It settles over me slowly, like a truth I’ve been circling without ever letting myself touch.
This isn’t about me. It’s about her.
She needs this comfort and safety she’s always found in my arms. I can give her stability in the middle of all the chaos that’sbeen tearing her apart. And if I can be that for her, even for a single night, I will.
Even if it breaks me in the process.
I press a kiss to the top of her head, and I hold her like she’s still mine.
The rise and fall of her chest against mine is steady, her leg stays curled over my hip, her fingers twitching once before settling near my ribs again, as if her body is remembering a rhythm it hasn’t followed in a long time. Her nose tucks into my collarbone like some part of her still knows this was always where she felt safest.
I close my eyes and breathe her in, letting the familiarity of her sink into me. It’s almost too much, and yet almost not enough.
And when her breath has gone soft and even, and I know she won’t hear the way my voice fractures, I bare my soul to her.
“I’m so sorry,” I whisper into the dark, the words rough and raw at the edges. “I never should’ve pushed you away.”
The confession scrapes its way out of me like glass, coated in the guilt I’ve been carrying since the moment I ended things. It burns, but it’s the truth.
“I thought I was doing the right thing. That I was protecting you from all of this.” My hand slides gently along the curve of her spine, following the familiar path it used to know by heart. “From me… but I was wrong about everything. I swear to you, Celeste… I’ll do everything to fight for you and make things right.”
My fingers tighten just slightly against her hip, not enough to wake her. Just enough to anchor myself to the promise I didn’t even know I was going to make until it spilled out of me.
Because every word of it is true.
I don’t care if she forgives me tomorrow or never. But I’m not walking away this time. Not again.
Not unless she looks me in the eye and tells me she doesn’t want me.
And even then, God help me, I’m not sure I’ll survive it.
A tremor runs through me, small but sharp, the kind that comes from holding too much in for too long. I bury my face in her hair, letting the scent of her undo me in ways I’ve been pretending it doesn’t.
She breathes softly against my throat, completely unaware of the way she’s breaking me open just by existing in my arms. Completely unaware of the way I’m falling apart around her, quietly, desperately, hopelessly.
I swallow hard, the ache in my chest spreading like a bruise.
“I missed you,” I whisper, the words barely audible, scraped raw from somewhere deep. “More than I ever let myself admit.”
My voice cracks on the last word. I don’t try to hide it.
“I should’ve fought for us, I should’ve stayed with you. You were the best thing I ever had, Celeste. And I let you go like you meant nothing.” A shaky breath escapes me. “You mean everything.”
The words hang there, fragile and final, sinking into the quiet like stones.
I hold her a little tighter, just for tonight, just for this moment, just for the version of us that still exists in the dark.
And I let myself break quietly around her, piece by piece, in the only place she’ll never see.
19
Celeste
The water is hot enough to blur the edges of the room, and I let it run until the steam softens the world, and the tile under my palms is the only thing that feels real. I know if I stop the water, then the silence will come back, and with it the memory of last night, the way his arms folded around me, and the way my body fit into him as if it had been waiting for that exact place to rest.
After the way James tore through my rig and left everything exposed and raw, safety should be a foreign word, something I no longer recognize; instead safety is the memory of Lucian’s chest against mine, the slow, even beat of him under my cheek, and how he held me like he could gather the jagged pieces and lay them back where they belonged, and that contradiction sits in my ribs like a stone I cannot swallow or spit out.
I keep replaying fragments of his voice the way you replay a song you are not sure you remember correctly, soft and wreckedand urgent:I’m so sorry, I never should’ve pushed you away; I thought I was protecting you; you mean everything,and the words drift through the steam and my doubt until I cannot tell whether they landed in the dark last night or whether my heart stitched them together out of need.
