No questions.

No judgments.

No faking it.

No apologies.

Our lives were far from perfect, but the fact that we were living and not standing still as the world turned beneath our feet made it perfect to us.

Porter came on the muffled groan of my name, and moments later, I followed him down in a crash of ecstasy.

“Jesus,” he breathed, peppering kisses over my face and neck.

Smiling, I raked my nails up and down his back. His skin pebbled and he squirmed as I teased at his sides.

“Ya know…I only promised her an office. I didn’t say anything about there being a desk.”

“Excellent call. We can throw this baby in the Tahoe and put it with the couch from my office. I can see it now. The bonus room could become a shrine for all the places we’ve had sex.”

“That wouldn’t be awkward at all,” I teased.

“I have it on good authority that you like awkward,” he mumbled, begrudgingly pulling out of me as he started to soften.

After a long discussion, I’d finally given in and agreed to move in with Porter. It really did make sense. I was still terrified, but it had been next to impossible to tell him no when I could feel his excitement vibrating in the air between us. Since I had until the end of the month to be out, we’d decided to slowly move my stuff into Porter’s house. But, a few days later, I’d learned that the word slow had a vastly different meaning to him. One afternoon, after I’d come home from the hospital to take a shower, I’d boxed a few things up to start the merger of our lives. I’d given Porter my keys and asked him to pick them up on his way home. The next day, I’d walked through my front door to find a herd of professional movers and a nearly empty apartment.

We’d fought—okay, fine. I’d fought. Porter had just smiled. A lot.

We’d been officially living together for over a week and not once had we slept under the same roof. One of us was always up at the hospital—usually me so Porter could stay at home with Hannah.

It was exhausting, but none of that mattered. Not as long as we had each other.

The office was empty as I walked back from the bathroom after having cleaned up. It was funny—I’d spent so much of my time in that building, years of my life spent growing that place into the thriving pulmonology practice it had become, but I wasn’t going to miss it.

Sure, I’d be back, but when I walked through those doors again, I’d be doing it as a different person.

The broken, lost-in-the-darkness version of Charlotte Mills was gone. And I couldn’t have been happier about the future without her.

Pushing my office door open, I found Porter standing at my desk, staring at his phone.

He didn’t look up as he said, “Six minutes. You go first.”

I smiled at the ridiculous game I knew he’d made up that day at the hospital to distract me. But such was Porter. He did a lot of things just to make me smile when it should have been impossible.

Swaying my hips, I sauntered over to him. “Six minutes from now, we’ll be in the car, on the way back to our house to drop this stuff off.” I ducked under his arm and pressed my front against his side while circling my arms around his waist.

He finally looked up from his phone and it felt as though the air had become electrified. His face was tight, and his jaw was clenched. But his eyes—God, I will never forget his eyes—were filled with light.

“Porter?” I whispered.

“Six hours from now, we’ll be sitting in the recovery room with Travis. Listening to the sound of his new heart beating on a monitor.” His voice broke and his shoulders shook, but it was a loud and joyous laugh that sprang from his throat.

Nerves and excitement ignited inside me as the hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. “What?” I breathed.

He smiled down at me. “They’re prepping him for surgery now. We need to get up to the hospital.”

My face crumbled, but through it all, a smile grew on my lips. “Seriously?” I asked in disbelief that it was finally happening, and hopefully for real this time.

Porter’s eyes filled with more love than I had known existed in the world only a few months earlier. And then he dipped low, and with one touch of his lips, he transferred it all to me.

“Seriously, sweetheart.”

We were alone in the darkness.

The place where it had all started.

And the place where we were desperately hoping it would end.

I was in his lap, our breaths mingling as silence filled the air.

There were no confessions to make.

It had been four hours since the nurse had come in to tell us that they had started the surgery.

And two hours since she had come back to inform us that his heart had been removed.

With the exception of the day when I’d realized he’d gone missing, I’d never been more terrified in my life. Whether his body accepted the new heart or not, there was no turning back.

But that was exactly the thing with our lives—none of us wanted to go back. Our hopes and dreams were all about the future laid out in front of us.

Images of Travis graduating high school and attending his first prom illuminated the backs of my eyelids.

Visions of Porter holding my hand as he grew older, his hair turning gray but his infectious smile never fading.

Hannah blossoming into a young woman who loved sleepovers, makeup, and giggling about boys until three a.m.

And me experiencing it all right along with them, embracing every moment of the beauty I never thought I’d have.

Porter nuzzled my jaw and I closed my eyes, reveling in the warmth as it cascaded over me, driving out the chill of reality.

No questions.

No judgments.

No faking it.

No apologies.

We both jumped as the door cracked open.

The darkness parted to make way for the light.

Sticks and stones will break my bones, but words will never harm me.

Lies.

Syllables and letters may not be tangible, but they can still destroy your entire life faster than a bullet from a gun.

However, they can also heal your wounds, tethering parts of your heart back together when all hope seemed lost.

Words weren’t always the weapon.

They were sometimes the sweetest remedy.

Nine words. That was all it took to bathe my entire world in the brightest light imaginable.

“He did great. Everything’s going to be just fine.”

* * *

“This isn’t fair!” Travis complained for approximately the four hundredth time since the party had started.

Two number one candles were glowing from the top of his chocolate cake, illuminating his face as the purples and pinks of the sunset behind him faded into darkness.

Various shades of blue, green, and brown streamers—Minecraft colors—decorated the deck at our new house. We’d only been there for a few months, but it was more of a home than I’d had in over a decade. That had little to do with the five-bedroom, three-bath house Porter and I had picked out together and everything to do with the three people who shared it with me.

While Porter had convinced me to move in with him, I’d still had a few reservations. And, only weeks after I’d officially changed my address, I’d figured out what they were. Catherine might not have been a part of his house, but as I’d stood on our front porch watching Hannah collect fireflies in a pickle jar, the small one-story house Porter had shared with his ex-wife had taunted me from the end of the cul-de-sac.

She didn’t get to be a part of that beauty. Not even in memories. At least, not mine.

Porter, being the amazingly understanding man he always had been, didn’t bat an eye when I’d confessed in the darkness my desire to move. The very next afternoon, I’d sat in his lap at the kitchen table and scanned the listings our real estate agent had emailed over.

We bought the first house we looked at. It was everything we had never known we wanted. It was further out than we had planned to move—at least thirty minutes from each of our offices. But it was nowhere near Porter’s bridge or Lucas’s park. Just the way we liked it. Though what really sold me on the property was the clear view of the horizon off the expansive back deck.

Every morning, the rising sun would flood the living room in light. And it was just far enough outside the city that, each night, after the sun had disappeared, the stars danced in the sky, proving that there was always light to be found—even in the darkness.