“Oh, Phoenix,” she blurted out, then dropped her head into her hands and began to sob.
It gutted me.
I wrapped my arms around her and pulled her into my chest, letting her collapse against me. She went limp, like she'd been holding herself up for too long and couldn’t anymore. I leaned us both back against the couch, one arm tight around her, the other cradling the back of her head as if holding her together would somehow piecemeback together too.
She cried. Long, hard, heaving sobs that soaked through my shirt. And I let her. I held her like I’d wanted someone to hold me after I woke up alone in that sterile hospital room. Like I wished someone had held me when I lost who I used to be. And the more I held her, the more I knew—I’d never let anything happen to her. Not while I was breathing.
I pressed a kiss to the top of her head and breathed her in. Her shampoo. Her skin. That faint trace of vanilla and honey that seemed to linger in every room she entered. It was the scent of home. Of something I hadn’t realized I was missing until I found it in her.
My beautiful Rose Flower.
After a few minutes, she pulled away, wiping at her face with the sleeve of her sweatshirt. She laughed—quiet, embarrassed. “Geez. I’m supposed to be your therapist.”
I cupped her face and kissed her forehead, my lips lingering longer than necessary. “Don’t worry. My bag of crazy still runs circles around yours.”
She let out another laugh—real this time, if still a little wet around the edges. “I’ll give you that.”
She reached for her coffee, took a sip, and leaned back against the couch. I stayed close, settling beside her, my hand finding her thigh like it belonged there—because it did.
“Now that you know all that, I want to make sure you understand something else. Through my schooling, I learned that everything ‘weird’ about me has to do with my childhood. My OCD, my perfectionism, my uptight, condescending nature—as you’d call it.” She slipped me a side-eye smirk, then focused back on the fire. “But the biggest side effect has been my need for control. I never had control growing up, so I grip onto it now like some elusive gift that might escape me one day. I have to have the routine, the mundane. I want the white picket fence, a family. I wantnormal.I’ve spent my life trying to control everything, keeping everything in its place, trying to make decisions based on facts instead of my heart.” She looked up at me.“That’swhy I dated Josh Davis, Phoenix. That’s why I said yes to his proposal.”
“Because he’s perfect on paper. He’s your white picket fence.”
“Exactly. He had everything. He served his country, had a solid education, solid family, solid future. Turns out he was also a solid jerk.”
“Is that why you left him?”
A moment passed.
Her hand drifted to mine, those dark eyes locking onto mine.
“No. I left him, Phoenix, because he didn’t give me butterflies.”
Without saying a word, I reached for her. My hands framed her face with a tenderness I didn’t know I still possessed, and I kissed her.
Slowly.
Deliberately.
Like I had all the time in the world to memorize the taste of her, the heat of her mouth, the shape of her lips. I kissed her like it was the only thing keeping me tethered to the earth. Like everything broken inside of me could somehow be healed by this single, quiet moment.
Because with her—itcouldbe.
Her hands slid onto my shirt, her breath catching as our foreheads touched. And for the first time since the explosion, since I woke up in that damn hospital not knowing who I was or what my life would become—I felt whole.
She didn’t just make me feel again. She made mewant.
To be better. To deserve her.
To stay.
This wasn’t just a kiss. It was a promise. A surrender. A beginning.
My Rose Flower.
Mine.
A bright light flickered behind my closed eyes. I jerked back, scanning the room. More lights, moving across the walls in waves.
