“Cassie.”
She stopped.
Liam pushed off the doorframe and closed the distance between them in two steps. He cupped her face in his hands—those capable, calloused hands that had fixed her fence and her gutters and her grandmother’s music box—and looked at her like she was something worth looking at.
“You’re not too much,” he said. “You’ve never been too much. You’re exactly enough. I’ve been saying that since the beginning, and I’ll keep saying it until you believe me.”
“But—”
“No buts. You’re chaos. You’re exhausting. You cast spells while I’m in the shower and summon people across continents and turn your garden into something out of a fever dream.” His thumbs traced her cheekbones, gentle and steady. “And I’m here anyway. Not because of magic. Not because of binding. Just because Iwantto be.”
“You want to be?”
“I drove halfway across the country after my divorce swearing I’d never get tangled up with another witch again. And then you yanked me into your kitchen with pipe slime in your hair and panic in your eyes, and I thought—” He laughed softly. “I thought,not again. And then I thought,no, this one’s different. And I haven’t stopped thinking that since.”
Cassie’s vision blurred. She blinked, and tears spilled down her cheeks—the good kind, the relieved kind, the kind that came when you finally stopped holding your breath.
“I practiced a speech,” she said again, because she didn’t know what else to say. “It was supposed to be good.”
“It was good.”
“I forgot all of it.”
“It was still good.” He was smiling now, really smiling, and the sight of it cracked something open in her chest. “Did the speech include a part where you tell me what you actually want?”
She reached up and covered his hands with hers. The glow brightened between them—not a surge or a storm, just a steady warmth that felt likerightness.
“I want you,” she said. “Not because of the binding. Not because you were stuck here. Just—you. Grumpy and Scottish and terrible at small talk and too good at fixing things that aren’t yours to fix.”
“Aye?”
“Aye.” She laughed through her tears. “Is that—I mean—is that okay?”
“Cassie.”
“What?”
“Stop talking.”
And then he kissed her.
Not like the almost-kisses before—interrupted, tentative, heavy with all the things they weren’t saying. This was something else entirely. This was achoice. His mouth on hers, her hands fisting in the fabric of his shirt, the soft exhale he made when she pressed closer.
No magic required.
Well. Maybe a little magic. The light bulb in the motel hallway popped, showering them in a brief rain of sparks. The radio in his room switched stations to something slow and French-sounding. And Cassie could swear—swear—she heard the ice machine on the first floor rumble to life like it was applauding.
She pulled back just enough to look at him.
“I did that, didn’t I?”
“Probably.”
“Sorry about the light bulb.”
“I’ll fix it.”
She laughed—really laughed, the kind that came from somewhere deep and relieved—and kissed him again.
