My mouth found hers with a hunger born of loss and recovery, of weeks of yearning and a lifetime of regret. She made a sound against my lips, something between a sob and a laugh, and it undid me completely. I pulled her closer, closer, until there was no space between us, until I could feel her heartbeat against my chest, racing in time with mine.
"I love you," I said against her mouth. "I love you so much."
"I love you too." She was crying and laughing, her fingers curling into the fabric of my shirt. "I love you, I love you, I never stopped…"
I swallowed the rest of her words with another kiss. Deeper this time. Her hands slid into my hair, and mine found her waist, pulling her practically into my lap despite the awkward angle and my useless arm. I didn't care. I couldn't get close enough. Couldn't touch enough. Couldn't make up for all the time we'd lost, fifteen years of silence, three months of forgetting, a lifetime of almost.
"Wait." She pulled back, breathless, her lips swollen from kissing. "Your arm, your injuries, I don't want to hurt you."
"You're not hurting me." I pulled her back in. "The only thing that hurts is when you stop."
She laughed against my mouth. "That's very smooth."
"I told you I was recovering my smoothness."
"You're ridiculous."
"You love it."
"I really do."
We kissed again, slower this time, savoring it. The desperate edge faded into something deeper, not less intense, but more tender. I traced the edges of her lips. Kissed the corner of her mouth. Then the soft skin beneath her ear that made her shiver.
"I want to remember this," I murmured against her neck. "Every second of this. I want to remember how you taste. How you feel. The sounds you make when I touch you here…" I pressed a kiss to the pulse on her neck, and she gasped. "Like that."
"Miles." Her voice was ragged.
"I forgot you, forgot our three months together." I pulled back to look at her, holding her face in my hands. "I'm never going to take a single moment for granted again."
The tears were flowing freely now, both of us crying and smiling and probably looking completely ridiculous in the blue glow of the television. I didn't care. I'd never been happier in my entire life.
"So what now?" she whispered, her forehead resting against mine.
What now? The question opened up a future I could finally see clearly, not shrouded in fear or uncertainty, but bright with possibility.
I thought about everything we'd been through. Everything we'd survived. The fifteen years of silence. The diagnosis. The accident. Me, forgetting her. And through all of it, she'd stayed. She'd fought for us when I couldn't fight for myself.
"Now," I said slowly, "we stop wasting time."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean that I spent fifteen years without you because I was too scared to choose what I really wanted." I pulled back to look at her properly, holding her face in my hands. "I spent these last few days forgetting the best thing that ever happened to me. AndI'm done. I'm done being afraid. I'm done waiting for the right moment or the perfect circumstances."
"Miles—"
"I want to build a life with you, Charlotte." The words came out fierce, certain. "A real life. Not just surviving day to day, not just managing my condition, but actuallyliving. With you. Whatever that looks like—the good days and the bad days, the memories we make and the ones we might lose again. All of it. I want all of it with you."
Her breath caught. Fresh tears spilled down her cheeks, but she was smiling with that radiant, sunrise smile that had haunted me for fifteen years and brought me back from the darkness.
"That sounds like a plan," she whispered.
"Yeah?"
"Yeah." She kissed me softly. "But maybe we can discuss the details when we're not both emotional wrecks on a couch at three in the morning."
I laughed, the sound surprising us both. "Fair point."
"I'm full of fair points. It's one of my best qualities."
