I didn’t know anything else, but I knew Will.
My heart knewhimeven when my head couldn’t recall my own name.
For a moment, neither of us moved.
He was pale with dark circles under his eyes. His clothes were rumpled like he’d been wearing them for days. He looked wrecked. He looked like he’d been crying.
He was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.
“Thomas.”
His voice broke on my name.
Then he was across the room and dropping to his knees beside the bed. His hands flew to my face, then my chest, then my arms. He touched me everywhere, as if he needed to confirm that I was real.
“You’re alive,” he said through tears that now streaked his face. “Oh God, Thomas.”
“I’m alive.”
He pressed his forehead against my chest and made a sound I knew I’d never heard from him before—a raw, broken thing that wasn’t quite a sob but came from the same place.
I lifted my hand.
It took more effort than it should have, but I found his hair and curled my fingers into it.
“I’m here,” I said. “I’m okay.”
“You almost died.” His voice was still shattered and desperate. “The doctor said . . . if the water had been any colder—”
“But it wasn’t.” My hand drifted to his cheek, cupping, urging his gaze upward. “Look at me.”
His eyes were red and wet and full of something that looked like terror and relief and love all tangled together.
“I came back,” I said. “I promised you I would, and I did.”
“You almost didn’t.”
“Almost doesn’t count.”
He groaned—a wet, fractured sound. “That’s not how it works.”
“It’s how it works for us.”
He stared at me for the longest moment.
Then he leaned forward and kissed me with the tenderness of a snowflake landing on a flower. It was the kind of kiss that said nothing—and everything.
When he pulled back, his hand found my face, mirroring my own gesture.
“I love you, Thomas,” he said quietly. “I don’t say it enough. I should say it more. Iwillsay it more. I love you so damn much. When I thought I’d lost you—”
“You didn’t lose me.”
“I know, I know. But . . . for those hours . . . I didn’t know that. I didn’t know anything. I kept thinking about all the things I should have said, all the moments I’d wasted being careful or professional or—” He stopped. Took a breath. “I don’t want to waste any more moments.”
I covered his hand with mine.
“Then don’t.”
