His hands were in my hair before I registered the movement, steadying my head, tipping my face up. I caught the taste of coffee, something faintly sweet beneath it, the familiar mix of hay and soap and him—a scent I’d noticed once and then never stopped noticing.
My back met the hallway wall. Solid. Cold. He followed, close enough that there was nowhere left to retreat. The weight of him pressed me there, grounding, like an anchor I hadn’t known I was reaching for until it held.
This wasn’t the kiss I’d imagined in the rare moments I let myself imagine anything at all. Those had been careful. Measured. The kind that paused, that checked, that moved slowly.
This was everything we’d been avoiding, colliding at once.
His thumb brushed my cheekbone. I felt it before I saw it—felt the tremor in his hands, small but unmistakable.
The knowledge landed quietly—that he was unsteady too, that this mattered to him the same way it mattered to me—and something I’d kept braced shut finally gave.
I pulled back just enough to breathe.
His forehead came to rest against mine, eyes still closed, breath heavy and uneven where our chests met.
Neither of us moved.
Like if we did, we’d have to decide what this was.
“Riley.” My name sounded different in his mouth. Lower. Heavier.
It took a second to catch up—to register where I was. The hallway wall was cool against my back. The warmth of him was still close. The echo of the kiss lingered on my skin.
“I know.” The words came out soft, rough around the edges, pulled from somewhere deeper than thought. “I know.”
He kissed me again. Slower this time. Like now that we'd admitted this was real, we didn't have to rush. Like we had time.Like we had all the time in the world, stretching out ahead of us, full of mornings and evenings and ordinary moments that suddenly felt extraordinary.
His arms wrapped around me, pulling me close, and I let myself be held. Let myself lean into him instead of pulling away. Let myself want this, want him, want the life we'd been building without admitting we were building it.
When we finally broke apart, foreheads still touching, both breathing hard, I laughed. The sound surprised me—watery and raw and startled out of some deep place I'd kept locked for years.
"So," I whispered. "What now?"
Liam's arms tightened around me. "Now we stop pretending."
I'd built walls for twenty-six years.
Stone by stone, brick by brick, mortared with every broken promise and abandoned hope. My father left when I was a child. Mom chose drugs over her daughters. Todd's fists and Mom's excuses and the night I climbed out a window at eighteen with nothing but a backpack and a promise to come back for Mia.
The walls had kept me safe. They'd kept me standing when everything else fell apart. They'd kept me moving forward when stopping would have meant drowning.
They'd also kept me alone.
But standing in that hallway, Liam's mouth still warm on mine, my sister sleeping peacefully down the hall, I felt them fall.
Not crumble. Not shift. Fall.
All at once, like they'd been waiting for permission, like they'd been ready to come down the moment I stopped holding them up.
And for the first time in my life, I didn't try to rebuild them.
CHAPTER 14
Liam
Two weekssince the hallway kiss, and I kept waiting for something to go wrong.
It didn’t.
