Every sound she made lit me up like gasoline to a fuse. I kissed her as if I was starving—because I was. For her. For this. For the fucking truth between us finally getting air.
Her fingers found the back of my neck, tugging me closer, as if even this wasn’t enough. And maybe it wasn’t. Not with everything we’d buried. Everything we’d denied.
When we finally came up for air, our foreheads touched. Her lips were swollen, breath hitching. Her eyes dazed but clear. A crooked grin tugged at her mouth.
“This changes things.”
“Damn right it does.” I went in again. Slower. Deeper. More of a claim than a kiss. She moaned into my mouth and arched against me.
A car horn blared below. We froze. Then pulled apart, reluctantly.
The sky had turned indigo above us, stars scattered, confessions written in light. I reached into my pocket. Pulled out the chain. “Might as well mark the night.”
She blinked, her eyes going suspiciously shiny. “You kept it?”
I didn’t answer. Just brushed her hair aside and clasped the chain around her neck. Her fingers drifted up, grazing the tiny silver star. It settled just above her collarbone.
“I left it in your bag the night of the game,” she whispered. “For luck. I wasn’t supposed to leave that night. I thought I’d be there to get it back from you the next day.”
Her revelation hit me, a shock wave down my spine. She hadn’t meant to disappear. The necklace wasn’t a goodbye—it was a thread we never got to finish. It changed things.
“Still suits you,” I murmured. I wanted to claim her. Make her mine. Shout it to the world. But we couldn’t do that, not yet. Not with my family’s warning in my ears and Lorne standing like a shadow at the edge of everything.
She touched the star, voice low and steady. “We can’t be reckless. Not with this. Not with us. If they find out…”
“I know.” The words scraped out of me. “We keep it quiet. Off their radar. Allies. Partners.”
Her eyes didn’t waver. “Not lovers. Not yet. But don’t think for a second I’m shutting this down. Not again.”
I swallowed hard. The heat between us wasn’t going anywhere. “Then we fight smart. Together. And whatever this is”—I brushed the star at her collarbone—“we keep it ours until it’s safe to burn the rest of the world with it.”
Not just friends. Not enemies. And not what we were before. Something volatile. A secret. A truce painted in starlight and skin.
She didn’t answer. Didn’t need to. Because that star? That kiss? That promise? They weren’t just ours now. They were war paint. And we would need it.
