Yasmine was sitting by the pool when Seth came to the archway in the wall of the pool area. Though he already had on his swim trunks and a towel in his hand, he didn’t go in. She looked deep in thought. For a moment, he felt like he shouldn’t disturb her. He held back before alerting her to his presence. Maybe it was the moonlight above, or the scent of the confederate jasmine hanging over the wall of the pool deck, or maybe it was simply the sight of her splashing her toes in the water under the moonlight, but he felt hypnotized watching her. His breath caught in his chest, and he had to process what that meant. He had to process what he felt earlier in the car with Vanessa when he was reflecting on Yasmine. Did he love her? Really truly love her, the way a man loves a woman, not a cousin.

  He finally felt ready to approach her. She looked distressed, and he was concerned. “You okay?” he asked, walking up and tossing his towel down on a nearby chaise lounge.

  “Had a rough night.”

  “Wanna talk about it?” he asked sitting down beside her.

  She did want to talk about it. She wanted to tell someone how frightened Jake had made her, but she also knew if she told Seth he’d go after Jake. She just wanted to forget the matter. “No,” she said.

  “I had a pretty bad night myself,” Seth admitted. “Vanessa and I are done.”

  “Really?” Yasmine exclaimed in surprise and hoped she hadn’t sounded as happy as she felt. “What happened?”

  Seth didn’t say anything. He just kicked the water with his feet, trying to splash to the other side of the pool. He wanted to tell her, but it was embarrassing. This was not something he could tell her. Was it?

  Leaving Seth his privacy, since he clearly wasn’t going to divulge anything further, Yasmine decided to share a little of her tale as well. “It’s over with me and Jake too.”

  Seth’s heart thumped in his chest. “Really?”

  “Jake turned out to be pretty awful. Not the guy for me.”

  “Same. Except the awful part,” Seth replied. “Vanessa’s pretty great. Just not the one for me.”

  Yasmine was confused. “What’s wrong with her?”

  He hadn’t meant to, and he could have kicked himself the second it left his lips, but his heart betrayed his better sense and Seth replied, “She’s not you.” Then he dove into the pool.

  Yasmine’s heart nearly stopped. She could not believe what she just heard. Seth was swimming underwater now as she sat there questioning whether or not he’d actually said the words she thought she’d heard. His head popped up on the other side of the pool, and slowly he began walking back towards her, moonlight glistening off his smooth chest.

  “What did you just say?”

  Seth faced her from a few feet away. He sighed, then swept his hair back out of his eyes. “Yaz, there’s a moment, just one little moment, when one word can change things forever,” He was nervous now. Unsure. “But if we let that moment go without saying it, then life won’t change. Things will just go on as they always have. I don’t want things to go on the way they always have. But I also don’t want to change the way things have always been.”

  “You are not making sense, Seth. Say it.”

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  “One little word though, Yaz. It can ruin everything. Or it can make everything. What if it all changes and nothing is ever the same? What if it gets even better? But what if it doesn’t?”

  “Seth!” Yasmine exclaimed. Then she smiled. It was a safe smile. A reassuring smile. A requited smile. “Seth. Say it.”

  He moved even closer. Her legs now dangling at the sides of his chest. He rested his arms on her knees. She shivered from the cold drops running off his arms. “I love you, Yaz. I guess I have always loved you. You’re the only person on earth I can never live without.”

  She slid off the edge of the pool into his embrace. They kissed. It was gentle. It was tender. It told everything. Seth placed his hands on her head and pulled her lips closer. The kiss turned more passionate, more electric than either of them had ever felt in their lives. When it was over, she laid her head against his wet shoulder. He could feel her heart beating against his chest. Her soft hair tickled his nose in the summer breeze. She smelled of jasmine. Or maybe it was the vine. He didn’t know. All Seth Blanchard knew was that he had never known such peace in all of his life as he stood in the pool holding Yasmine in his arms.

  “Aren’t you forgetting to say something?” he grinned tilting his head to stare one eye into hers below him.

  “Oh,” she laughed. “I love you, too, Seth. I have loved you all my life. I remember two things from the first night I came to live here. I remember how kind Grandmother was to me when Granddaddy brought me into the house. And I remember the grubby little boy with dirt on his face and a leaf still stuck in his wooly sweater. He looked after me. He also picked on me and put gum in my hair. But he still looked out for me. I knew that night I loved that little boy.”

  Seth grinned. “I wonder whatever happened to that little boy.”

  “Well, from the feel of it,” she smirked looking down at the water where their waists were pressed against each other. “He’s not so little anymore.”

  Seth blushed.

  Upstairs, hours later, Seth held her in his arms as they rested in his bed. Her cheek was pressed to his chest, and she ran her fingers lightly up and down his forearm into the open palm of his hand. It was a familiar caress, from a long time ago—but somehow different when she did it now. He moaned at her touch.

  “I like that; I remember that,” he whispered.

  “Granddaddy used to soothe us like that when we were little and he’d be reading to us before bed,” Yasmine reminded him. “It was so soft. It always put us right to sleep.”

  “I had forgotten about that ‘till now.”

  Yasmine suddenly changed the subject with a timid laugh and the blurting out of, “I can’t believe you’ve seen me naked now.”

  “I know!” Seth chuckled. “I thought the same thing when you stripped me down and jumped on me.”

  “Seth Blanchard that is not at all what happened, and you know it.”

  “I distinctly remember you being unable to control yourself,” Seth smirked. “And I never would have thought in a million years you’d do the things to me you did tonight.”

  Yasmine gently punched him in the side. He pulled her closer to his chest and kissed the top of her head. She still smelled like jasmine. Or maybe that wasn’t her or the vine after all, maybe that’s simply what love smells like.

  “You know you wanted me,” he teased.

  “You are so vain, Seth Blanchard.”

  “It’s okay,” he kissed her hand as he clutched it to his chest. “I wanted you just as much. I guess I always have.”

  “What do we do now?” Yasmine asked. “Do we keep this quiet? How will the family take this?”

  “There’s no way to keep it quiet,” Seth started as he sat up. He looked serious now. He wasn’t playing anymore. “This isn’t a fling, Yaz. This isn’t a one-night stand. This isn’t even the beginning of a relationship. We’ve been having a relationship for years; we just wouldn’t admit it until tonight.”

  “You’re right, Seth.”

  She liked that he had been the one to say it. She liked that he was recognizing now the thing she’d hoped for years he would see. Yasmine and Seth had spent their entire lives teasing each other, confiding in each other. They’d been one another’s rock during the hard times and a soft place to land in the desperate times. Yasmine Sinclair had always wondered how Seth could receive all of those things from her yet always searched out some other girl when it came to falling in love. Why couldn’t he see that was under his nose all along. Now he did.

  “So we tell the family?”

  “Are you asking me or telling me?” she replied.

  “I don’t know,” he blushed. “As for me, I say we tell them--but if we are together now then we are partners. I can’t just decide. You have to weigh in on what you want, too.”

  Partners. He gets it, she thought. He finally gets it.

  “Well, partner,” she quipped. “We will tell them tomorrow.”