy groaned, thrusting up, spilling into her with a **** that left him dizzy. For a second, neither of them spoke—just breathing, sweating, holding on as her body continued to pulse around him in diminishing tremors.

She collapsed against him, her whole body still trembling. "Holy shit," she panted, her laugh muffled against his neck. "I've never—that was the most intense I've ever—" She couldn't finish, just shook her head in disbelief.

He stroked her back, up and down, gentle, as if afraid she'd vanish if he let up. "You're amazing," he said, voice thick.

She pulled back, eyes glazed but happy, and kissed him, soft this time. "Still got it, Andy," she whispered.

They stayed like that for a long moment, her straddling him, their skin cooling in the island breeze leaking through the windows. Andy’s mind was blank, empty of everything but the sense memory of her and the impossible luck of getting this moment. He could have said something clever, or something meaningful, but he just looked at her, marveling.

Erin was the first to move, eventually. She slid off his lap, winced as she did, then flopped next to him, feet up on the armrest, dress bunched around her hips.

“Now I understand why you never wanted to talk about closure,” she said. “You just wanted an encore.”

He grinned, feeling the afterglow in every muscle. “There’s nothing wrong with a good encore.”

She looked at him, and for a second, the old Erin was back: skeptical, self-deprecating, eyes narrowed. “You gonna ghost me again tomorrow?”

He shook his head, solemn. “Never again.”

Those two words, as simple as they were, seemed to unlock something. She laughed. “We’ll see about that.”

They sat, side by side, catching their breath. Out on the balcony, the wind had picked up, making the doors rattle. The ocean pounded the rocks below, a steady, endless rhythm.

Andy reached over, took her hand, and squeezed. She squeezed back, hard enough to hurt, and that was all the reassurance he needed.

They were both still half-dressed, hair wild, skin flushed. Neither bothered to fix themselves before Erin turned, swung a leg over his lap again, and kissed him hard, tongue insistent. She tasted like wine and sweat and some intangible spice he could never name.

He pulled her close, arousal already threatening a second round. She felt it, ground her hips against him, and laughed. “Insatiable. God, I forgot about that.”

He’d lost track of how much time had passed. The entire evening seemed to fold into itself, a loop of memory and sensation, until it was impossible to tell where the past ended and the present began. All Andy knew was that he was here, with her, and that whatever came next, they would face it together, no more running.

She was still straddling him when she rolled her head back, sighing deeply. “Okay, now I’m going to need a shower. You ruined my makeup.”

He ran a finger under her eye, smearing what was left of her eyeliner. “I like you better this way.”

She grinned, knocked her forehead into his, and then, after a contented minute, leaned back and let herself go limp across the couch.

Had sex with the Master! +5 VP
Master came inside her! +2 VP

They lay there, catching their breath, the only sound the tick of the ceiling fan and the crash of their pulse. Andy waited for the old panic to resurface, the guilt or regret or shame that always tried to sneak in at the edges. But it never came.

After a while, Erin lifted her head, blinking at him like she’d just remembered where she was.

“Holy shit,” she said, voice hoarse. “I can’t believe I ever let you go.”

He snorted, still lightheaded. “Technically, I let you go. You just finally gave up waiting for me to stop being an idiot.”

She smiled, then went quiet for a second, fingers tracing patterns on his chest.

“That was… different,” she said, the words careful. “In a good way.”

He nodded. “Yeah. It was.”

She sat up, still straddling him, and for the first time he saw her face flush—not just from exertion, but from something like surprise. “Can I tell you something? You’re going to laugh.”

He brushed her hair out of her eyes. “I promise I won’t.”

She grinned, then looked down, shy for the first time tonight. “Since the… transformation thing? I can’t… you know. Do anything. Unless I’m with you. Unless you look at me. I thought it would be like a punishment, but… that was the best I’ve ever felt. Like, in my life.”

Andy was silent for a beat, then he laughed—not to mock, but from the sheer delight of it. “That’s actually kind of hot,” he said. “Not the curse part. The rest of it.”

Erin rolled her eyes, but she was smiling. “I knew you’d say that. You always did have a weird kink for saving broken things.”

He ran his hands over her thighs, feeling the tremors still there. “You’re not broken, Erin. You’re just… differently wired.”

She leaned down, kissing him again, slower this time. “If you say so. But don’t get used to it. I’m still going to be the strong one.”

He kissed her back. “You said you didn’t want to, anymore. Tell you what: we can take turns.”

They disentangled, Erin flopping onto the couch beside him, legs draped over his lap. For a while, they just sat, naked and tangled, looking at the stars through the window.

“You know,” Andy said, after a long silence, “if you can stand having sex with an emotionally unavailable guy, your new superpower doesn’t sound so bad.”

Erin nudged him with her foot. “Don’t get cocky. You’re just the delivery system.”

He grinned. “Happy to be of service.”

She glanced at the clock, then at him. “Think you could go again?” Her voice was half challenge, half invitation.

He looked at her, took in the curve of her body, the gleam of sweat on her chest, the way her eyes dared him to say no. “You’re going to make me pay for the last six years, aren’t you?”

She stood, offering her hand. “You have no idea.”

He took her hand, let her lead him to the bedroom. Erin closed the door behind them, and the sound was final—not like an ending, but like the sealing of something new.

They didn’t make it to the bed. Not at first. They made love on the floor, on the cool, faintly sandy tile, with salt-wet air streaming in the open window and that wild edge to every movement as if one or both of them might disappear the moment the other let go. Andy tried to match Erin’s hunger, but it was a losing battle: she was relentless, chasing every gasp and every tremor, needing all of him, needing him to need her back.

But when it was over—when they lay tangled and sweating, breathless on the rug, limbs knotted up so tightly he couldn’t tell which hand was his—they both started laughing, helplessly, like kids hiding from a storm in a blanket fort.

“Didn’t expect the Master to be so easy to topple,” Erin said, her nails tracing lazy constellations on his chest.

He looked at her, and for the first time in years he didn’t see the Erin who left him, or the Erin he’d hurt by never saying enough, or the Erin who haunted him in angry dreams. He just saw Erin Delgado: her hair slicked back with sweat, her chin speckled with freckles he’d somehow never noticed, her mouth soft and gentle in the afterglow.

They lay there for a long time, the silence deep and easy around them. Andy felt a strange peace, as though his bones had finally slotted into place after years of being slightly off-kilter.

It was only when the wind started to chill their skin that Erin rolled over and stretched, lithe and lazy as a cat. “C’mon,” she said, “before the floor freezes us.”

He let her pull him up, let her lead him by the hand to the bed. There, they crawled under the heavy hotel duvet and curled together, her head tucked into the hollow below his collarbone. For a while, neither said a word.

It was the most at home Andy had felt in a decade.

She fell asleep first, her breathing settling into a slow, even rhythm, her fingers still looped around his. Andy watched her in the dark, counting heartbeats, resisting the urge to untangle himself and escape to the balcony. But there was nothing to run from this time, no silent panic crawling up the inside of his ribs. He just let himself be held.

When she woke, sometime in the middle of the night, she turned toward him and pressed her lips to his shoulder, the one she’d bitten earlier and left an angry red mark.

“Sorry,” she mumbled, half-asleep.

He smiled into her hair. “I liked it.”

She laughed, a soft rumble against his chest. “Of course you did.”

He thought she’d drift off again, but her hand crept across his stomach, trailing down, slow and deliberate. “I meant what I said before,” she whispered. “Those were… on another level entirely.” She sounded both shy and proud, as if confessing to a strange new superpower.

“Doesn’t bother me,” he said, with a grin.

Erin’s breath ghosted over his ear. “You want to see if it works one more time?”

They made love again, slower this time, every touch an apology and a promise at once. She let him take the lead, and he tried to remember every detail—how her hair fanned out across the pillow, the faint scrape of her knee against his hip, the way she grinned and then lost the ability to do anything but clutch him tighter.

He traced the curve of her collarbone with his lips, feeling her pulse flutter beneath his tongue. When he moved lower, she arched against him, fingers tangling in his hair, guiding him. The moonlight caught the sheen of sweat along her stomach as it tensed and released with each breath. "Andy," she whispered pleadingly, her voice breaking on his name like a wave on rocks. He took his time, mapping her body with deliberate patience, finding places that made her breath catch, learning the language of her sighs.

He tried to make it last, but Erin, true to form, shattered first, her whole body going taut, a wordless gasp locked in her throat. Then the second orgasm hit her so hard that she bit his shoulder again, harder this time, as if she could anchor herself to the present with the pressure of her teeth. Her nails scored lines down his back as she pulled him closer, deeper, her legs wrapped around him with **** strength. "Don't stop," she commanded, though he had no intention of doing so. He watched her face as pleasure overtook her again, memorizing the vulnerability there, the trust that had been so hard-won between them.

Andy lost track of everything except the way her body fit against his, the way her arms pulled him closer even when his own muscles failed. When he finished, it was less an explosion than an unraveling, all the tension in his body collapsing into hers.

Afterward, they lay tangled in the dark, neither willing to be the first to move. The moon cast a faint blue rectangle onto the ceiling, flickering in and out as clouds scudded by. Andy listened to the distant surf and the soft, irregular click of the ceiling fan, heart still racing but mind startlingly clear.

“Hey,” Erin whispered at last, her voice small, almost afraid of breaking the spell. “I’m glad we’re here.”

He wrapped his arms around her, holding her as tight as he dared. “Me too,” he said, and this time he knew he meant it.

They drifted toward sleep, and Andy thought of the future, and of all the ways he could fail, and of all the ways he might try not to.

He didn’t know if he could ever be whole, but with Erin beside him, it didn’t seem as important.

He closed his eyes, listening to the even rhythm of her breath, and let the night carry him.

5-Time Combo! +3 VP
First! x2
Achievement (Erin Delgado): There and Back Again! +5 VP