Same gold dress, same mouth I can spot in a crowd of a hundred, same hands that rewrote my story and made it something I could stand behind. The tattoos on her fingers peek out from under the sleeves of my sweatshirt, her gorgeous face soft and gentle and radiant. The softest wrecking ball I’ve ever loved.
We crash into each other without even discussing it. She wraps around me like a little fuckin’ koala, and I bury my face in her hair and exhale for the first time in days.
“God, I missed you,” I say.
“So much,” she agrees, her little body trembling.
I cradle her head in both my hands, winding my fingers through the silk of her hair, tilting her face up to look at me. “I’m so sorry,” I say, with a soft kiss to her lips.
“I know,” she agrees quietly.
“I fucked up.”
“You did.”
“God, there’s so much I want to say to you,” I go on. “That day, I made one bad call. A small one. I didn’t say anything when I should’ve. I didn’t shut it down.”
She blinks, slow and careful. “And you think that’s small?”
“No,” I admit. “I just mean—it was a small moment. Barely a quarter of an hour. But the pain it caused you—us—was… massive. And that was terrifying. How one lapse, one second of fear, could break something like that.”
When she exhales, it sounds like it’s been sitting in her chest for weeks. “You didn’t break it.”
“Felt like I did,” I say. “And I deserved that feeling. I didn’t have your back when it counted.”
Annie nuzzles into my chest.
“But the second I thought I’d ruined it? It gutted me. Because loving you has made me feel more like myself than I ever have before. And losing you didn’t just hurt—it made everything else meaningless,” I tell her.
There’s a pause.
She says quietly, “You made me feel foolish. For believing you could be the one who didn’t let me down.”
“I know,” I say, and I really do, “and I hate that. Because you’ve always been the brave one. You let yourself believe in something. In me. And I failed you.”
“You didn’t fail me.” She shakes her head, almost amused. “You hesitated. You got scared. And yeah, that hurt—but I’ve had time to think. And… I think I’ve figured out the difference between someone who gives up and someone who fights to fix it.”
I look at her. “And which am I?”
“The second one,” she says. “God, Nico, you illiterate gorilla.”
We’re quiet for a beat. I let her look at me.
“You make me brave,” I say. “You make me want to be better—not just for you, but for myself. I didn’t know I could love someone like this and still feel like me.”
She’s quiet for a second. Then, “You make me gentler.”
That’s a surprise.
“You make me less reactive,” she continues. “Not softer—just more deliberate. Being around you makes me…” She clears her throat. “Makes me want to slow down enough to care about things I usually bulldoze through. You make me want things. Real things. Not just goals or grudges or proving everyone wrong. And you make me feel like it’sokayfor me to want things. ”
I swallow, hard.
“You’re the first person I’ve ever trusted to give all of me. Even the parts Sister Annie tries to keep in a locked box labeled‘Too Much.’ And somehow, you look at all of it and say, more, please.”
“I mean it,” I say, taking her hand, rubbing my thumb across the tattoos on her knuckles. Kissing every single one of them. “Every time.”
She nods. “I forgave you the second I saw your name on the title page.”
