“How do you know?” I ask. “How can you be so sure?”
“Because I’ve watched you for three years,” he says simply. “Because I know exactly who you are. And I’m still here. We’re all still here. And we’re not going anywhere.”
I don’t have words for what I’m feeling. This overwhelming, terrifying hope.
So I do the only thing that makes sense.
I kiss him.
Chapter 23
Elijah
She kisses me.
We’ve done this before—at the cabin, before the heat hit, when she was still fighting what was happening between us. But that kiss was tentative. Uncertain. A question she wasn’t sure she wanted answered.
This is different.
This is Tessa after she ran. After she had time to think, to process, to talk herself out of this a hundred times. And she’s still here. Still choosing this. Choosingme.
That’s what makes my hands shake when I reach for her.
I kiss her back.
My hands tighten on her waist, pulling her closer. She makes a small sound against my mouth—surprise, maybe, or relief—and her fingers curl into the front of my henley like she’s afraid I’ll disappear.
I’m not going anywhere. I’ve waited too long for this. I’m not goinganywhere.
She tastes like the wine we had with dinner, dark and rich, with something sweeter underneath. Her scent is changing—the citrus edge completely gone now, replaced by pure lavender and something else. Something warm and honeyed that I’ve onlysmelled once before, in that cabin, when her body was calling to mine.
Not heat. Just want.
I tilt her head back to deepen the kiss, and she lets me. Opens for me. Her tongue slides against mine and I groan into her mouth, pulling her flush against me so there’s no space between us.
Three years. Three years of watching her from across rooms. Three years of finding excuses to be near her, to touch things she’d touch, to exist in her orbit without ever being brave enough to close the distance.
And now she’s in my arms, kissing me like I’m the air she needs to breathe.
I wasn’t prepared for this. I thought I was. I thought I’d imagined every possible scenario, planned for every outcome. But the reality of Tessa Lang—her taste, her scent, the little sounds she makes when I do something she likes—is better than anything I could have imagined.
I break the kiss to breathe and she chases my mouth, whimpering when I pull back. The sound goes straight to my cock.
“Tessa.” My voice comes out rough. Wrecked. “I need—can I?—”
“Yes.” She’s nodding before I finish the question. “Whatever it is. Yes.”
I laugh, and it surprises both of us. “You don’t even know what I was going to ask.”
“Don’t care.” Her hands slide up my chest, over my shoulders, into my hair. Her nails scrape against my scalp and I shudder. “Just don’t stop touching me.”
I kiss her again. She’s right there and she’s willing and she’sTessa, the woman I’ve been quietly, hopelessly gone for since the moment she walked into Maeve’s bakery with an ink stain on herblazer and demanded they remake her coffee because the foam ratio was wrong.
I’d been sitting in the corner, eating a cinnamon roll, and I’d watched her apologize to Maeve afterward. The way her cheeks went pink. The way she tried to backtrack, embarrassed by her own intensity. And I’d thought:there. That’s the one.
I never told anyone that story. Not even Levi. Some things you keep close.
But I want to tell her. Eventually. When we have time. When I have the words.
