Three years later, aboard a luxury yacht in the Cerulean Sea, the sea breeze brushed across the deck with a warm, briny tang. In the distance, the water was a spectrum of blues, transitioning from the emerald hue at my feet to the ink-blue of the horizon. The sunlight shattered into millions of flakes of gold, spread across the ripples of the waves.
I leaned back in a lounge chair, wearing a white cotton-linen dress, my bare feet propped up on the railing, toes sun-kissed to a pale pink.
Ethan sat beside me, peeling an apple. His movements were slow and meticulous; the peel came away in a single, continuous strip, like an endless red silk ribbon that never broke. In the distance, the sun was setting. Its orange-red glow set the clouds ablaze in rose gold, casting a long, shimmering pilla
