"Cruise!" I can't stop staring at the beautiful ring he holds between us as we kneel in this frozen version of heaven. Everything in me surges. An explosion of brand new feelings go off inside me like fireworks, so potent and viral, they put excitement and wonder to shame.

Through the eye of this ring is a portal, a bright shiny path to a future with Cruise. It comes with a promise, backed by love, and everything in me sighs with relief because the very thing I decried as a fallacy, materialized in the only person I have ever wanted. And now, he held something tangible for me to have and to hold, from this day on.

"Yes!" It drills from my lungs, loud and capricious - crisp as the air that sings it back to me in an echo.

"Yes?" He looks unsure as if maybe he dreamed it.

"Yes! Yes, yes, yes!" I lunge into him with a swarm of wild kisses, salted with tears. I have never felt so whole, so happy and overwhelmed all at the same time.

"Yes." Cruise closes his eyes a moment. He picks up my left hand and slips the ring on my finger. It glows against my skin. The diamond shimmers in the reserve of light like a star encased in a seam of moonlight. "It was my grandmother's ring. I hope you don't mind."

"God, no. It's beautiful. I'm touched it belonged to her." I shiver into him. "And it fits. That's a miracle."

"You could trade it in, or we could get you something different for the wedding. I just thought it'd look gorgeous on you, and I was right." His gaze never dips from mine.

"I don't want anything different. This is perfect. You're perfect."

Cruise melts a kiss over my lips and runs his hands up the back of my sweater, warm and strong. The same arms that will love me tomorrow and the day after that until eternity unravels like a spool.

My coat acts like a blanket as I pull Cruise down to the snow. His face is alarmingly attractive against the backdrop of a sodden sky, and my stomach melts at the sight of him - at the thought of knowing he'll always be mine. He kneads his hands over my body as if he were a sculptor, working my jeans down, anxious to have me. He dusts his fingers over my belly, slips his hand between my thighs, and his dimples dig in like twin shadows. Cruise watches from above as I writhe from his touch - he supervises with a heated intensity as he sets me on fire from the inside. This erotic bliss, this inflamed burst of ecstasy is the threshold to a new era in our lives. He relaxes over me and pushes in with his hips, slow and sweet, meeting me right there in my fevered delirium.

Cruise makes love to me in a bed of snow with those tender groans that wrench from him with an aching passion. He blesses me with a kiss, soft and careful as his tongue strokes over mine. Cruise satiates me from the inside out with a pull of dizzying affection. I memorize his touch, take in his scent, fill my ears with every errant sound that emanates from his throat. Everything about Cruise makes me greedy for more. He covers me with his body and buries himself inside me in the most intimate way.

This is all I want.

Forever.

The next week, after Gender Relations, Cruise said there is someplace special he wants to take me.

Cruise holds my hand as we walk boldly through campus. I'm still hopped up on our newly engaged status. We've spent every night tangled in one another's arms, locked in the bliss of what the future holds for us.

A parade of bicycles clutter the walkways. They speed by as if this were a busy New York sidewalk - the Tour De France taking place right here at Garrison.

He pauses just shy of a tall brick building. His gaze rides to the top, then to me. There's a mischievous look in his eye that suggests the architectural erection standing in front of us has something to do with his special locale.

"If this involves repelling, you can count me out." No use placating him with false hope. I'd just as soon leap from a building as I would eat a bowl of greasy worms.

"No repelling. I promise." Cruise brings my hand to his lips and presses in a kiss that warms me down to my toes.

My mouth opens to say something, but a blonde in a red coat catches my eye off in the distance. It's Blair from art, which reminds me, I meant to ask her if she'd be open to trapping Cal. Lauren has been after me every chance she gets, even though I've assured her I won't be hitting on another guy anytime soon. Not when I have Cruise.

He reels me in and we duck into a narrow door through the back. It's dark inside. The stench of mildew and rust lights up my senses.

"Welcome to the tower, Kenny," he says, nodding over to a stairwell that leads dozens of stories to the top of Garrison's most prized phallic symbol.

"This will take hours." I'm quick to point out. Plus, this is one vertigo-inspired workout I'm not looking forward to.

He pushes a button behind me, and an elevator door silently opens.

"Clever," I say, more than slightly relieved. "My feet appreciate the reprieve."

We climb in and ride to the top at gravity defying speeds. Cruise makes himself at home, nibbling on my earlobe with his hot, hungry mouth.

The doors open to an iced bite of wind, and that revised syllabus comes flooding back to me. Number ten, the grand finale - the tower.

"Oh God," it comes out frail.

"I got you," he whispers with a devious smile.

Cruise leads us outside to the giant globe that floats over campus like an insignia. The graphite sky looms above. Burnt grey clouds bow so close you could touch them. I half-expect the finger of God to reach out like a fresco come to life.

I catch a glimpse down at the tiny people shuffling around campus. The landscape zooms in and out as I sway on my feet.

"Don't be afraid," he says, steadying me. He pulls me gently into the metal frame of the sphere with the utmost care. Cruise wants this. This is the piece de resistance of his orgasmic outline, the one he drew up for my eyes only.

I give a naughty grin as I drop to my knees and peel open his jeans. He clasps his hand over mine and kneels beside me.

"Kenny, you're a work of beauty. You know that?"

"No, I don't know that," I whisper as the color rises to my cheeks. "But I'm damn glad you think so."

Cruise scoops my face in his palms, kissing me full on the lips with the fire from his mouth.

The wind slices through the gap between our bodies as if it were trying to keep us apart, push us over the edge - trade in our love for tragedy. But Cruise lays me down, holding me steady with the weight of his affection. He hovers over me with a wicked grin, taking me in, soaking up the experience as if this were the sum total of all he ever wanted. He runs his hands inside my sweater and frees me from my bra with the dexterity of a magician. He bows into my neck with steamed kisses before creating a trail down my chest, slow and steady as if the world and everything in it were ours. We had a million years to love one another, wherever we pleased - whenever.

Cruise maneuvers me free from my jeans, pulls down his boxers, and his love for me dives into the open. His warm body rides over mine, teasing me with barely-there kisses. He kneads his hands into my hips, rolling me into him until I'm panting for what he's about to offer. I reach down and guide him in, soft and easy until my body arches to meet his, and I take in a breath. Cruise pulsates in and out as we create a soothing rhythm. He lands his lips over mine; they drift to my ear, my neck, quick as lightning. Cruise bites and licks, moans and calls my name until we're lost in that beautiful oblivion built just for the two of us. My lids flutter. The clouds rotate dressed in navy and black while the wind sears us with its wrath. With Cruise, I no longer fear the heights the world has to offer. Now I would crave them. With Cruise, I no longer wonder what it would be like to be loved. Now I'll know forever.

"God, Kenny." He boils the words into my ear as his body launches into a series of convulsions. Cruise lets out a guttural roar and arches his neck back, his eyes closed to heaven. I want to remember him this way - nothing but Cruise and sky - the pinnacle of lust with a backdrop of cinder.

My insides sail me past passion and reason, and I flex into him hard and fast. Cruise doesn't let up. He thrusts in deeper until all of the breath leaves my body. I clutch onto his back, pulling him in with violent intention.

A dark laugh rumbles from him as his skin blisters against mine.

"I love you, Kenny." His heart knocks against my chest as if demanding to come inside.

"I love you, too, Cruise." I pull a wet kiss off his lips, trying to catch my breath.

Cruise always leaves me breathless.

I tried to convince Cruise we should go home and continue the prequel to our honeymoon, but he insists I go to my afternoon sessions, poor hygiene and all.

In art, Ally, of all people, surprises the hell out of me by being the next student hungry for two hundred solid. She lends her body to the class as a landscape with a smile, and every guy in the class is perked to attention. The male model never showed, so she's a one-woman show. I can tell she's uncomfortable because she keeps trying to cover her girl parts by crossing her arms and legs, and Professor Webber keeps barking at her to knock it off.

A little warning would have been nice on Ally's part, but, then again, she probably doesn't know I'm in this class.

I trace her out in charcoal - thin and wispy, making her limbs look as though they've run through a pasta machine. I want to make her face as beautiful as possible because I know she's going to want to see this. Anyway, Ally is gorgeous, so I don't have to worry about trying to make her look good - more like trying to make her look human. Needless to say, my aptitude for sketching people leaves a lot to be desired. Speaking of Ally - that totally reminds me of Lauren's ludicrous plan to sick a faux tramp on her boyfriend. That's so twisted I don't even know how to classify it.

"Say, Blair?" I take her in as she wistfully sketches Ally, giving her ballooning hips fit for birthing an elephant. "Would you mind trying to seduce someone's boyfriend to prove he's not a cheat?"

Her tiny mouth opens. Blair looks at me with wonder as if a backhanded miracle just took place.

"You want me to seduce your boyfriend?" She stammers, flustered at the idea of hitting on Cruise, and suddenly I'm sorry I ever brought it up.

"No, not my boyfriend. He would never cheat. It's for a friend."

"Nope, wouldn't do it." She whips her pencil across the oversized sheet of paper. Funny how her enthusiasm waned once "my" boyfriend disappeared from the scene.

"Is that a ring on your finger?" Blair's eyes magnify and retract at the sight of the shiny band of platinum.

"His grandmother's." I hold it out for her to inspect and her face turns a strange ashen shade. "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine." Her lips pinch tight. "So how'd he do it? It's the boy with the penis, right?"

I don't like her reducing Cruise to such indelicate body parts, but I let it slide since she's bitter. Nothing like a broken heart to turn you off to men forever, or so my mother says. Although with Mom, forever is the span of time between her divorce finalizing and her next visit to the local bar.

"He took me out on horseback," I whisper. "It was this place that looked like heaven on earth, and he dropped to his knees - made love to me in the snow after, right there in the field like we were the only two people in world," I say it low, mostly to myself as I relive the memory. A thread of heat rises through me, and suddenly it's too warm inside the jacket, inside the boots he bought for me with his careful attention to my needs. "He's perfect."

She huffs into my admission. "I bet his last fiancee thought so, too." She shrugs as if I should already know this. "Does he ever talk about her?"

The ground beneath me sways for a moment. I knew Cruise had a girlfriend, but he's never brought her up. For sure he never mentioned an engagement.

"No, he doesn't say much."

"Funny." She smirks, continuing on with the distorted picture in front of her. Blair's pencil glides across the page in a series of spastic strokes as she disfigures Ally's forehead to make it look twice its natural size. "For a couple that's supposedly so in love, you don't seem to know a lot about him. Then again, he probably doesn't want you to find out why they broke it off."

Why they broke it off? "Do you know why they broke it off?"

"Oh..." She grunts with marked aggression, "I do know. They crashed and burned." She says it with an exaggerated sadness as if there's an irony in there somewhere. "He cheated. He's prone to wander. But you know that. He's slept with at least five hundred girls. He's got pig's blood coursing through his veins just like his daddy."

A breath gets caught in my throat. She so did not go there.

"What the hell are you talking about?" The words edge out as if each one took me one step closer to stepping off a cliff. "Take it back. Cruise isn't like that, and I don't appreciate you reducing him or his father to farm animals." My blood boils right down to the marrow to hear her talk about Cruise like that.

She gives a solid laugh. "It's true. But you're one of those girls who needs to find things out the hard way, I can tell."

The sudden urge to slap her rails through me, and the only thing stopping me is the fact a bitch like Blair would most likely file assault charges.

"Boy" - a frustrated laugh gyrates through me - "someone really screwed you over, didn't they?" This is the last conversation I'm ever having with this psycho. I'm sorry I ever sat on this side of the room.

She needles me with those dark, brooding eyes. Her face is hard as flint with all of the sweetness drained right out of her.

"You're right. Someone really screwed me over. Or maybe I did it to myself." Her arm glides over the page in front of her, violent and spastic. She creates large black X's through her meticulous sketch until the pencil knifes through layers of onion paper. She stops cold and looks right at me with a fire in her eyes that looks downright caustic. "He still loves her. You know that, right? That's the reason he never brings her up - because it hurts so bad. He'll always love the girl he was going to marry. You don't really want to be second place in his heart, do you?"

I pack my things and turn to go, but she catches me by the elbow.

"Look" - she closes her eyes briefly - "I'm only trying to do you a favor. I never want you to feel as bad as I do. There's someone special out there for you, Kendall. It's just not him. His heart still belongs to me."

My stomach lurches. I scoot the hell back, knocking down easels like dominos and half the room erupts from the chaos.

This is her?

She never once said so, and yet she listened as I told her the intimate details of our relationship.

I run out of the building.

I never plan on going back.

Cruise

Caught a ride home with Lauren. xoxo

Ride with Lauren? Huh. Maybe she's not feeling good.

I would have left early if she wanted. I'm all done with classes just logging the last few minutes of office hours.

Strange. It's usually me waiting for her. We've been driving together the past few weeks to save on gas. It won't be the same leaving without her next to me. I actually miss her.

I let out a little laugh. It looks like Ms. Jordan has me whipped after all. My how the mighty have fallen.

A shadow darkens the doorway, and for a fleeting moment I'm convinced it's Kenny. She's probably going to tie me to the chair and make good use of this paper penitentiary.

"Cruise?" A female voice scratches the air.

My blood runs cold before I turn around.

I recognize that sharp tone, that curt inflection. Blair. She never did say my name with an ounce of respect.

My shoes dig in as I spin in my seat. I knew this was coming. Deep down inside, I never wanted to see her again, but her persistence, her stalker-like abilities ensured otherwise.

"Can I help you?" I look right at her. Her bright red coat glares at me like some damn alarm that I wish I would have ran from all those years ago - her lying lips, those deceptive eyes. Now that I see her again in this new light called reality, she's plain compared to Kenny - downright skeletal in contrast to my future bride's well-placed curves. For sure she's hideous on the inside where it counts.

"What the hell do you want?" I say it low, to not stir the professors in their microcosms around me.

"You're to the point." She slinks in and closes the door behind her.

She thinks she's caged me in, but I'm not above leaving.

"Heard you put a ring on it." She pulls her shoulders to her ears before taking a seat on the desk right next to me.

It feels uncomfortable being this close to her, smelling that familiar perfume that unloads a truck full of bad memories.

"Listen" - she pulls her head back - "I'm just here as a friend. I don't know how it happened, but I sit next to her in art, call it kismet, fate, whatever the hell you want, but she tells me these wild things about other guys and I thought you should know."

"Really." I used to buy whatever Blair sold by the gallon, but I stopped scooping her shit down my throat like ice cream once I discovered she was spoon-feeding me lies.

"Yeah, really. She said she's in training to be the town whore and that she's 'playing the player.' Trying to get him to believe he's actually falling in love."

My stomach bottoms out.

"I don't know what you're talking about, nor do I want to. Why don't you go back to Dartmouth, or didn't they want you there either?" I didn't need to say it. I could have picked up my briefcase and bolted for the door, but a part of me wanted to push in the dig to let her know I didn't appreciate what she did. Although, in the end, I'm glad it happened. I don't know what I would have done if Kenny walked into my life, and I was still serving time with Blair.

"I've come back to you." Her eyes widen like cesspools filled with malice and loathing. "I came back for us. We spent four years as a couple."

"Four years I'll never get back." I shut my laptop and slip it into my briefcase.

"We had good times, Cruise. It doesn't have to end like this. We could forget all about that guy and all about this silly girl. We could be Cruise and Blair again and spend the rest of our lives together. I won't ever bring her up, I swear."

Blair spins her fantasies like a witch trying to cast an impotent spell, and a laugh gets caught in my throat. "You won't bring up my fiancee because you won't be around to do it. Kenny and I belong together, not you and me." I stand, towering above her. "Sorry things didn't work out for you and that, what was it? Basketball player?" I head to the door and turn around. "Heard you cheated on him just like you cheated on me. Looks like we both get what we deserve. I get true love, and you get screwed." I head out of the building so fast my heart tries to detonate out of my chest.

That felt good.

Damn good.

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