Author's Note: Ohhhh God, I don't know guys...this story is silly. I can't get it to read the way I want it to and I'm tired of nitpicking at it so I decided to post the last part anyway. I hope it's just me being a perfectionist and it's not as bad as I think it is!


Part III

"Hey."

I start and suck in a surprised breath, suddenly noticing that the car is no longer moving.

"Still with me?" my Caspian asks with an amused smile.

"Yeah, I'm sorry," I say, quickly shaking myself out of it. We're parked in the same gravel lot we were earlier today, nothing in front of us but a choppy expanse of sand that eventually gives way to the dark, rippling ocean, gentle waves spun with silver lapping up against the shore. It's completely deserted, and the moon hangs low in the sky, bright and very nearly full.

"What do you think about when you space out like that?" he asks, his eyes trailed intently upon me.

I can barely look at him now, not with the way the moonlight hits his face, the way his gaze bores into me like a drill bit made of diamond. "Nothing," I lie hoarsely. I don't think about anything. I don't think about horse drawn carriages. I don't think about glass slippers. I don't think about my mother's last words, I especially don't think about him, his thick, powerful arms wrapped around some blonde goddess' waist. I don't put myself in her place.

"I don't believe that for a second," he informs me. "You're too insightful for that, you have to be thinking about something."

I look down and shake my head. I can't tell him. It's ridiculously silly, it's embarrassing, it's my little secret and nobody else needs to know. "I really don't, I just…it's a pretty night," I rationalize. "I was just…looking."

He laughs quietly. "Fine, I guess since it's your birthday I'll let you off the hook," he decides. "Here." He puts out his cigarette and exchanges it for the blunt tucked behind his ear. "You only have fifteen more minutes left of being a kid," he adds, nodding towards the clock on the dashboard. "Care to do the honors?"

I shyly reach out and take the blunt from between his fingers, trying to convince myself that the ever so slight brush of our wrists against each other as I do so isn't intentional on my part. He leans a little closer and flicks the lighter as I slowly start to inhale, and I can see the warm orange glow of the little flame reflecting in each of his eyes.

As if he isn't magical enough to me already.

The first time we ever got high together – the first time I ever got high in my life – he, my brother, and I sat in a circle in the middle of the floor passing around a bowl and lighter while I laughed until I got cramps in my sides as I tried to teach them both the finer points of my favorite fairy tales.

"So wait, I thought Snow White was asleep," my brother slurred, "because she got cursed by the one bitchy fairy who didn't get invited to her birthday party - "

"No, dude, that was Sleeping Beauty," my prince interrupted. "Snow White was asleep because the Evil Queen poisoned the apple, because the mirror on the wall said Snow White was the fairest of - "

"Wait, but why was she the fairest of them all though?" my brother argued. "If she was so pale and pasty then why did everyone think she was so hot?"

"Because that's the whole point of the story! This bitch is trying to kill her with a poison apple - "

"But she doesn't have to is what I'm saying, the mirror could be wrong - "

"It's a magical mirror, it's not wrong dude - "

I just laughed and laughed and laughed some more.

Then their older friend with a pierced tongue and a face like a rat's showed up, in his pocket a fairly small, tightly rolled joint which he immediately lit up. He passed it over his shoulder to the defender of my fairy tales who looked at me and warned, "You probably shouldn't smoke any of this, baby girl. It's not like my stuff, it's really strong. Might be too much for you."

I really should have listened, but it was so small and innocuous looking. Like the spinning wheel that knocked Sleeping Beauty on her back for 100 years, I couldn't imagine what harm it could possibly cause.

Some time later I found myself alone in a room I didn't recognize with no recollection of how I got there, staring up at the ceiling and the way the shadows twirled and writhed horribly on the rapidly shrinking walls, wondering what in the world had happened to me, when a pale, long-fingered hand latched onto my shoulder.

"You like fairy tales, honey?" crooned a gravelly voice, a glint of silver catching my eye with every flick of his tongue. "Want to see my magic wand?"

I didn't have a clue what he was talking about, didn't even have time to try to work it out before a wet, cold, metal-studded tongue was in my mouth. It tasted like ashes and liquor, like the sticky, dark soot on the inside of the hearth that Cinderella slept beside.

The tongue slithered back out of my mouth as quickly as it had come, and then somehow my left cheek was on his lap, resting against his bare thigh as he petted my head and his sharp, too-long fingernails snagged in my hair. "To activate the magic you have to lick it," he told me, "like a candy cane. You can call me the Candy Man." He cackled at his own joke.

It was true that everything did seem magical at the time, but it was magic in its most wrong, twisted form. There were no stars or sparks, no giggles or warm tingles, no sense of being on a flying carpet like there had been earlier. There was just my spinning head and my stinging eyes, my heart pounding against my ribs so hard and fast that I thought for sure it would just beat right out of my chest, sharp talons digging into my neck and a burning in the back of my throat that made me retch and gag, but I couldn't move. I couldn't breathe. Like the Little Mermaid crawling up on the shore to gaze longingly at her prince, wishing with all her might that she had the lungs to breathe his air, the legs to walk to him…

And then suddenly I could breathe again, and I coughed and sputtered like I was coming up from under a wave, my abs weak and sore from all the laughing that had taken place earlier in the evening.

"What the hell is going on?" demanded a voice from behind me, and I looked over to see my Richard the Lionheart, a little blurry at the edges but clearly furious, standing in the doorway with the fresh pack of cigarettes he had just gone across the street to get.

"Dude, it's not - " started the rat-faced man.

"No, you shut the fuck up," my prince interrupted loudly. "I'm pretty sure it's exactly what it looks like. I've been gone for ten minutes, are you kidding me?" He strode across the room and grabbed me underneath one arm, pulling me to my feet. "She's Matt's little sister!" he continued, clipping the consonants and spitting the words out like venom. "She's seventeen, you sick fucker - "

"Dude, I did not know that!" the pale, clawed man tried to argue.

I swayed on my feet and nearly fell face first into the wall, and as I reached out to steady myself I could feel hot tears spilling over the edges of my eyes. Everyone was yelling and it was all my fault. I had done something wrong, and in my inebriated state I didn't have the cognitive capacity to quite understand what it was, but I could tell I had made my beautiful prince very, very angry.

"She's high as a fucking kite, she can't even stand up!" the enraged voice continued. "What did you do to her? And where the fuck is Matt?"

"I let her have like, one or two hits, man. That's all, I swear! Her brother just fucking left her here with no explanation, it seemed messed up to not even offer - "

"Except that I told you not to fucking do that, didn't I?" He turned, the angle of his body blocking my view of the Rat King, and then slipped his arm around my shoulders and tightened his grip. "Come on, baby girl," he said softly. "It's okay, we're going to find your brother and then I'm taking you home. As for you," he added in the other direction, "don't ever fucking talk to me again, and just know that if Matt doesn't end up killing you I probably will."

There was more yelling after that, loud, grating sounds that made my ears ache so much that I had to cover them with my hands to make it stop. I hid my face in his chest, tried to tune it all out, tried to will my heart to slow down just for a second so I could breathe, and cried harder than I ever had before.

Since that day I've never smoked anything that wasn't handed to me by my white knight, because his is the only magic that I trust.

I let out a long breath, watching the cloud of smoke disappear into the night air, and tipping my head back as I feel the immediate effects of his spell. All my muscles relax and I melt back into the plush, velvet cushion behind me. Even from this far back I can hear the steady rush of the waves against the sand, and below that, very faintly, the rhythmic clip-clop of horses hooves as my fanciful carriage ride continues.

"Man, that's really good…" I breathe with a languid smile as I pass the blunt back over in his direction.

"And that's a surprise?" he says jokingly. "You know I wouldn't give you anything but the best."

"I know," I agree, letting my eyes close as the ocean breeze brushes across my face. "Thank you."

"So how are you doing?" he asks, taking a long drag and holding it in. "You didn't really talk much today."

I give a lazy shrug. "You had friends along," I answer.

He watches me evenly as he exhales ever so slowly. "So?" he says finally. "They know how to talk."

"Well, yeah, I know." I accept the blunt a second time. "They're just older than me and way more interesting than me, and I know I just get brought along because I'm 'Matt's little sister,' so I didn't want to bother you guys or be annoying or anything…"

He just lets out a single breath of laughter and watches me take another hit. "You never annoy me."

His magic leaves make me fearless, give me the courage to say things I normally wouldn't. "Are either of them your girlfriend?" I ask with a slow, thick-feeling tongue.

His lungs are clearly full of smoke but he shakes his head, and I feel the little knot in my gut that tightens itself up every time I picture him with another girl unwind just a tiny bit.

"Why not?" I press. "They're both so pretty."

When he lets go of his breath some of the smoke comes out his nose and makes him look like a dragon. "Just not my type," he explains. "I'm not really into the fake tan and hair extensions look."

"I'm sure they'd be pretty without it," I say honestly.

"Probably," he concedes, reaching over to pass the blunt back to me, "but I'm not really thinking about them right now."

The way his eyes are fixed on me makes me feel unsteady, like there's not quite enough oxygen in the air around me, and my mouth feels hot and dry. I want to keep being nosy, press him to tell me why exactly those girls don't hold his interest, if there's any way on earth I might possibly have something that they don't, enough to stand a chance with him, but I don't want to be too obvious. I don't want to let my curse get the better of me and ruin the most magical evening of my life just because I'm too restless and discontent to be happy with what I have, so, "Do you think you'll ever get married?" is what I ask instead, and I unconsciously hold my breath, waiting to see if the question is too personal, if I've scared him off with my unprecedented boldness.

He frowns slightly as he reaches for the blunt and takes another hit, but he doesn't look upset. "I hope so," he answers, each word punctuated by a small puff of smoke as he exhales. "I mean, I'm not in a hurry or anything, I'd like to have all my debt paid off first and have, you know, some idea of what I want to do with my life…" He laughs a little and rolls his eyes at me. "But who knows when that'll be, I have no clue right now. Why do you ask?"

I ask because princes should marry princesses and grow up to be kings and queens with little princes and princesses of their own, but he sleeps with barmaids and harlots and even the ones who show up more than once never last long after that. I wonder if he's the one who drops them, never calls back and ignores them when they pass on the street. I wonder if he treats them like dirt, breaks their hearts and laughs callously at their foolishness, their blind, misguided faith in the idea of romance.

Somehow I just can't bring myself to believe that about him.

I shrug, attempt to pass it off as just a whim, a spur of the moment thought with no deeper intention behind it. "I've never seen you have a girlfriend for more than a couple months," I try. "I thought maybe you just didn't like dating or didn't ever want to get married or something."

"No, I definitely do," he assures me. "I guess I'm just picky…just haven't found what I'm looking for yet."

I pull my feet up to rest on the edge of the seat and hug my knees to my chest, my heart thrumming rapidly as I build up my courage. "What is it you're looking for?" I ask, my eyes nervously flickering from his ear to his neck to his left shoulder, anywhere but his face.

He turns to me with a thoughtful expression and leans his head back against the seat. "Honestly?" he begins. "Probably the most important thing to me is someone who would make a good mother."

I feel my eyebrows lift and I straighten up a little. That's not what I was expecting to hear at all, certainly not the sort of thing I've ever overheard him discussing with my brother or any of their drunk friends. To them it seemed to always be about shape and size, the ease of the catch, and maybe intelligence or more commonly a lack thereof. Personality traits were rarely addressed.

He seems to sense my surprise. "I mean, obviously I'm close with my family," he explains. "That's something that's a big part of my life. I definitely want to have kids someday so I want the woman I marry to be just as dedicated to giving them a good life as I am."

"That's…really mature of you," I remark, and I don't let myself consider how backwards it is that I'm sitting here just barely eighteen commenting on anyone else's maturity level, much less a grown man. "I feel like most guys your age aren't thinking about that yet."

"Well, I can't speak for them," he points out, "but I know what I value, and I don't think I would want to spend the rest of my life with someone too selfish to put their family first." He pauses to smoke and gaze out the windshield for a moment before turning his attention back to me. "You know Lindsay," he continues, "from earlier today, with the dark hair?"

I nod numbly. I remember Lindsay. She's a hard one to forget, although I wouldn't exactly consider 'dark hair' her most distinctive attribute.

"I went on one date with her a few months ago," he says. "She was really nice, really outgoing and fun and we had a good time, but I could just tell less than an hour in that she was self-absorbed." He sighs and runs a hand over his head distractedly, as though the thought alone is enough to aggravate him. "So that was pretty much it," he concludes. "I didn't have any desire to go out with her again. Luckily she understood and still wanted to be friends, but a lot of girls don't and I respect that. It's not like I think I'm a playboy or anything," he adds with an earnest glance in my direction. "It's not like I'm proud of myself for it, I just don't see the point in wasting anybody's time."

The knot in my gut is clenching up again, despite how much I try to tell it that it's wrong, he doesn't like Lindsay after all, he only went out with her once and never again…because at least he went out with her in the first place. Her, and not me, because she's prettier than me and even if he wasn't interested in her for long he's never been interested in me ever.

I'd get on my knees and scrub the floor twelve hours a day for the rest of my life if it would buy me one date with him.

"What's wrong?" he asks, still pensive.

I shake my head quickly and accept the blunt that he holds out to me. "Nothing, sorry." It's pointless to think about things like that, especially while I'm actually in his presence. This alone should be a dream come true for me, and a princess should never be ungrateful.

He watches patiently while I take another hit and then says, "Come on. Let's go for a walk."

I agree, and he opens the door and slips out before I've even gotten it into my head that I need to take off my seatbelt. I'm still struggling with it when he gets around to my side of the car.

"Sorry," I groan as I fumble with the buckle some more. "Am I just really high, or am I not doing this right?"

He laughs and opens my door, reaching across my lap to help. His hand grazes my hip and I feel a lurch in my throat, I can't stop my own fingertips from fluttering against his wrist while he works. "You're probably pretty high," he informs me, "but also this thing is fucked up. I love watching your brother try to figure it out, I never help him."

I giggle at that, imagining my Wicked Stepmother drunkenly scrabbling with the seatbelt, growling obscenities the whole time and getting progressively more and more angry. "Well, thanks for helping me," I say with a wry smile as I take his hand again and slide off the seat onto the gravel.

He gives me a wink. "Only because it's your birthday. Next time I'm going to find out how long it takes you."

Next time…

The weight of those words isn't lost on me, and of course I wonder what next time means, but I'm determined not to let my curse run away with me. Just in case there's not a next time after all I want to spend every moment that I'm with him really with him, not swept off into some fabricated world where everything is quite literally too good to be true. He's not a prince, I tell myself. He's not anything special, he's just a regular person, but that's even better because princes have to attend stuffy diplomatic balls and hold court and listen to the peasants gripe and complain for hours a day. He doesn't have to do anything, but what he chooses to do is reach out and comb back a strand of my hair that's floating in the breeze, and he winds the end of it around his finger a couple times, his gaze holding steady with mine, before letting it go.

My stomach burns and churns, and my heart flutters.

We walk to the beach side by side in silence, the only sound the steady crash of water against the shore. I pause to slip off my shoes once we reach the sand, giggling sheepishly when he notices the delay. "I like the way the sand feels on my toes," I explain. "And I might want to put my feet in the water, I haven't really decided yet."

He looks amused but good-natured and takes another hit off the blunt before saying, "Do your thing, baby girl."

With my shoes safely stowed beside the walkway I follow him all the way down to the damp sand, watching his silhouette against the glow of neon lights from the pier in the distance, the way the wind makes his cotton shirt cling to his body. The moon's reflection on the rippling ocean splits into infinite refracted beams of light that dance back and forth over the waves, like the spiky branches of a solitary, leafless tree blowing back and forth.

"Doesn't it kind of look like a tree made out of diamonds?" I ask suddenly, pointing at the reflection, wondering if anyone else in the world sees what I see or if I'm just high and imagining that my thoughts are deep and meaningful.

He stares out at the water for a moment, deep in concentration. "Yeah, I can kind of see it." He turns to me. "What story is that from? I remember you told it to me one time when we were high. There were three trees I think, and one of them was made of diamonds…"

I bite back a smile and shuffle my feet a little deeper into the sand. "The Twelve Dancing Princesses," I reply softly. "How in the world do you remember that?"

"I remember most of the stories you taught me," he says almost indignantly, passing me the blunt again. "I mean, well, I probably remember more of the ones about like, dragons and swordfights and dismemberment than dancing princesses, but still."

I laugh. "You're such a boy," I accuse, but of course I wouldn't have him any other way.

I step forward, until I feel the water just barely lapping against my feet with each wave that rolls in, and take a deep breath of cool ocean air. I feel so content in this moment, my head light and buzzy, my toes buried in the sand, alone on the dark beach with him at my side, that for once in my life I don't feel my curse tugging at the back of my mind, trying to take me somewhere else instead. I turn around, my back to the sea, and look at him in wonder, amazed by how present I feel, how solid and alive and here. "Thank you," I say, "for remembering my birthday."

"Of course I remembered, I've never not remembered your birthday for as long as I've known you," he shoots back with a smirk. "The question is, are you going to remember mine?"

"Of course," I affirm. "It's the week after next. Are you doing anything fun?" He always has big parties for his birthday, crowded with friends and acquaintances and people who love him and remember him and want to be around him…

He nods. "I'm going up to my brother's for a day or two. There are some really good surf spots near where he lives." He surveys me thoughtfully for a second before adding, "Want to come?"

Go away with him somewhere for a day or two? Of course I want to, if there's even the slightest chance that I might get a moment alone with him like this one then I'd probably give my left arm for it, but with his brothers and his friends around that's doubtful, and I'd most likely just be in the way. "I don't surf," I remind him.

"So?" he demands. "Neither do my parents or my sister-in-law and they're all going to be there. Plus I've offered to teach you a million times before, you know you could learn."

I chew distractedly on my thumbnail and drop my gaze to the sand, cold and white and dotted with the dark smudges of shells. I want to say yes so badly, but I know he's probably only asking to be polite. I don't know what I did to deserve this stroke of good luck tonight, this captivating and desperately confusing moment with him, but I know it would be too much to expect it to happen again. I sigh regretfully. "It sounds like it's a family thing. I wouldn't want to intrude.

"Hey," he says, commanding my attention and causing my eyes to snap back up to meet his. "It's mybirthday, I can invite who I want. I'm asking because I'd like you to come."

My heart hammers against my chest and my lips part, my gnawed-up thumbnail falling passively out of my mouth as I stare at him in the moonlight. I don't know if I can trust my voice, but it does manage a faint, whispery, "Why?" before completely giving out on me.

"I like being around you," he answers, like my question isn't weird, like I'm not clearly freaking out right in front of his eyes. "I think you're a great person, you work really hard for other people which I admire, and I think you deserve to just have fun sometimes." He rolls his shoulders back a little and glances away, and it may be the first time in my life that I've ever seen him look even remotely close to nervous. "I mean, I know you're shy," he adds, more passively this time, "and I wouldn't want to make you uncomfortable, there's no pressure or anything, but I figure you know most of my family so you might have fun."

After a beat I realize that I'm just standing there with my mouth hanging open so I hurriedly close it. "Is my brother going?" I ask, still confused.

He shakes his head. "You know I love your brother, but honestly I can't trust him to be sober and I can't have him around my family like that. My nephews are really young and it would freak my mom out and I just don't want to deal with it."

"I get that," I assure him, nodding. "I wouldn't want him around little kids either, I just…" I pause and squint out at the horizon, trying to gather my fuzzy thoughts and mold them into discernable words. "So you really want me there even if my brother's not?"

"Yes," he says firmly, "if you'd like to come."

I feel my cheeks heat up, feel this nearly instinctive need to drop my gaze and hide my face as my lips spread into a tiny smile. "I…yeah, I mean, I think it sounds fun," I agree. "I'd have to see if I could get off work but…" I trail off and press a palm to my burning face, glancing up apprehensively and just hoping that he can infer the rest of that sentence because all my ideas seem so fragmented right now.

"Just let me know," he says genially. "It's no big deal if you can't, but I would like you to be there."

"I'd like that too," I tell him, timid and embarrassed of how I'm acting but determined not to read too much into things.

The conversation dies down and he lowers his head, shifts on his feet a little and looks at his watch. I'm suddenly terrified that I've made things awkward when they were so perfect before, and in an instant I want my curse back, want to go somewhere else in my mind. I want him to be my knight in shining armor again, riding in to rescue me from one of my brother's fairy dust powered rampages, or the lap of the Rat King, the carnage of my mother's suicide. I need him noble and valiant and fearless again, because the handsome prince in all the best fairy tales is never anything but brave…

But with a jolt of something akin to horror I realize that my curse isn't coming back. For the first time in years I feel in a deep, resounding way that this truly isn't a fairy tale. I'm not a maiden in need of salvation and he's not a handsome prince who is never anything but brave, instead he's a handsome but all-in-all completely unremarkable young man who time and time again has made the choice to be brave for me.

I press my fingertips to my lips in astonishment, and when his gaze meets mine again I feel as though I'm seeing him for the very first time. "Did I…" I begin, my voice coming out unnaturally high. "Did I ever thank you for all the times you've taken care of me?"

His brows draw together. "What do you mean?" he asks.

I just shake my head in wonder and stand there, transfixed. "The day my mother died…" I murmur. "You kept me from going inside, you kept me from seeing…"

"Of course," he says immediately. "It was really bad, trust me, it would have been awful for you to see."

"I know," I reassure him. "I'm glad, I'm so glad that wasn't my last memory of her…but you saw it."

He nods solemnly. "Yeah. But it wasn't my mother. And I wasn't eleven."

"But weren't you still scared?" I ask, taking a step closer to him, dragging the tips of my toes along the surface of the water.

"I was scared as hell," he says unabashedly. "I didn't know what the fuck had happened or who had done it, I thought there might still be some guy with a gun hiding in the corner."

"But the first thing you did was come outside for me," I point out, words starting to spill from my mouth in a pressured stream as my thoughts race faster and faster. "And until just now I had never thought about how scary it must have been for you, and how brave and just…selfless it is that your first thought was of someone else!" I wring my hands agitatedly at my waist, afraid that I'm doing a bad job of explaining myself through the haze of smoke and confusion that is my brain right now. "And I'm just so ashamed that I never thanked you," I finish lamely, but it isn't even half of what I wish I could say to him.

His face relaxes into an almost smile. "You don't need to thank me for anything, baby girl. I would never have done it any differently. You should know all about that anyway," he adds. "You do things for other people all the time and I rarely see anyone thank you, but you've kept it up for years."

Laundry and grocery shopping and designated driving maybe, but not anything like him. I'm sure no one has ever gotten me confused with a knight in shining armor. "I'm not being brave though," I argue.

"Yes, you are." His smile fades a little and he crosses his arms. "There are a lot of different kinds of bravery."

I want to smile at him, ask what he means, blush and bask in his compliments because they give me this warm sort of tingle deep inside my body, but he doesn't seem in the mood for it. He takes a deep breath and looks down at his watch again, his arms drawn as tightly across his chest as a rubber band, and I just don't understand the reason for the tension.

"Do you have somewhere you need to be?" I ask meekly, trying not to sound hurt. It's just that I was so enjoying being here with him and I don't know what I did to make him uncomfortable. I wish I did so I could take it back, make everything return to the way it was five minutes ago when I had almost forgotten my curse ever existed.

"No, I don't have anywhere to be," he replies, his chest swelling with yet another long inhalation, "but there is something I want to do, and it's time now."

"What - " I start, but then he's walking towards me, coming so close that our bodies are no more than an inch apart, and he slips a big, rough hand around to the back of my neck, cradling my head with his palm as it relaxes back into his touch. His other hand comes to rest on the side of my face, thumb rubbing gently along my jaw, and I have to wrap my arms around him for support, otherwise I think I'll just dissolve right into the sand. His eyes are locked with mine and in his gaze I see strength, fear, longing, doubt, compassion, bravery, all these things that make him so much more than just a character on a page…

When he kisses me, I am spellbound.

It's soft and sweet, no more than a few seconds, simply a gentle press of his lips against mine, but I am entranced. Enchanted. Bewitched and enthralled. If the entire earth fell away beneath me I wouldn't notice, wouldn't do anything but just cling to him, feeling his warmth and his substance and his humanity in my arms. No fairy tale that I've ever heard, no story that I've ever read, no ridiculous fantasy that made me gasp and giggle like the silly little girl that I know I am, ever came close to capturing the tiniest fraction of this feeling. They weren't too good to be true at all. They weren't good enough.

When he pulls back my eyes flutter open and my breath rushes out in a shudder. I am afraid that he will let me go, leave me lost and reeling in this sudden torrent of mystification, but he doesn't. His shoulders slowly rise and fall, and his eyes remain on me, searching my face, his brow knit tightly. "I've been waiting to do that for so long," he says, his voice a soft, deep rumble in his chest that I feel against my own.

It's like I've forgotten how to control my own muscles, so lost in this moment that I never could have imagined would actually come to pass, and I feel my trembling fingers start to slip down his chest. "You have?" I ask breathlessly, disbelievingly.

He nods as he takes my shaking hands in his own, and they look so small and dainty with his wrapped around them. "For years."

I don't understand. I don't believe him. He's never treated me like anything but his best friend's little sister, a kinder, gentler, more sympathetic version of the older brother I always wished I could have had. I was always the one who pined after him, the one who practiced writing my signature with his last name in my school notebooks, the one who offered to babysit his nephews and water his mom's flowers just for the chance to get a quick smile from him on his way out the door, the one who always felt a sick, shameful, visceral envy at the sight of him with his arm casually slung around some slender blonde's shoulders, her lips pressed against his cheek. "But…" I start, shaking my head in confusion. "So why now?"

"It's eleven thirty-five," he says simply, but I immediately figure it out.

"And I'm eighteen…" I finish, trying unsuccessfully to bite back the ridiculous smile that my cheeks just can't force their way out of.

"I didn't want it to seem like I was taking advantage of you," he explains, his gaze intense and scrutinizing, eyes flitting back and forth between each of mine. "The last thing I ever want to do is hurt you, and I'm sorry if that was too forward, but I just couldn't wait a second longer." He swallows hard and reaches out to brush my cheek with his fingertips again. "I had to do it at least once."

The spot where he touched me feels like it's on fire. "Just once?" I ask, my voice small and wavering.

His expression softens, the line between his brows disappearing in an instant, and he pulls me close again. "As many times as you want," he whispers.

He guides my face to his for another kiss and his fingers slip into my hair, twisting it between them gently, pressing harder this time, holding me tighter. I feel every muscle in my body relax, every bone shudders as I practically melt into his hands.

When my fingernails lightly scrape his neck I hear him gasp, feel him pull back for a split second before bringing our lips together again, and I feel a burst of hot energy inside me. It's one thing for me to swoon in his embrace but it's another thing entirely to think that I could mesmerize him just as much, so I stroke his face, look deep into his eyes, stand on my tiptoes and kiss him again and again, feeling the way his chest heaves and his breath catches in his throat and his hands slide up and down my back.

"If I can have as many as I want then we'll be here all night," I murmur against his lips, my eyes still closed and my arms locked around his neck.

I feel him smile before pressing one last kiss to the corner of my mouth. "You don't have to be home before the clock strikes midnight?" he teases, wrapping his arms around me and pulling my head to his chest.

I stare out at the open ocean, at the waves coated with sparkling pixie dust and the tree of diamonds swaying steadily back and forth as they dance over it. This is the most magical place I have ever been in my life, but it's not any of those things that make it magical. It's him. "This is not a fairy tale," I reply serenely. "I can stay out as late as I want."

I feel his body contract as he laughs. "And all this time I thought you were a princess."

I tilt my head back and gaze up at him, my Prince Charming, my savior, my handsome defender, my knight in shining armor…or maybe just my friend and my occasional protector, someone to care for me and keep me warm, someone to listen to my stories, someone to make my heart skip a beat, someone to hug and kiss, to smile with, to feel real and rooted and grounded with…

"No," I say, "I'm not a princess. But right now I think I can live with that."

~ The End ~