I've had to be strong for so long. Numb myself to all of it. Throw my heart in a locked box and swallow the key. I taught myself that needing someone was the most dangerous thing a person could do. Learned to bite down on every scream, every sob, every plea until my jaw ached from the effort of holding it all in.
Until eventually, I felt nothing at all.
And now Tristan is standing in front of me at dawn, saying things likerest of my lifeandtogether…and I think he means them.
I don't have the right words.
So I grab his jacket with both fists and pull him down to me.
The first second feels like a glitch, a pause in time as my lipspress against his. Then he exhales against me—this shaking, fractured breath that sounds like a man setting down something impossibly heavy. His hands come up to cradle my face.
I taste salt. My tears or his, I can't tell. It doesn't matter.
The kiss deepens gradually, not desperate but more like pieces falling into place.
His mouth moves against mine, and it's like finding a language I'd forgotten I spoke. My body remembers before my brain catches up.
The way he tilts his head, the way his thumb traces the hinge of my jaw, the way he kisses like he's trying to say something he can't figure out how to put into words.
I melt into him. There's no other word for it.
My fists loosen on his jacket. My palms flatten against his chest. I feel his heartbeat slamming underneath—fast and frantic, completely at odds with how gentle his mouth is.
I forgot what it feels like to be kissed by someone who knows the worst of you and wants you anyway. Someone who looks at your wreckage and doesn't see a project or a problem or something to fix.
I forgot what it felt like to be completely, devastatingly wanted.
After everything, Tristan is here, in my arms.
That's enough. Right now, standing in the ruins of everything we lost, with dawn bleeding gold through the branches above us, it's perfectly enough.
FORTY-TWO
TRISTAN
She tastes like coming home.
That's the only way I can describe it. The moment her mouth meets mine, everything churning inside me just…stops. The constant noise. The planning. The anger. The white-knuckle control I've been strangling myself with for months.
All of it goes quiet.
There's only her.
I need to feel her. Need proof that she's real, that this is real—that I haven't finally snapped and started hallucinating the only thing I've ever wanted.
Fuck, I've been going out of my mind wanting this.
Her back is against the garden wall. When did I put her there? My hands are braced on either side of her head, caging her in. Her lips are swollen and slick, parted on uneven breaths that fog in the cold morning air.
"Seventeen minutes." My voice comes out like gravel scraped over glass. "That's how long until the groundskeeper returns."
"That's not very long."
"It's long enough."
Her eyes widen. I watch her pulse jump at the base of her throat, watch her thighs press together.
"Tristan, we can't?—"
